Mugabe’s self-help constitutional order

Mugabe’s self-help constitutional order

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• Zimbabweans have spoken, and the message is in the detail

• Mugabe's re-election would be disaster for private enterprise

• Zimbabweans at the polls: the great debates

• Change cannot wait for Madhuku's post-election ambitions

• Voting for change in Zimbabwe

• Can an independent win in Zimbabwe? Yes he can!

• Makoni: puppet, Zanu PF agent or national hero?

• Who is behind Makoni? Please count me in!

• Obama v Billary Clinton: lessons for Africa

• If Zuma is corrupt, who isn't?

• Charamba gives civil service a very bad name

• Be the change that you want to see

• The paradox of African liberation and change

• Zimbabwe and the Jacob Zuma factor

• The EU-Africa relationship post-colonialism

• Beyond Lisbon: setting the African agenda

• Implications of Zuma winning ANC presidency

• Africa's enduring economic apartheid

• Does indigenisation threaten law of succession?

• Defining the role of the state in post-colonial Africa

• Mushore's ordeal and the Zimbabwe we want

• Does rule of law pose a threat to Africa?

• Capitalism may challenge the poor, but it gives them hope

• The Africa we want: out of time?

• Africa: From Berlin to Lisbon

• The turning point that never was

• Zimbabwe's turning point

• Black Economic Empoerment project gone awry

• Africa's bitter harvest

• Africa's real brand ambassadors

• Indigenisation: a case of hypocritical manipulation?

• Can Africa's brand ambassadors please stand up?

• Is Zimbabwe a candidate for economic surgery?

• Zimbabwe's leadership paradox

• Rhodesia not so good

• Wither Zimbabwe?

• Investing in fear: Mugabe's economic revival plan

• Mugabe takes over as leader of the opposition

• Mugabe under siege: a failed ideology or conspiracy?

• Robert Mugabe's fate

• Without a cause, Africa's progress stunted

• Kofi Annan and the outsourcing of Africa's future

• The Africa we want

• Africa's development challenge: from civil to platinum rights

• 2008 may already be a done deal

• To quit or not to quit: the leadership question

• Business sector cannot remain indifferent to political question

• Gono plays Pope and Cop

• Trust and succession politics in Africa

• Robert Mugabe and Ian Smith: two of a kind

By Mutumwa D. Mawere
(www.mmawere.com)

THE people of Zimbabwe have spoken and yet they have been denied the right to know the outcome of their democratic choices.

We now know that Zanu PF lost the parliamentary elections and the senatorial results were a draw.
However, it is evident that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) faces some unexplained difficulty in announcing the presidential results leading to a valid speculation that Zanu PF and President Mugabe now know the results and they do not like what they have seen.

Arthur Mutambara’s 2008 independence message has clarified the position of his party and identified a legislative agenda that on the face of it has undoubtedly made Zanu PF nervous, particularly when it is manifestly clear that for the first time since independence, it has lost control of parliament and would need to rely on the chiefs to control the senate.

The recount of the 23 constituencies last Saturday must, therefore, be seen in the broader context of an attempt to reverse the parliamentary results through shenanigans that serve to undermine President Mugabe’s hitherto boisterous posture that he would never be involved in any scheme designed to defeat the will of the people.

President Mugabe has made the case that Gordon Brown and George Bush were a manipulative factor in the Zimbabwean election as if to suggest that anyone who votes against Zanu PF is delirious and insane and necessarily a reflection that such a person is a puppet. The only conclusion one draws from the confusing and confused statements from Zanu PF and President Mugabe is that it is treasonous to vote for change.

Zimbabwe turned 28 last Friday and for the first time since independence, President Mugabe’s legitimacy was at stake.

I have no doubt that President Mugabe, in agreeing to the SADC mediated framework for holding elections, had not counted on the people of Zimbabwe being able to express themselves so eloquently against the politics of the past.

President Mugabe has taken pride in being part of the struggle that brought civil rights to the majority of the citizens of Zimbabwe and for the first time he has been caught at his own game. Could he be a victim of his own making?

The people of Zimbabwe want a new reality and clearly have elected to shape their own destiny without President Mugabe at the helm. Will he release the people to be free once again or will he cling to power using the recycled anti-colonial arguments?

Anyone who cared to listen to President Mugabe’s independence message can safely conclude that the road ahead is going to be bumpy with an unknown destination.

Even President Mugabe knows that the people of Zimbabwe deserve a new beginning but many of us have not taken the trouble to express how absurd an outcome that will leave him in power will be.

It cannot be said that the only injury that President Mugabe has caused is that of stealing an election but the attack must be much broader to locate the injury in the context of a humanly created dysfunctional constitutional order that makes the separation of powers doctrine a joke. Clearly, we now know that under President Mugabe the judiciary is incapable of being independent, so is the ZEC.

President Mugabe has invested in a new reality where fear is the order of the day. Black hope that underpinned the 1980 independence celebrations has been replaced by fear and it is difficult to imagine that the Zimbabwe many people fought so hard to create has turned into an international joke.

One of the fundamental principles of the rule of law is that no-one can be a judge unto his own cause and yet we find a strange occurrence in Zimbabwe where the current regime has taken the law into its own hands with impunity. The election results are now being reviewed by the same party that only a few weeks ago announced them with no involvement of the courts.

What is now clear after the election is that Zimbabwe can no longer be classified as a republic as President Mugabe has successfully demonstrated that he is above the constitution. In the circumstances, it is important that a new conversation be started to critically interrogate the feasibility of applying legal and diplomatic remedies to a situation in which the rights of citizens are no longer relevant.

Many have tried to understand the kind of mind that now informs President Mugabe’s attitude to his constitutional obligations. If there was any doubt that the real problem in contemporary Zimbabwe is President Mugabe, the unfolding events since the elections clearly show that up until the announcement of the parliamentary and senatorial elections, the loss by Zanu PF could be digested but when it became obvious that the President was not immune to what citizens wanted to see, it became necessary to seek the intervention of the politburo prior to the conclusion of the electoral process.

Precisely where the politburo of Zanu PF is to be located in the constitutional order has not been addressed, but what is significant is that the resolutions of this partisan organ seem to be the deciding factor in responding to the outrageous and unprecedented fraudulent manipulation of democracy the country has ever witnessed.

Zimbabwe desperately needs a new beginning and the starting point must surely be the respect of the sovereignty of the people of Zimbabwe.

Self help initiatives are inimical to the rule of law and it is embarrassing that President Mugabe now finds refuge in schemes that undermine the foundational principles of the post-colonial state and the SADC region now also finds itself as an accomplice in this dangerous development whose implications on Zimbabwe’s constitutional order can only be frightening.

Mutumwa Mawere's weekly column is published on New Zimbabwe.com every Monday. You can contact him at: mmawere@global.co.za
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