Release Date: 2009-07-17

Zimbabwe teeters on the brink of a precipice in the aftermath of the 2008 elections, which saw the incumbent, President Robert Mugabe, return to power for another five-year term in an electoral process judged by all African observers as not free and fair. Far from resolving Zimbabwe’s eight-year political and economic crisis as anticipated, the election, earlier conceived as a conflict resolution mechanism, has deepened political paralysis, insecurity and economic uncertainty. Although Mugabe lost the first round of the harmonized elections on 29 March, his challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai, the presidential standard bearer for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) secured 47.9%, three points shy of the mandatory 51% required to clinch an outright victory, necessitating a run-off. Zimbabwe’s legislature, now a new frontier in the inter-party conflict, is ill-suited to break the country’s impasse after Mugabe’s Party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), lost control of the House of Assembly in the elections to the MDC, which also secured half of the seats in the Senate.

Regional and international calls for the presidential run-off on 27 June to be put on hold failed to grapple with the perils of an imminent power vacuum in a fragile state or to suggest a viable stop-gap option. However, Mugabe’s decision to go on with the re-run and Tsvangirai’s last minute withdrawal, citing intimidation, repression and retributive violence against his supporters, left the country poised on a slippery slope. The unanimous rejection of the run-off results by observers from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) and the African Union (AU) has failed to restore legitimacy to the Mugabe government, which is now facing a low-intensity civil war from retaliatory violence from MDC supporters at home and calls for tougher sanctions abroad.

Document: SAVING ZIMBABWE 10 JULY 2008.pdf