adminMicheal Mhlanga
The past few years in Zimbabwe have witnessed a budding contest on election politics; indubitably the debate has positioned the concept of elections at the centre of Zimbabwe’s political landscape — democracy in particular.
This has connected all the cleavages of statehood and state continuity into the contestation of elections and the manner in which they occur, undoubtedly elections provide a pivotal role for any democracy, however, the question that many Zimbabweans have failed to attend to, is the forecast of democracy beyond the ballot box.
Although democratic participation can be traced in some instances, it is mostly common in seemingly elite demographics, for the masses their role has been limited to casting their vote believing that those who encourage them to vote are experts in bringing the wanted democracy.
This elitisation of democratic participation has left the masses exposed to a “here say” culture of democracy, one that can probe the masses to be frustrated on behalf of their political chiefs before critically relating to the given problem.
In many instances, the masses end up being a tool to bully political rivals in the ballot as a substitute of the masses being the corner stone of constructing a self-governing order.
Indeed, for the 2018 elections we have recently celebrated the five million registered voters, but with the trending culture will that translate to a democracy, or it will only translate to the rule of those with the majority as an alternative of majority rule?
For many Zimbabweans, elections have been presented as an instrument of signalling the demise of the establishment, a view that emanates from a deliberate misrepresentation of the concept of elections.
This view, parochially denotes elections as an instrument of regime change instead of explaining elections as the genesis of a democratic participation culture that forms the basis of democracy, regardless of the political party in power.
Broadly speaking, those who have monopolised the role of elections in a democracy have located the thrust of “their democracy” along neo-liberal lines that have a simplistic appeal to the masses disregarding the complex factors that unfold in any democracy even beyond the ballot box.
While raising some issues of fundamental importance, the question of elections and democracy has tended to be characterised by misplaced emphasis, there is dubitable clarity on what constitutes democracy and what does not in the current debate.
Due to the polarised definition of democracy in Zimbabwe, emanating from various historical cleavages, the trending premise of democracy that suggests that “when we just go to vote and then go back to wherever we came from to proceed with our daily routines that are devoid of post or pre-election democratic participation”, has skewed the prospects of Zimbabwe achieving a viable democracy.
The bulk of articulating the role of citizens weighs much on the position of the civil society organisations and even political parties that have a mandate to impartially explain and facilitate the adequate engagement of citizens with their institutions of power, for the sake of creating a sustainable democracy.
While civil society organisations and mostly opposition political parties enclose the complex responsibility in the building of a democracy, the usual norm is that these organisations appear during the short period towards elections to abstractly respond to the question of elections as a means to democracy when in actual fact they want to consolidate power to themselves, or even sometimes to deliberately misconstrue the concept of democracy to the advantage of their political preferences.
The snowball effect of this is commonly reflected by the electoral behaviour of the public.
The public is either swayed to commit uninformed voting or is misled to impulsively vote for the wrong thing under the “government is trash mantra” enchantment, a mantra that deliberately ignores commissions by government and only focuses on omissions by government.
It further forgets to unveil the bankruptcy of capacity in the alleged significant other.
Just a moment of digression, as I was finishing off a long day of interacting with the literature of Dr Lwazi Lushaba, there was no better way to complete the day without a couple of drinks in a decolonised space, accompanied by a thrilling retrospection of intellectual questions.
As I sat in the Bulawayo Art Gallery Cafe, I could not resist the conversation that was taking place in a table just adjacent to where I was sitting.
When I realised that the caucus adjacent to me was attending to relevant political questions, I sat there motionless in an attempt to capture all that was being said by the conclave that was seemingly from a civil society background.
The bloc was debating on the upcoming 2018 elections trying so hard to locate the role of the coming elections in the framework of democracy.
Disturbingly one of them outrightly declared that what is the point of voting, nothing will change; “Zanu-PF will still be in power even if we vote”. This statement prickled my intellectual nerves, probing me to lose it and budge uninvited into their discussion.
The deficit that was prevalent in their argument was the inadequate definition of elections and the failure to correctly link elections to democracy.
The bloc subscribed to the short term definition of elections, one that assumes that elections can only bring change if only that change translates to Zanu-PF losing power.
As if that was enough, the conclave was seemingly convinced that an election can only be free and fair if their respective political party wins. I was quick to controvert that view, thereby igniting a profuse dialogue between myself and the bloc that was seemingly bent on responding to the question of elections and democracy in Zimbabwe.
As I was responding to such professionally disturbing views, I resorted to political philosophy.
I then learnt that the biggest jeopardy to Zimbabwe’s democracy is the polarisation of discourse envisaged by subliminal, subconscious elements of political intolerance especially in the anti-establishment intonation.
These pitfalls are mythicised and romanticised to present democracy as a being the deconstruction of the nationalist creation in Zimbabwe and Africa at large. Such thinking sees no possibility of nationalist thought being democratic. Its view is not hinged on the contemporary phenomenological findings, but is rather founded on misplaced historical perceptions that were guided by racist thinking.
The racist thinking which assumes that if any political system is not informed by neo-liberal standards, then it is not democratic.
It further behaves that if an election does not elect a candidate aligned to neo-liberal thought, then that election is never free and fair, regardless of the precise findings presented by the electoral commission. Owing to the hegemony of neo-liberal opinion in the media, such views have inculcated an arrogant expectation in the political minds of the masses.
In Zimbabwe and other African states this thinking has vandalised the image of government capacity in delivering a free and fair election, therefore, nationalist governments are constantly accused of electoral fraud even without tangible evidence to support such claims.
The question of the freeness and the fairness of elections has now went beyond the simple cause of judging elections on what they are, it is now a case of “how elections are seen in Africa”.
This relays to be absent in the thinking of possibly, the many who have registered through pebbles incentivised to them by civil society.
When approaching the question of elections in Zimbabwe, one of the fundamental areas warranting the immediate response of every democratic mind, is the liberation of elections in Africa from a deeply entrenched series of stereotypes, some of the stereotypes are as a result of Africa’s dark history with colonialism, the same colonialism that resisted tooth and nail the ability of native Africa being able to govern itself.
The other stereotype is a result of political entrepreneurs who delegitimise the establishment for donor funding.
Through donor funds, the masses are captured by petite gifts that range from sadza and beer, in return the masses are taught to be uncritical in voting, the masses are told that not agreeing with government is being democratic, the masses are further hoodwinked to believe that democracy is regime change (a parochial thinking founded on opportunism by ideologically devoid counter narratives).
The masses are then left to vote without undergoing proper orientation in the topic of elections and democracy.
The political elite therefore seeks to crudely benefit from such ill informed voting, voting that confines the role of the masses in a democracy only to the ballot, but does not further stretch to elaborate the need for democratic participation.
Online Reporter