Statutory Instrument 89

Statutory Instrument 89 of 2013: A case of political law

The recently gazetted Statutory Instrument 89 of 2013 (S.I.89 of 2013) has confirmed the long held public assumption that politics in Zimbabwe precedes law, that our problems are inherently political and the law is created and interpreted to suit certain political ambitions.
S.I.89 of 2013 (termed Electoral (Accreditation of Observers) Regulations), which is one of the many instruments that have been gazetted as ZANU PF prepares to frog march the nation into a fraudulent election on July 31, must be viewed and understood in three perspectives. Firstly this S.I has been designed to make it impossible for Civic Society Organisations (CSOs) to observe the process by prohibitive costs. Secondly the S.I is designed to automatically restrict international observers while deliberately leaving loose ends on domestic observers. Thirdly the regulations are designed to entrench and perpetuate the fear in voters by undermining the secrecy of the vote.
In the first scenario, the S.I has set USD10.00 as accreditation fee for local observers and has gone to demand that these observers must present themselves in person to get accredited as observers which automatically raises the costs to anything beyond USD100.00 per observer when one factors transport, food and accommodation, given that ZEC has a precedent of working at a snai’sl pace to accredit observers and with over 9000 polling station the bill for local observers will run into many millions of dollars.
All CSOs are non-profits whose budget are met by well-wishers which leaves one wondering why the government wants to make it difficult or even impossible for citizens to observe their internal processes which are a critical foundation for democracy. Members of CSOs are all well-meaning Zimbabweans who are determined to see their country prosper and develop into a competitive democracy thus therefore any law or regulation that seeks to make it difficult or impossible for them to scrutinise public processes is tantamount to placing them as second class citizens.
What shocks the ordinary reader of the S.I is the fact that it goes to exempt a large number of bodies from paying anything. These include the African Union, the Southern African Development Community, the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum, embassies in Zimbabwe representing countries in Africa among a host other bodies. It is obvious that according to this, our own citizens are considered unfit or even a threat so much that it has to be very difficult for them to observe.
In the same category of exemption has been inserted a very vague parameter which simply states that ‘…any other organisation that the Commission considers should be exempt from payment of accreditation fees.. .’ (6 (1) h). This broad statement may be taken to flood polling stations with tens of war veterans, Border Gezi graduates and other partisan members of ZANU PF linked structures and thus saturate the observation space for CSOs. The threat of this is real especially given that the S.I stipulates that only six observers can be allowed to observe inside the polling station at any given time.
The second attempt of the S.I is to silently make it difficult for international observers to observe the process as it has not specified the category under which they fall and has also charged a rather exorbitant fee of USD50.00. Any serious meaning democracy must allow as much international scrutiny as possible more so given our history of sham electoral processes which we need to shape up internationally. This strategy is well in sync with the ZANU PF strategy to bar international observers from the United Nations so that the current fraud which they are pushing for is not exposed internationally.
Thirdly as noted above, the S.I 89 0f 2013 seeks to entrench and perpetuate the latent fear within the population by undermining the secrecy of the vote which it should promote. Section 9 (4), gives the presiding officer powers to allow accredited media practitioners to take photographs and make kinetic images inside the polling station or collation centre.
ZANU PF activists, headmen, chiefs and intelligence operatives have invaded the countryside threatening citizens that they have cameras inside polling stations that will ‘see and report’ if they vote for MDC. Thus allowing anyone to take pictures and hold the camera inside the polling station feeds well into the ZANU PF strategy of harvesting fear. With these regulations we are likely to see men in black suits and dark spectacles manning the inside of polling stations in the countryside taking photos of voters casting their ballot while outside youths are telling already intimidated voters that there cameras inside to ‘see and report’ if the vote for the MDC, these youths would further promise severe repercussions on those ‘seen’ voting for the MDC by the camera. To the unsophisticated villagers this would work very well especially with the fresh memories of 2008.

From the foregoing it is evident that the S.I is nothing more than political law, that is, it is designed to pursue a certain political agenda. Therefore all progressive forces must act in unison at pushing for the reform of this S.I otherwise the election outcome will be, to borrow from Schedler, little more than the outcome of structurally induced ignorance.