by Blackman Ngoro

In 2000, Zimbabwe’s social movements, led by the National Constitutional assembly scored a major victory over ZANU(P.F.) hegemony with the “No” vote on a draft constitution.

This victory demonstrated that mobilization and political opportunity can achieve change.

Of that victory the Zimbabwe Election Support Network commented, “the no vote to the state’s proposed constitution was the first real setback for ZANU(P.F.) and a clear sign that they could no longer take their political hegemony for granted”.

According to Gabriel Shumba, a lawyer for human rights, “The constitutional reform exercise…had sort among other things to forcibly take away land from white farmers for redistribution to blacks….civil society activists, labour and the newly formed Movement for Democratic Change successfully campaigned for the rejection of the Draft Constitution. This move was taken after the realization that Mugabe, who had been in power for 20 years, had not incorporated provisions limiting his executive power as had been voiced by the majority of the people”

“In 2000 the state became both a de facto and de jure dictatorship with the removal of the last vestiges of liberal democracy and the promulgation of POSSA and AIPPA, the packing of the judiciary, the closure of the independent media etc.” said Kumbirai Hodzi a lawyer and former spokesperson of Crisis in Zimbabwe.

Since 2000 and 2001 the social movements organizations on democratic and constitutional reform such as the National Constitutional Assembly and Lawyers for Human Rights including the Movement for Democratic Change have considered the Zimbabwe president illegitimate, whom they donot recognize.

This is the obvious issue which has heightened tension between the social movements and the ruling party. It is also the issue which has increased the violence found in Zimbabwe’s contentious politics today.

The background to the significance of these elections which Zimbabwe is facing in March 2008, is highlighted by a view of a Zimbabwe social movement insider and academic, Kumbirai Hodzi, who is also a former deputy chairperson of Transparency International Zimbabwe, and former procedural law lecturer at University of Zimbabwe.

He is a former committee member of the Zimbabwe Crisis Committee, who acted as its spokesperson, and campaigned vigorously for the de-ligitimization of the Zimbabwe government by Western powers following the 2000 elections.

In personal communication, Hodzi said decertification was a demand put together by Crisis in Zimbabwe, a campaign for democratic and constitutional reforms which represented “local civil society -that is labour, the churches, the business community, the private sector and the local NGOs”.

The demand was contained in an argument which was later adopted by firstly the European Union and then by the Commonwealth and then the USA, the Swiss, the Canadians and a dozen other states was that Mugabe had failed to meet the minimum standards that are required in a liberal democratic state.

According to Hodzi, “This certification requirement was not the first in the world although it was certainly the very first that was demanded in Africa. The reason is very obvious. For a long time the regime has touted itself as a democratic government and in 1997 after the formation of the MDC and after suffering its first electoral defeat during the constitutional referendum at which only 44 percent supported the proposed changes to the constitution.

"Mugabe was for the first time faced with real opposition and also faced real loss of power if real democratic free and fair elections were held, he chose to abrogate from a constitutional and legal framework.”

The certification process had been carried out on many countries since the formation of the EEC in 1957. For any state to join the EU it undergoes a rigorous certification process. Incidentally Zimbabwe was the first country in Africa to undergo a partial certification process from the international community in 1980 in the elections that gave the regime its international legitimacy.

“All what the key actors were saying is that Mugabe must play by the same rules and not shift the goal posts,” said Hodzi who is now exiled in London.

“The process of certification vis-a-vis the 2000 elections was not an Africa/West or Developing world/Developed world or White/Black Divide. The Commonwealth observer mission was led by a Nigerian and composed mostly of Africans yet it was the first mission to condemn the excesses of the regime.

“The commonwealth itself composed of more African states voted to exclude Mugabe on the grounds that he had violated the fundamental tenets of the grouping. I think what you have is that Mugabe has some support of some primary African heads of state like Thabo Mbeki and his ANC who support him for their own parochial purposes and of course the rest of the African dictators who do not want this certification process lest it is applied against their own regimes. Thus the Africa Union through default find itself on Mugabe side not because it likes him but it is even more wary of this process,” said Hodzi.

As we entered 2008, a parliamentary and presidential election year, Zimbabwe’s struggle for human rights and democratization remained locked in state repression. The onslaught against citizens and social movements, against labour, civil society and other human rights defenders as well as opposition activists had its origins in Mugabe’s 2000 defeat, said Gabriel Shumba, Zimbabwean lawyer for human rights.

The police, the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), youth militia, the Green bombers and terror groups, Chipangano have been unleashed on the urban population, forcing demobilization of social movements and causing mass migration to neighboring countries.

When social movement organizations requested the international community to delegitimise the ZANU(P.F.) government after the 2000 parliamentary election, generally believed to have been rigged in Mugabe’s favour, the position was adopted by Western countries.

There has been a succession of umbrella bodies for social movement organizations designed to mobilize resources and international support for the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe.

First was the National Constitutional Assembly, which provided the 2000 draft constitution victory and also provided leadership for the now splintered Movement for Democratic Change continue to struggle.

No much was achieved under Crisis in Zimbabwe except to bring the repression under international spotlight and the externalization of contention where such organizations as Crisis in Zimbabwe under its South African wing, led by Eleanor Sisulu, played a major role in mobilizing resources for exiled Zimbabweans and awareness of the situation.

Indeed Crisis in Zimbabwe was aimed at exposing how international norms were being violated in Zimbabwe.

Later on in 2006 another umbrella organization was formed, the Save Zimbabwe Campaign, in order to act as a bridge for solutions to repression in Zimbabwe which had intensified following the 2005 elections and allegations that they were rigged in favour of the ruling ZANU(P.F.). But this largely failed because of the intransigence of the Zimbabwean government.

According to social movement theorists, “mounting, coordinating and sustaining (confrontations with elites, authorities, and opponents) are the unique contribution of the social movement-an invention of the modern age and an accompaniment to the rise of the modern state”

The Save Zimbabwe Campaign, spearheaded by the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance, brought together all opposition political parties and major civil society organisations seeking to resolve Zimbabwe’s social, economic and political crisis.

The objectives of the Church-led Save Zimbabwe Campaign were similar to the 2001 objectives of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Campaign.

Now that elections 2008 are staring at Zimbabweans in the face what are the gains and what are the challenges? This is a watershed election which if conducted freely and fairly will usher in a new dispensation. But whether things will change with Mugabe still at the helm is a different matte.

With three to four million Zimbabweans eke-ing out a living under very hard conditions in different Southern African countries and the rest of the world’s cities what role will disenfranchisement have on future discontent?

Already the issue of citizenship where the state sought to exclude citizens it thought were against it has come under the spotlight with the banning of the dual citizenship. Zimbabweans in the diaspora have now formed Global Zimbabwe in order to build structures for Zimbabweans living and working outside their borders, something which obviously annoys the Mugabe regime.

With much of its international legitimacy space being taken over by different social movement organizations, how much will be left for the Mugabe government to contest? Between isolation and change it is better to change.

Blackman Ngoro is a Phd candidate of Zimbabwe’s social movements and media at the University of Johannesburg’s Department of Communication.

He can be reached at garikai.masara@gmail.com