Why South Africa is watching the Zimbabwe poll

South Africa’s business daily, Business Day, has summed it up all. The Zimbabwe elections, in which 89-year-old Robert Mugabe who has ruled the country since independence is heading for a landslide victory, are not just about Zimbabwe, they are also about South Africa.

“Zimbabwe’s election is .. not only on Mugabe’s future or the MDC’s role, but on South Africa’s own political path,” the paper says in an article by editor-at-large Ray Hartley and Gregg Mills of the Brenthurst Foundation.

A Mugabe victory does not augur well for South which has been under the rule of the African National Congress for the past 19 years. What is even more worrying is the ANC’s stance towards Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and the path it has taken.

“The answer to the Zimbabwe question circa 1999 as South Africa’s today, must lie in robust political competition. It is not enough to hope that the ANC will come to its senses and right the ship by eliminating corruption and the baleful influence of crony capitalism,” the article says.

“Democracy’s survival depends on an opposition that operates as a check and balance on government excess and encourages a healthy economy. But it must do more; it must create a space where irrational distortions of the national interest are punished by voters. The political aims of liberation cannot be diverted to the narrow interests of liberation movements and their elites.”

The article then goes on to why Zimbabwe’s economy collapsed.

“At the core of the country’s problems has been ZANU-PF’s failure to change from a liberation movement to a political party. Its survival strategy has morphed, however, from a crude violent stereotype to a more sophisticated election machine, seeking legitimacy in ways the international community not only understands, but advocates.

“This “democratic failure” is when people vote for democracy but get a dictator or authoritarian government instead, even if they are more sophisticated, savvy and have better public relations than their Cold War prototype — where democracy and its necessary institutions, including parliament and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), are permitted only up to a point. Hence legislation in such states on foreign funding of NGOs, overstuffed presidencies, control of TV, looking after “friends” and running regulatory interference on businesses or NGOs, all the time “blending repression with regulation”.

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