POLITICS-ZIMBABWE: "Getting People Participating Is a Process, Not an Event"

By Ephraim Nsingo

HARARE, Jun 19 (IPS) - Amidst the turmoil surrounding the Jun. 27 presidential run-off in Zimbabwe, it is doubtless something of a challenge to muster enthusiasm for plans relating to the country's next general elections. Gender activists intent on having more women voted into office in 2013 are undaunted, however.

"We now need to take a systematic approach and start preparing for the next elections. We are confident from our experience in this election that more women will come up," said Luta Shaba, executive director of the Women's Trust, in reference to the ballot held Mar. 29. The trust is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.

"A number have already written to us seeking assistance and guidance on how they can be involved as observers and polling agents in the run-off election. The big challenge now is to keep the momentum and maintain their confidence," she told IPS.

The efforts of the trust form part of 'Women Can Still Do It!', a continuation of the 'Women Can Do It!' campaign that was launched last year to encourage more women to participate in the recent elections as candidates, voters, polling agents and observers -- overcoming the view that politics is essentially a male domain.

"We have already started working with women at grassroots levels and running adverts on radio, television and (in) newspapers. Our campaign has somehow slowed down because of what is happening now...After this (the run-off) we will intensify our operations at all levels, especially at the grassroots, empowering women to empower others," said Shaba.

According to the former director of the Women in Politics Support Unit (WiPSU), Rutendo Hadebe, "This election has given us an opportunity to revisit our strategies to see what worked and what did not work, and use those (that worked) as a foundation for future efforts." WiPSU is an NGO headquartered in Harare.

Noted Netsai Mushonga, co-ordinator of the Women's Coalition of Zimbabwe, "We will keep pushing; this is an ongoing process which we believe will pay off some day. Our democracy is still very young, and I believe with time we will attain our targets in terms of equitable gender representation in government."

The Harare-based coalition is an umbrella group for women's organisations in Zimbabwe.

Elections across the board

This year's elections saw votes cast for the presidency, the upper and lower houses of parliament (the Senate and House of Assembly), and local councils.

No women contested the presidency.

Figures provided by WiPSU show that female candidates won 21* of the 60 Senate seats in play (35 percent). An additional 33 seats are reserved for a group that comprises the president and deputy president of the Council of Chiefs, 16 other traditional chiefs (elected separately), 10 provincial governors and five senators representing special interests. Women do not figure among the new contingent of chiefs in the upper house; provincial governors and senators for special interests are appointed by the president.

During the last Senate elections, in November 2005, women won 21 of the 50 seats that could be contested (42 percent), and were appointed to two of the 16 seats up for nomination, giving them control of just under 35 percent of the upper house.

The House of Assembly comprises 210 seats, 207 of which were contested Mar. 29, when 34 women won their races. By-elections for the three remaining seats -- Gwanda South, Pelandaba-Mpopoma and Redcliff -- will take place later this month alongside the presidential run-off. With one female candidate competing in the Gwanda South constituency, women may marginally increase the proportion of seats in the lower house that they currently occupy: about 16 percent.

The outcome as regards the House of Assembly was reminiscent of the March 2005 polls for the office, in which women won 20 seats and were appointed to a further four; this amounted to 16 percent of positions in the lower house, which then comprised 120 elected members and 30 nominees.

Under a constitutional amendment, the Senate and House of Assembly were enlarged in 2007.

Of the 1,902 local government seats, about 16.6 percent were captured by women Mar. 29 (315 women won local office). At the time of publication IPS was unable to obtain gender-related statistics for the previous local elections; prior to the Mar. 29 vote, polls for urban and rural councils were held separately -- the last urban local election in 2002, and rural polls in 2006.

Overall, figures which are available show that Zimbabwe's governing institutions have some way to go in meeting local aspirations for the administration to reflect the fact that women make up about half the population in the country -- and also in fulfilling regional goals. In 1997, the Southern African Development Community, to which Zimbabwe belongs, set a target of having 30 percent of decision-making posts in member nations occupied by women, by 2005. This target has since been adjusted to 50 percent of posts.

"There is a temptation to have a pessimistic response to the results, considering that there has not been a positive change in the representation percentages," said Shaba.

"But from an advocacy perspective, we are on the right track...If you compare the number of women who contested and their performance, we have made great strides," she added.

"Getting people participating is a process, not an event."

Of the 198 candidates who ran for the Senate this year, 64 were women (32.3 percent); in 2005, there were 25 women among the 90 Senate aspirants (just below 28 percent of the total).

In the case of the lower house, 118 of the 775 candidates who vied for seats Mar. 29 were women (15.2 percent) -- compared to 58 of the 272 candidates (21.3 percent) on the ballot in 2005.

Concerning local government polls, 661 of the 3,831 aspirants who ran this year were women (just over 17 percent).

Climate of fear

There is widespread concern about the presidential run-off, which pits long time head of state Robert Mugabe against Morgan Tsvangirai, head of the larger faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Zimbabwean law requires a second round of polling in the event that no candidate wins more than half the vote in the first round of elections for the presidency. The MDC claimed that Tsvangirai narrowly won the Mar. 29 presidential ballot; however, official results indicate that he captured 47.9 percent of the vote, against 43.2 percent for Mugabe. Delays in issuing these results prompted fears of vote rigging on the part of government.

Extensive physical abuse and other harassment of opposition supporters have led observers and rights activists to declare that a fair election in Zimbabwe is all but impossible under present circumstances. The main faction of the MDC claims that 70 of its supporters, or their relatives, have been killed and thousands more injured in violence aimed at keeping Mugabe in power.

A Jun. 9 report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, '"Bullets for Each of You": State-Sponsored Violence since Zimbabwe's March 29 Elections', notes that "The violence has been particularly concentrated in former rural strongholds of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) -- areas that to the party's shock voted for the MDC in the parliamentary and first-round presidential elections."

"ZANU-PF officials and 'war veterans' are beating, torturing and mutilating suspected MDC activists and supporters in hundreds of base camps, many of them army bases, established across the provinces as local operations centers," the report states.

Amidst other allegations, it also accuses the party and its supporters of being "...engaged in a campaign of looting and destruction, slaughtering animals, stealing food and property, and burning down homesteads."

The run-up to the Mar. 29 polls was marred by similar irregularities, echoing the pattern of earlier presidential and parliamentary elections. As IPS reported, opposition supporters and rights activists were harassed and abused, and questions raised about the voters' roll -- while state broadcasting services were biased in favour of ZANU-PF and food aid allegedly manipulated, amongst other problems (see POLITICS-ZIMBABWE: "The Election Will Not Be Free and Fair").

Earlier this month, Zimbabwe's government accused aid groups of political interference and ordered them to suspend their activities; while a number of groups have since been allowed to resume work, the suspension has prompted renewed fears about the use of food aid as a political weapon.

According to figures on the website of the World Food Programme, 45 percent of the country's population is malnourished. Years of political and economic difficulties have also left the nation with shortages of other basic goods, runaway inflation, joblessness and widespread poverty.

The Mar. 29 polls saw ZANU-PF lose control of the House of Assembly for the first time in Zimbabwe's post-independence history: the former ruling party won 97 seats in the house and MDC-Tsvangirai 99 seats, while a smaller MDC faction headed by Arthur Mutambara took 10 -- and an independent candidate one seat. MDC-Tsvangirai, MDC-Mutambara and the independent have since agreed to form a coalition that can exercise a majority in the House of Assembly.

The MDC split in 2005 over participation in that year's Senate polls.

As regards the Senate, ZANU-PF won 30 of the contested Senate seats Mar. 29, MDC-Tsvangirai 24 seats, and MDC-Mutambara six seats.

A breakdown of party representation in parliament along gender lines shows that ZANU-PF has the largest number of female legislators.

Of the 21 women in Zimbabwe's Senate, 13 represent ZANU-PF, and eight MDC-Tsvangirai.

Concerning the House of Assembly, 21 of the women in the house belong to ZANU-PF, 12 to MDC-Tsvangirai, and one to MDC-Mutambara.

* Please note that certain statistics about women's participation in Zimbabwean elections that are used in this article may differ from figures used in previous features on the same topic. The statistics used in the earlier articles were the best available figures at the time of publication.