This comes as Sadc Election Observer Mission Head and
former Zambian Vice President, Dr Nevers Mumba, sought to discredit the
country’s just-ended harmonised elections which saw Zanu PF presidential
candidate, President Mnangagwa, declared winner beating his closest rival, Mr
Nelson Chamisa of CCC.
Dr Mumba has since come under fire for covertly handing
over the SADC Electoral Observation Mission (SEOM) report to CCC, as confirmed
by the opposition party’s fugitive spokesperson, Mr Promise Mkwananzi, thereby
flouting the bloc’s guidelines on elections and ethics of observers, which
require the teams to be impartial, Government has said.
In his post on X (formerly Twitter) yesterday, Secretary
for Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Mr Nick Mangwana, said
the covert machinations by the Sadc member State has since been noted by other
vigilant member States.
“There is some treacherous lobbying going on by one SADC
member State to have an Extraordinary Summit on Zimbabwe. The other members are
seeing through this and it’s not going to happen. This agenda being pushed by
this member state is not its own. It’s doing a hatchet job for some powerful
nations,” said Mr Mangwana.
Dr Mumba has since been exposed as a biased election
observer after Mr Mkwananzi confirmed in an interview with a local weekly last
week that CCC had seen the SEOM’s final report, which spotlights his role in
the high-stakes game to besmirch Zimbabwe’s August 23-24 elections.
In the lead-up to the recent elections, concerns were
raised on the conduct of Dr Mumba, as he seemingly aligned with CCC and even
went to the extent of accompanying Mr Chamisa — one of the 11 presidential
candidates — to cast his vote in Kuwadzana, Harare.
He also attended Mr Chamisa’s press conference later that
day.
In an interview with our sister paper, The Sunday Mail,
Deputy Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet (Communications), Mr George
Charamba, said if what Mr Mkwananzi is saying is true, it represents an
unprecedented breach of SADC principles and guidelines on elections.
“If what CCC has indicated is true, namely, that the final
report has been shared with a political player in Zimbabwe, ahead of
presentation to the chairman of the (SADC) Organ (on Politics, Defence and
Security Co-operation), who is Zambian President, and ahead of its adoption by
the Presidents of the Troika (Zambia, Namibia and Tanzania) — those who are
supposed to sign it — and also ahead of a signed copy of the report being given
to the Zimbabwean Government; if this is what has happened, it is a breach of
the SADC code of conduct in relation to election observation. If there is
evidence, we will take it up with SADC,” he said.
Diplomatic sources indicate that beyond the scarcely
concealed bias towards CCC, Zambia was also closely following the country’s
election to the extent of getting regular updates from the opposition, before,
during and after the elections.
It is also believed that, apart from dispatching Dr Mumba
on a mission to “deliver a free and fair election for Zimbabwe”, Zambian
officials were still making frantic efforts to convince the region to convene
an extraordinary summit on Zimbabwe.
Further, the sources said, the Zambian government, in
direct contravention of the impartiality demanded of it, called some Heads of
State in the region to prematurely and misleadingly announce that Mr Chamisa
had won the elections by 51 percent of the vote, with President Mnangagwa
managing 47 percent.
However, it turned out that President Mnangagwa actually
garnered 52,6 percent of the vote, with Mr Chamisa getting 44 percent.
This misdirected offensive by Zambian officials reportedly
prompted Tanzania to try and send its former President Jakaya Kikwete, as an
elderly statesman, to help manage an anticipated volatile situation in
Zimbabwe.
However, before Mr Kikwete could fly to Zimbabwe, several
SADC governments that had been contacted by Lusaka phoned the Zimbabwean
Government seeking confirmation of developments in Harare.
The plot, which ultimately was designed to dent Zanu PF and
President Mnangagwa’s legitimacy, reportedly involved some members of the SADC
secretariat, including officials from the Zambian government.
Before the elections, Western governments, especially the
European Union (EU), even went to the extent of extending close to US$3 million
to ensure CCC fielded polling agents across the country.
The money, however, disappeared.
Eyebrows were also raised when Dr Mumba’s preliminary
report was almost similarly worded as the EU and US government-sponsored Carter
Centre reports.
But the report is widely expected to be rejected by the
region.
A Sadc member state is given an opportunity to study the
report and its recommendations.
It will either accept the recommendations, if they are
progressive and consistent with the constitution and laws of the country, or
reject them. Herald
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