Notes following briefing by Ambassador Kingsley Mamabolo on the SA Observer Mission to Zimbabwe elections, Union Building, Pretoria, 19 March 2008

Morning. We thought perhaps maybe on the eve of our departure give you an update. The people will be leaving again now on the 20th - the last group from South Africa, which constitutes the rest of the team. Last week I did tell you that we have about 55 observers from South Africa made up of various groups – Parliamentarians, civil society, trade unionists. This group is leaving now. We have sent an advance team which was there as of the 7th of March.

You would also recall that the SADC Observer Mission was launched on the 11th of March and it was launched by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Angola in his capacity as Chair of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security. I’m informed that the minister emphasised the need for observers to be diligent in undertaking their duties, observing the entire electoral process. We are at this stage still in the pre-lections phase, and then you have a phase when the elections are happening and you have the post-election exercise that SADC will be engaged in. We are of course expected to act within our responsibilities and the confinement of our given mandate. We will be attempting at all times to make sure that that mission is credible and does indeed observe and assist the Zimbabweans in hopefully ensuring that there is credible elections in Zimbabwe.

The advanced team comprises of observers from five member states – Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Tanzania. Our SADC Team on the ground is already engaged in doing a number of things – it is receiving briefing from civil society organisations and they have been already engaging with the people of Zimbabwe with the various complains and observations that they raise, and that duty would be in the pre-election phase. We are guided by SADC principles governing democratic elections, which guidelines are based on first the constitutional and legal guarantees of the freedom and rights of the citizens; that the SADC will have to ensure that there is a conducive environment for a free and peaceful election; that the voters’ registration is non-discriminatory; that there is existence of an updated and accessible Voters’ Roll; and what of course will be also important is the timeous announcement of the election date – of course in Zimbabwe it has already been done. These are the guidelines guiding the SADC Observer Mission.

We will be there for a period of about two weeks, this team. You have a situation in which from the 7th, which is almost three weeks, the SADC has been on the ground. But in addition to that, SADC member states, their Ambassadors there constitute a forum that assists the SADC Observer Mission. That is very important because there is a deadline within which we should be there. And the observing of the election will take into account all these phases put together.

We hope to be there with the announcement of the elections be in a position where then ourselves reveal our report after that, and observe the acceptance of the election results by Zimbabweans, and we would leave thereafter.

We have the Angolans leading this, they are the Chair of the organ and at headquarters in Harare a leadership core has been created that consists of Tanzania, South Africa, Zambia, and of course Angola – it is constituted by members of the Troika – the current Chair, which is Zambia, the incoming Chair, which is South Africa.

 Questions and Answers

Question: Thank you Ambassador. Part of these SADC electoral principles is that the independent electoral commission would be responsible for accrediting observers and journalists to cover these elections. Now it has surrendered that particular power to the government which seems to be in contrast with these principles. Is that one of the complains or have you received a complaint in that regard?

Answer: We have received a number of requests to intervene from people here in South Africa and other people, journalists and so on. I think when I was in Zimbabwe there was one organisation that approached us – I would have to check with members on the ground if there have been more – but these were not journalists, these were an observer team, one of the national observer missions there which was wondering whether they are going to be accredited. Of course at that stage it was difficult to say because I think the list had not been announced yet – the entire list of all national observer teams, so it remains to be seen whether they are indeed accredited or not.

In so far as the journalists from South Africa what we have done is, with us not being on the ground now, was to forward that to the team in Harare and to try and find out whether they would be accredited.

Question: Similar question. Would it concern you greatly if South African journalists were not accredited for this election because it seems to have been a long process and we still have absolutely no word on whether we are going to be or not? Would that concern you in terms of reporting on the election to a global audience?

Secondly there have been some complaints from the opposition mainly that there were not enough polling stations in urban areas to cater for the populations that will be voting there. Is that an issue that you will be looking into in Zimbabwe? And if it turned out that many people in the urban areas couldn’t vote because there were not enough polling stations would that be something that would sway your report?

Answer: Of course if all those things are brought before us I think our principle would be that we try and intervene where possible because SADC moves from the position that you try and help them make the elections as credible as possible. We are simply not going there to take notes, observe, and condemn, and be critical and say “yes this was not done” – this is not our mission, our mission is to ensure that a SADC member state – be it Zimbabwe or any other – does indeed advance in this area because we all want that in the continent here, countries to advance and prosper in conducting democratic and transparent elections. So our mission is also to try and assist a member state. So what we do in terms of the complains – the complains of journalists and so on, is to take them and find out from the Zimbabwean authorities and as to “why was this not done?”

We already know that the Zimbabweans already have criteria of who they want to invite and who they don’t want to invite. They themselves have given reasons for that – some EU members, some countries are not invited even; some organisations are not invited even. And I don’t know whether that extends to some journalists or whatever, I’m not sure. All we can do at this stage is to take this and bring it to their attention and say “you know in terms of the SADC observer principles and so forth we are wondering why they are not accrediting these people” and listen to what they say as explanation to the reason why they have not accredited some of the people.

Question: Our trade union movement Cosatu has basically said our government should make some noise, especially in relation to the lack of voter education in that country. How would you respond to that? As South Africa will you be prepared to make that noise and say people are not properly educated in terms of how to vote?

Answer:   Don’t forget that I’m not going there now as South Africa. This time I’m part of SADC Observer Mission. I think you should ask that from the South African government, they usually make policy pronouncements. So the deputy minister comes here from time to time on Tuesdays. I think you should ask him whether they would like to make noise.

We are not going to be making noise as you say. We are not inclined to do that, you can imagine if I could start making some noise about it this candidate who is taking part in the elections, or that. How am I supposed to be a middle man in this process if I’m already condemning them that “this is not done”? As I say we would note any normality in the election process and intervene and make an observation about it at the completion of our mission. It wouldn’t help us to make noise even before we really start our mission.

Question: Will there be any restrictions on the observer mission because the local Zimbabwe media were saying the observer team will not be able to monitor all the counting process or certain processes through the elections?

Answer: We would have to check that you know, we’ve got to be careful sometimes – I mean how do people invite you and restrict you? I doubt that is what they want to do but we would have to check. I’m not sure, I haven’t seen this report.

Question: Is the observer mission required to know how the voting process is going to be conducted and as far as you know, if that is one of the requirements, how is it going to be conducted – how many ballots will be there; how much time to people have – are you required to know those things?

Answer: We are required to know everything. One thing we are doing is to acquaint ourselves with all the procedures that are undertaken by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission. They are already briefing our people there. So when the team gets there… by the way this big South African team going there is not the only team, the others are also coming more or less around the same time and we would be making sure that all the teams from all the SADC member states do meet the Zimbabwean electoral commission to ensure that all these processes are explained.

And of course we are not only meeting the Zimbabwean electoral commission, we are meeting civil society organisation and many other people who already have complains about these processes, and the Voters’ Roll, registration and so on – we will be asking those questions to test the validity of some of these complains. As I said, we are not just only observing, taking notes – if people complain… I will give you an example: ZBC is favouring one party in broadcasting and so on; the media is not transparent in its broadcasting and announcing of these issues and advertisements and so on.

And some times, I remember in 2005 there were complains about Zanu-PF that we received – Zanu-PF is not made to pay for its advertisements in the media and ZBC, and we sent a team there to verify that and when they said “no, everybody is treated the same”, we said “give us the receipts, lets see”. Upon them producing those receipts, we take those copies back to the people who complained. We are not just simply sitting there and waiting so that we can right a good or bad report about this election. We would be intervening. And so it is indeed our duty to know everything about the electoral process there.

Question: Some countries are not invited in Zimbabwe to come and observe the election as you correctly pointed out. Are you worried by the fact that those countries are not invited and are you satisfied as the South Africa election observer mission by the reasons furnished by the Zimbabwe government? Are you going to present an independent report from the SADC mission, as the South African observer mission?

Answer: The South African observer mission is divided into two parts. There is the Members of Parliament and you have all the others: government officials, civil society and so on. The Members of Parliament, although being part of the South African observer mission will have their own mandate from Parliament and would therefore be expected to report back to Parliament about their findings. So we expect that they would have their separate report but for the entire South African mission, which I’m heading, it is not like the one we had in 2005 where we sent an independent South African mission and therefore were expected then to produce an independent South African report. We would be contributing now to the SADC report. We would not have a separate South African report.

On your second question, they have given their reasons and we would like to stray away from passing judgement at this stage. Maybe you should be asking us after the mission when we have written a report as to whether we think it’s a good or bad thing. We can sit here and debate with them about the rightness or wrongness of the reasons that they have given but they have their reasons and at this stage I wouldn’t want to enter into that debate as to whether they are right or wrong.

Question: Can it ever be justified in your opinion in a democratic society that the government, which is only one part of this whole electoral process because there is the opposition as well, can bar certain media organisations simply because the government doesn’t like what they will say? Can it really be justified?

Answer: I think again you are bringing me back to the issue of passing judgement now even before I’m on the ground – I’m very reluctant to do that because as I say Zimbabweans have  their own arguments. I was listening to the Ambassador here, in Parliament giving the reasons why people are not invited and I think he said something to the effect, if I could quote him: “people have already decided, why invite them”.

I wouldn’t at this stage want to get into whether they are right or wrong in doing so. We would sit down and consider all this, our duty will be to do that but it is not for me here in the media, even before I meet my other colleagues in Harare to sit and be passing judgement out here, I think they would think I’m ridiculous if I was to do that.

Question: There have been some concerns from civil society there that the process is long and one day may not be enough for these elections on the day. You guys are there and you said you had met with the electoral commission there looking at the logistics as well. Would you be able to say that now you whether have looked into this and do you think the timeframe would be sufficient?

Answer: From what I gathered there is a debate about that by the Zimbabweans. Some of the civil society organisations have said that they think its not sufficient. To be frank with you we haven’t yet as a team met the Zimbabwe electoral commission, I think the advance team has, I haven’t. We would be asking them the same question ourselves: “do you think there will be sufficient time and do you think this is short?” And they would have to prove that by putting on the table how they think they would accomplish this task which is seemingly so difficult in such a short time.

Question: The question of civil society, have you had misgivings within your own observer mission or by others that the civil society, trade unions who take a position on Zimbabwe, we understand, their feelings, findings will now be subsumed, will now go into the SADC report. Do they feel that they may be compromise? Are they going to be allowed to publish an alternative report if they find that they do not agree with what the general SADC findings are?

Answer: I wouldn’t know what other people want to do. I’ve heard even some party members, political parties apparently would want to do that. I don’t know what people want to do and frankly wouldn’t care what other people want to do. However I want to say this to everybody that we are going there as part of a collective, you are not an individual. And so much as you want to have your freedom and do this and that, there is certainly some guidelines and conduct that is expected from a collective because if you didn’t want to be part of this collective you could just as well have gone at it alone. Lets take some of our parties for instance, DA, ANC and so on – they could have gone as DA if they wanted to, or as ANC or as PAC. Now if they come and want to be part of this collective and already some of them are making a lot of noise about what they would do or not do to violate the conduct that is expected of the collective – that would be a little bit unfortunate because as a collective we would have to sit down and look at this kind of behaviour – you can’t come here and already threatening what you are going to do and how you are going to move away from the… We are not there to go and score some cheap political points – we are there as the South African delegation and we would expect people really to conduct themselves really as part of the South African delegation within a collective of the region. Because as I say if people wanted to be alone they could have done so, there was no need for them to be part of this SADC observer mission.

Unfortunately it has its own confinements which would be based on is mandate, its principles and its guidelines.

Question: The Zimbabwean government, I think, has amended the electoral laws, I think now the police will be allowed into the polling stations to assist those who may have difficulty. Will that perhaps not compromise, or raise issues, or does that still fall within the SADC guidelines?

Answer: I have heard this you know, as I say I’m still going there. I’ve heard this and find it interesting, I think we would need to check that because there might be a point actually in what you are saying and unless there is a very valid reason… but as I say we can only pass judgement once we get the explanations. I have not seen it, is there somebody who has announced it?...Oh the President has announced it? We would have to check that definitely because what you are saying really could be the case. The perception could be that the police would intimidate the voters and so on, so we would have to check that. At the moment except hearing I from you, I haven’t heard it anywhere else.

Question: You said that you are part of a collective but this collective is being led by Angola which has not had elections some time, are you confident it will work out? The last election wasn’t really a success in 1994.

Answer: It doesn’t matter who leads us as long as those people abide by the guidelines, the mandate, the principle and so on, which are clearly spelled out we wouldn’t really have any problem whether those people have elections – as long as they abide by the principles because if they don’t then we will see. We will be there to see that this principles, the guidelines and everything is implemented as we have agreed as SADC members.

Question: How do you as an observer mission weigh up the complains that come in? You mentioned, which I think is a fairly simple thing to solve, the receipt from the ZBC, but how do you look into complains that the media – Zimbabwean media specifically, are biased towards Zanu-PF? We recently saw adverts in South African newspapers where media monitoring was done by the opposition – so that might be their claim – they monitored how many times the election came up in the media? Was it positive or negative? And found that the vast majority of news was about Zanu-PF and President

Robert Mugabe. Do you have a media analyst or someone on your team that can look into that specifically because that is something that is more difficult to measure than asking someone for a receipt. That is a more difficult thing to observe.

Answer: We will have people who will deal with the media, we have a media team that would make media analysis on a daily basis and would be looking at all this, advised by legal people who would be part of the team as well, and of course we would be monitoring the Zimbabwean media as well to try and make a judgement on this issue of the bias that people are talking about.

Let me say from the civil society people that I have met while I was there that time; they had said to me there was a vast improvement; that there is no violence in general, maybe there might be sporadic violence here and there but apparently it is much calmer that it has ever been in Zimbabwe; that even the media to some extent appear to be reporting all the activities of all parties.

Of course some of them complained about the bias which is up to the observers to determine whether in fact it is so. I myself have been in Zimbabwe; watched the television for that period and saw that indeed all the activities – I mean when I was there the rally of Morgan Tsvangirai was on ZBC and so on. But of course one would have to go deeper than that to try and determine that maybe despite the fact that there is this seemingly this appearance of everybody, that there is still a bias, we would still have to judge that, and that is up to the observer team to judge.

Question: Two questions. One being the Zimbabwean electoral commission being a headed by a recently retired military chief, does that worry you?

And you seem to have a lot of work to do for one day, although you will be there for two weeks but it seems you have just a lot in terms of monitoring what is going to happen in Zimbabwe; how the elections are going to pan out. Why should SADC observer mission or any other observer mission’s opinion of how the elections have panned out; whether they have been free and fair or not. Why should it be taken seriously if you come out and say they haven’t been free and fair – what are the consequences?

Answer: I am not sure if I get your question. But I thought our opinion matters, otherwise they wouldn’t have invited us. I think they are inviting us because our assistance, our views would matter. Of course there are those who think… – different schools of thought in Zimbabwe and internationally and you can’t help that. Some people have already decided for example that there is no way you can have free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. They have already decided the results are flawed. Some people have already decided that SADC will do that but we have a job to undertake; we have a duty to perform and that duty is the mandate we are given by the Heads of State of this region and we are going to execute that duty.

We can’t go with perceptions; perceptions are misleading in many cases. We would go on issues basing ourselves on facts on the ground, and that is what we are going to try and do. Of course I can assure you now as I assured the Zimbabweans, we are not simply going there to endorse anything – we are going there with a view that we will be active. You would have heard from the leader of the delegation, the minister of foreign affairs of Angola and the others that we have to do our duty to verify everything. Frankly I was there in 2005 and that is more or less what the SADC team did.

So indeed people will have their opinions, whether it matters or not that’s up to those, people are entitled to their opinions. We will go there to perform our duty.

Unfortunately we are not in the habit of appointing people; that is not our task; that is for the Zimbabweans. Let me tell you how SADC operates. We get invited by the government and these are part of the SADC region which has drawn up these principles and we expect that when we get invited by those governments, that we are welcomed also by the opposition and other people because they are free to say if they don’t want the SADC mission if they are not happy with it. So we base ourselves on those – we have our own mandate and guidelines and certainly part of that is not who appoints officials; what officials are appointed and so on.

If it is something worth noting that is worrying people, we always encourage people to put it down as something that is noted, that we can consider. But we can’t go to Zimbabwe for example and say “put this candidate to run for election, or put that candidate, or do away with this one, or this one has human rights problems why do you push him its not good for democracy”. That is not for us to judge, its for the Zimbabweans to do their job and make sure that they put the right people in the right places. Thank you.

Issued by Department of Foreign Affairs
Private Bag X152
Pretoria
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17 March 2008