BOKAMOSO
Let’s learn lessons from Zimbabwe while we can still act on them
The thing with warning signs is they are most useful when acted on early enough to avert disaster. Sometimes it’s hard to tell warning sign from alarmist conspiracy theory. In 2013, the DA’s warnings about state capture fell on deaf ears, even though many of the red flags were already waving. In 2009, our Stop Zuma campaign was denounced as alarmist, even racist.
Zimbabwe’s experience offers up valuable lessons to South Africa that we ignore at our peril. It demonstrates how a political elite will destroy a nation’s economy, collapse its wealth and ruin millions of lives if that is the price of holding onto power after its authentic moral authority has evaporated.
Zimbabwe’s recent election shows how difficult it is to restore true democracy once a single dominant party has entrenched power over decades. The only observer missions to proclaim the controversial electoral process free and fair were those colluding in the charade: SADC and the AU. Being themselves dominated by liberation movement parties who have similarly entrenched power, it is in their interests to play along.
The elections were compromised from the start.