Before the ascendancy of neo-conservatism, neo-liberalism and globalization, the world’s imperial powers believed in using the stick and carrot approach in their pursuit of global hegemony and influence. This was an approach driven by a belief in behavioural science where the Pavlovian technique is used to shape a dog’s behaviour by giving it a bone or some meat every time it elicits a desired response. Since the ascendancy of neo-conservatism, Western imperial powers have readopted the old 19th century “squeeze them by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow” approach in their bid to impose their hegemony on nations. The trouble with this approach is that it has been a complete disaster. The evidence is there for all to see in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Western invasion of these Middle Eastern countries was sup­posed to usher in Western style democracies in the Muslim world and elsewhere in the world where Western hegemony was necessary to secure natural resources and markets for its economies. Eight years later, the fabric of Afghan society is so ravaged its recent national elections had to be supervised by the United Nations! And what a debacle they turned out to be.

Yet when President Mugabe of Zimbabwe made a conciliatory speech in parliament offering an olive branch to Western coun­tries that have imposed illegal sanctions on his country, the American state department saw it as opportunity to slap his face by demanding that he fire his Attorney General and Governor of the Reserve Bank and agrees to elections supervised by the international community, a euphemism for a Western dominated United Nations election team. How the State department expected Zimbabwe to even entertain such an idea having seen what hap­pened in Afghanistan’s recent elections was a mystery only God can solve. In September, after Afghanistan’s August elections, an American diplomat, Peter Galbraith, in an unusual display of integrity, accused Kai Eide, the United Nations official in Kabul charge of the elections of siding with Hamid Karzai by allowing “ghost” polling stations which were at risk of fraud because of their insecure locations. Galbraith, who was Eide’s deputy, accused his boss of trying to cover up evidence of cheating by President Karzai. Galbraith said Eide had failed to stop polling stations from opening in areas that were too dangerous for moni­tors to visit, and barring his staff from handing over evidence that showed that actual voter turnout was far lower than reported.

Eide responded: “The allegation made against me by my deputy have not only been personal attacks against me and my integrity, but they have been attacks that in fact have affected the entire election process.” Interestingly, during Eide’s press conference, journalists were not allowed to ask questions. Galbraith was immediately sacked by United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon after his dispute with his boss on how to deal with the fraud allegations when they became public. Last week Eide made an about turn and admitted that “widespread fraud” had taken place Afghanistan’s August elections. “It is true that in a number of polling stations in the south and the south east, there was sig­nificant fraud,” he admitted. Now contrast the Western reception of the Afghan election to that accorded to Zimbabwean elections and you begin to understand that this is not about elections at all. It is about political hegemony. The standoff between President Mugabe and the West began after the 2000 national elections when the West’s favourite party, the MDC and their favourite presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, lost. Since then, every election lost by this opposition party in Zimbabwe has been dismissed by Western governments as “fraudulent.” To me, the solution is to leave it you the reader to decide.

Any political party that wanted to contest Zimbabwe’s 2000 parliamentary and presidential elections was required to register its candi­dates with the Register General’s office before a set deadline after paying the required registration fee. To ensure the secrecy of the ballot, each voter entered a polling station where his or her identity and eligibility to vote were checked; the voter then proceeded to a voting booth where, all alone, he or she marked the party or candidate of his or her choice on the ballot paper issued by the polling officials. The only voters allowed to seek assistance from a polling official on where to mark their ballot papers were the illiterate and the blind. In Zimbabwe, these are not that many. Certainly, they are not plentiful enough to influence the general outcome of an election. To make sure that no one voted twice or more times, each voter dipped his or her fingers in an ink which stayed indelible for at least a week. While all this was going on, each polling station was protected from violence or any other disruption by uniformed police. No election candidates were allowed to campaign or display their party regalia within 100 metres of the polling station. Those who did so risked being arrested. Meanwhile, the contesting parties were allowed to have three or four monitors per polling station to make sure that no cheating took place. Thousands of accredited monitors and observers, both local and foreign were also allowed to monitor the process to make sure that there were no irregularities. In 2000, when voting in Zimbabwe was still conducted over two days, the monitors of the contesting parties were allowed to guard the ballot boxes overnight to make sure that no ballot stuffing took place. When the vot­ing was complete and the polling stations closed, the ballot boxes were taken, with the monitors of the contesting parties in tow, to a central counting place. Before being counted, the marked ballot papers went through a process of verification to make sure that they matched the number of voters who had cast their votes in each individual constituency. Thus, until the results were announced by the appropriate election officials, no one knew for sure who was going to win. Election pundits could make predictions on the basis of opinion polls or their experience and seasoned knowledge of Zimbabwe’s voters, but their pronouncements were mere speculation.

This is exactly what took place in 2000 when Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections were held. The election process was monitored by some 302 international observers. The largest number came from the European Union (EU), with 190, fol­lowed by the Commonwealth with 40, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) with 29 and African Union with 28. A number of other foreign countries also sent small missions. Britain and the United States were deliberately ex­cluded because they were clearly in favour of an MDC victory since engineering its formation the previous year in September.

In numerous statements issued long before the election, they had already decided that the election would not be “free and fair.” Analysts saw this is an attempt to cast a shadow on the legitimacy of the elections in case they were won by ZANU PF as the Americans and British secretly

knew would happen. Zimba­bwe itself had 4 000 accredited monitors and some 16 000 unofficial observers to assess the legitimacy of the process. The Zimbabwe Republic Po­lice deployed 30 000 officers across the country to keep the peace and to maintain law and order. Altogether 267 foreign media organisations, represented by 702 accredited journalists from all over the world were in the country to report on the elections. The SADC Forum concluded that the elections had been a gen­eral reflection of the will of the Zimbabwean people. The Forum was a regional body whose membership included 12 parliamentary structures in southern Africa representing 1 800 members of parliament. The Forum issued a press briefing noting that the large voter turnout and the accept­ance of the result by political parties indicated the out­come was representative of the electorate’s wishes. The Forum noted in its conclu­sions that the people “turned out in large numbers to vote and elect leaders of their choice.” In its report, the leader of the Forum, Nora Schimming- Chase observed: “This is also evidenced by the fact that by and large all the stakeholders have accepted the results of the election.” At a separate press brief­ing, the Forum echoed this position, saying despite the violence that had claimed 30 lives, the voting process and the results “are legitimate, and reflect the will of the people.” In general, the re­ports of the various observer groups were affected both by the political agendas of the domestic players and of the governments which had sent the observers. Although the leader of the Common­wealth Observer mission told journalists at one stage that Zimbabwe’s elections were “physically impossible to rig,” his delegation later issued a negative report con­demning them and saying that they were not free and fair. And although election observers and monitors are supposed to be neutral, it was glaringly obvious to many Zimbabweans and other observers that the EU and the Commonwealth’s observers reports were fol­lowing a script already pre-written before the elections by their sponsors back home. So Namibians, watch out when you vote this No­vember.