Summary

Introduction

On 23 August 2023, Zimbabwe will have a general election to elect a President, Members of the Senate and the House of Assembly (HoA), and local authorities. Zimbabwe runs a mixed electoral system where the President, 210 HoA members, and 1970 council seats are elected through a first-past-the-post system. Meanwhile, an additional 60 female members of the HoA, 60 senators, 10 youths, and +/-590 women (30% of local authority seats) are elected through a party-list proportional representation system. An additional 20 senators will be drawn from traditional chiefs (18) and people with a disability (2). The presidential election also has a provision for a run-off election on 2 October. It kicks in if no presidential candidate garners an absolute majority (50% plus one vote). The election has attracted significant international interest because of the violent turn of the 2018 election and global economic interests, especially associated with the just energy transition, on account of Zimbabwe’s vast strategic mineral wealth. However, locally, the election’s run-up processes have been relatively muted and arguably less vibrant than past elections due to limited civil society engagement with the process, and citizens’ limited hope that elections can change things in the country.

During the tenure of the late Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe made headlines for disputed elections and allegations of undermining democratic processes. Since Mugabe's fall from power in 2017 and the emergence of a new dispensation amidst a violent post-election period, there is value in tracing how far the country has moved from the brink and assessing whether a new democratic dispensation is on the horizon. The 2023 election provides an interesting test for Zimbabwe's democratic progress or lack thereof. It is an opportunity for the country to "show and tell" the world the "progress" made around electoral and political reforms and enhance Zimbabwe's place in re-engagement processes and conversations. The Zimbabwe government and ZANU-PF are intent on shaking off a stubborn pariah status characterised by sanctions, limited diplomatic engagements, and suppressed foreign direct investment. How the election pans out both in terms of processes and outcomes could determine whether Zimbabwe is ready to return to democratic norm compliance, in the process lending a huge amount of legitimacy, locally and abroad, to the state and those presiding over it.

Who Are the Contenders?

The composition of candidates for the 2023 election was subject to several court cases meant to eliminate on technical grounds at least 12 opposition Member of Parliament candidates, three opposition presidential candidates, and many councillors from the ballot. Following the resolution of most cases, the election pits 18 political parties against each other across the board, 4648 Council candidates, 582 candidates vying for the 210 HoA seats, and 11 vying for the presidency. These numbers are lower than the 2018 races, with 23 presidential candidates and 49 political parties. The presidential ballot will feature one woman, Elisabeth Valerio of the United Zimbabwe Alliance, down from four in 2018, with only 70 women vying for the 210 HoA seats, down from 237 out of 1648 candidates in 2018. There is also a decline in voting intentions, with Afrobarometer estimating that only 67% of registered voters intend to vote on 23 August, down from close to 80% (77%) in 2018. In addition, the new constituency and ward boundaries also mean that many voters may go to the wrong polling station on voting day and may not be able to vote.

The presidential electoral contest pits the ruling ZANU-PF party, which has ironically claimed Goliath status, against a nascent opposition, the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC). ZANU-PF has forwarded 80-year-old lawyer Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, who hopes to maintain the 60-year-old party’s unbroken hold on power since independence in 1980. The CCC, a party launched in February 2022, has deployed 45-year-old lawyer and pastor Nelson Chamisa, who hopes to start a new winning chapter for opposition politics in Zimbabwe after doing away with the legacy and identity of his mother party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), formed in 1999 but afflicted by splits and allegations of capture by ZANU-PF.

In the 2018 election, Mnangagwa officially got 50.8% of the vote to Chamisa’s 44%. Chamisa disputed this result, with the incumbent eventually claiming the presidency through a refereeing decision of the Constitutional Court. The period leading up to the 2018 elections was characterised by a peaceful atmosphere and unrestricted political engagement. However, the legitimacy of the election was compromised shortly after its conclusion. This occurred due to the actions of soldiers who caused the death of six people and injured at least 35 others in the aftermath of post-election demonstrations.

The 2023 elections are a high-stakes game offering redemption and opportunities for internal power consolidation and legitimacy for both the leading contenders. Mnangagwa, whose party is said to be rife with factionalism, will be keen to show that he is the undisputed “one centre of power” and can achieve an uncontested victory and perform just as well or better than his party, which had more votes than him in 2018. Chamisa seeks to prove his claims made in 2018 of being the preferred candidate by winning the 2023 presidency. However, 2023 is a sterner test for Chamisa, who has been accused of limiting internal democracy and accountability. A dismal performance on 23 August 2023 may bring further difficulties for him and his inner circle, especially after suspicions that he deliberately sidelined senior figures to create space for loyalists. Chamisa will be banking on a decisive victory or clear rigging to save his new party from splitting as its predecessor, the MDC, did after almost every election. Like Mnangagwa, win or lose, Chamisa will use the 2023 election as a building plank for a post-election and post-MDC era in Zimbabwe's politics. Chamisa may use any attempts at criticising or removing him from the helm of CCC to disarm internal party opponents and replace them with a more supportive entourage.

Campaign Platforms, Strategy, and Issues

Mnangagwa and Chamisa are relatively new hands in presidential politics, maturing as party alphas and distrusting traditional party structures. Mnangagwa has kept senior ZANU-PF office bearers and structures in check by supporting the emergence of presidential support groups called the "4ED" movement. These groups include openly partisan private voluntary associations such as Forever Associates Zimbabwe (FAZ), Lawyers4ED, Young Women 4ED, MenBelievED, and others, including Teachers, Internet Trolls (Varakashi), Touts, and Prophets. This strategy is already causing discomfort amongst formal ZANU-PF party structures, which Mnangagwa has tried to dispel by providing over 800 all-terrain vehicles and distributing them across constituencies in addition to rumoured USD20,000, 4000 litres of fuel and 17,000 sets of caps, bandanas, and t-shirts per constituency. Mnangagwa is running a campaign that banks on ZANU-PF's overall performance, especially at the parliamentary level, through a chasing and mobilising strategy to support his presidential bid.

For his part, Chamisa has not created parallel structures but has done away entirely with "old-fashioned" traditional party structures as part of his strategic ambiguity approach to keep political opponents guessing, stem infiltration, and build a new citizen-based winning coalition for the CCC. However, critics accuse Chamisa of using strategic ambiguity, as a red-herring and an ambiguous strategic void, which he can manipulate without party members' popular and legitimate participation. Chamisa is primarily running a presidential campaign and has extensively targeted perceived ZANU-PF strongholds through his rural mobilisation strategy, called Mugwazo, and using "change champions" comprising ward coordinators, household, street, and village champions, citizens caucuses, and stakeholder consultations.

Mnangagwa’s and Chamisa’s foci on rural areas and new ways of organising may yield positive results because, although Chamisa has his base amongst youths and urbanites and Mnangagwa would want some urban presence, youths, and urbanites do not vote as much as their older rural counterparts. However, unlike ZANU-PF, the CCC has struggled to raise campaign resources, relying on diaspora-driven crowdfunding and various candidate efforts to fundraise independently. This approach puts them out of the patronage and clientelist politics race in the rural areas and may cost the CCC seats in places where ZANU-PF is investing heavily in chasing campaign programmes, patronage, and clientelist politics, like Cowdry Park in Bulawayo and Mabvuku Tafara in Harare.

Framing the Contest: A new great Zimbabwe versus delivering the Zimbabwe you want

The leading candidates' campaign tactics are mainly unchanged from 2018. The CCC is banking on Chamisa’s charisma. It continues the “Touch Me, See Me, Feel Me” strategy, where Chamisa makes impromptu and seemingly unscripted stops in traffic and at centres to meet the people. Chamisa has deployed beguiling tales that frame ZANU-PF and Mnangagwa as failures that have led the country to poverty, unemployment, and millions fleeing. He has been selling the vision of a “New Great Zimbabwe” with God and citizens at the centre and visions of an inclusive 100 Billion dollar economy in ten years.

Mnangagwa and ZANU-PF have also been framing the opposition as clueless and inept toddlers who have failed to run urban councils, leading to the government declaring a state of disaster on waste management in Harare. He has also been highlighting his performance during the five years he has been President and distributing largesse at rallies, including party regalia and fast food. He has been touting the state's various infrastructure development projects, including road, interchange, airport construction, Lithium processing plants, and normative stability in the economy, and restraining the black-market forex trade. ZANU-PF has yet to release an official manifesto, arguing that its work is the manifesto and framing Mnangagwa as a man of action rather than words. ZANU-PF's campaign efforts have been a shameless show of incumbency's power, giving it a clear advantage and opportunities to abuse state resources and leverage state projects as ZANU-PF achievements.

The issues that both candidates have been focusing on are resonant with the public. According to Afrobarometer, the Brenthurst Foundation, and Public Policy Research Institute Zimbabwe (PPRIZ), leading issues for citizens include the economy, corruption, unemployment, infrastructure development, and electricity and water supply.

Does the Opposition Stand a Chance?

The electoral field favours the ruling party because it controls critical institutions such as the police, the judiciary, public media, and government coffers, in addition to allegations of a Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) capture by ZANU-PF.

Nonetheless, the 2023 election still presents an opportunity for Chamisa, who lost the 2018 presidential election by 30,000 votes, to capture the presidency despite some tactics used to frustrate his party. A poll by the Brenthurst Foundation shows 53% of respondents favouring Nelson Chamisa and 40% supporting Emmerson Mnangagwa. However, on 10 July 2023, the more popular Afrobarometer released survey results that indicated a 7% decline in Chamisa's support (27% down from 35% in 2022) and a 2% increase for Mnangagwa (35% up from 33%). This difference places the incumbent eight percentage points ahead of his primary challenger.

The best chance of an opposition victory lies in persuading the undeclared block of voters captured in the 26% of respondents who refused to share their preferences for the presidential elections during the Afrobarometer survey. Most of these are urban, and many are opposition sympathisers who refrain from stating their intentions for fear of victimisation. Chamisa's "mango" strategy, where he has been encouraging people to go along with ZANU-PF (green on the outside) to avoid victimisation and missing out on hand-outs during the campaign but vote CCC on election day (yellow on the inside), may capture this vote.

A lot will depend on turn-out strategies; ZANU-PF is adept at turn-out buying and driving, especially in rural areas where many voters are coerced and "assisted" to vote. Low voter turnout will advantage Mnangagwa's ZANU-PF unless Chamisa and the CCC stage a miracle of turning out urban voters during a relatively low-interest election. But as in the David and Goliath story, sometimes all that is needed is a political sling and stones to fell a giant; Chamisa will have to find these quickly as events in the election run-up indicate that he may not have enough ammunition.

Local (dis)Interest, State of Play, and the Possibilities of Apathy ahead of the Election

Locally, the election period has been muted and characterised by limited to no civil society voter education and voter mobilisation, concerns about the political environment, decreases in electoral competition, inclusive politics, and citizens' voting intentions.

Limited civil society engagement in the 2023 elections has been due to a myriad of challenges, including shrinking civic space, resource challenges, late or no accreditation of civil society organisations to conduct voter education and the disciplining effect of repressive legislation such as the Patriotic Act and the Private Voluntary Organizations Amendment Bill. Both legislations impede freedoms of association, assembly, and expression, with the latter threatening deregistration and excessive executive control of the sector.

Zimbabwe's 2023 election has also been highly uncertain procedurally, including around candidates, and very litigious throughout the electoral cycle, leading to opposition and civil society concerns about whether the playing field is even. Allegations abound of the routinisation of procedural uncertainty to manipulate the election in subtle ways, such as urban voter suppression during registration, doubtful integrity of the voter's roll, disputed delimitation processes, and banning and disrupting opposition canvassing.

In addition, the 2023 election has been distinctive in using exclusionary financial, administrative, regulatory, and legal tactics to further tilt the electoral race in the ruling party’s favour. Financially, the fees gazetted for presidential and parliamentary races, at USD 20,000 and USD 1000 (up from USD 1000 and USD 50), respectively, were exorbitant and exclusionary, posing significant barriers to political participation, particularly for marginalised groups such as young people, women, and persons with disabilities. Only ZANU-PF and CCC were able to field full slates of candidates.

The International Community and Zimbabwe’s Interests: 2023 elections geopolitical implications

Although it has not been proclaimed at rallies during the campaign, the 2023 election is crucial to Zimbabwe’s efforts to re-engage with the Western-led international community and shake off a stubborn pariah status characterised by sanctions, limited diplomatic engagements, and suppressed foreign direct investment. Zimbabwe has been attempting to re-establish cordial relations with the UK, EU, USA, and other Western states and have critical individuals and companies removed from the sanctions lists. It has also sought to rejoin the Commonwealth and is in the middle of an African Development Bank (AFDB)-led multi-stakeholder debt and arrears clearance process, which places it in conversation with its debtors over its +17 USD billion debt but has both economic and governance-related issues on the agenda.

Even less spoken about in this election but remarkably prescient for the future is the global critical minerals’ race and Zimbabwe's attempt to build a USD 100-billion-dollar economy in ten years if Chamisa wins and achieve an upper middle-income economy by 2030 if ZANU-PF is still in charge. Zimbabwe sits on vast mineral reserves, including minerals critical to the clean energy transition, such as Chromium, Nickel, Coal, Platinum, and Lithium. Zimbabwe’s Lithium, where the country is the world’s fifth largest producer despite modest investments, is a significant part of what Zimbabwe will bank on for its development in the next five to 10 years. Yet its significant buyers, beyond the Chinese, are Western countries, especially EU members, the US, and Japan. Despite most of these players' needs, it will take much work for them to justify to their local constituents’ engagement with a rogue regime with contested legitimacy.

The preceding makes the 2023 election a crucial opportunity for Zimbabwe to show the world that it has gone over the bend of violent and undemocratic politics. To witness this, Zimbabwe has invited an unprecedented 50+ international media houses and over 60 election observer missions, including 46 countries, to observe and report on the elections. Despite the rhetoric around being anti-West and broaching no interference, this move by the Mnangagwa regime seeks to communicate its openness and willingness to engage as part of righting Zimbabwe's image in the West. However, this invitation has not been an open check as the government has cherry-picked observers, denying accreditation to both international and local observers they deemed acrimonious.

The substantial foreign interest and presence at the 2023 elections place a reputational burden on ZANU-PF, Mnangagwa, and the ZEC to stage a clean-enough election to keep re-engagement processes with the international community and the AFDB-led multi-stakeholder debt and arrears clearance process alive and to pave the way for more clients for its critical minerals.

The 2023 elections and expected judgments by election observers about credibility, freeness, and fairness will be crucial to Zimbabwe's bilateral and multilateral engagements and geopolitical interests post-election.

Dr. McDonald Lewanika

Dr. McDonald Lewanika is a political scientist with over 20 years of experience working on governance and development issues in Zimbabwe. He is the Regional Director for Southern Africa at Accountability Lab and researches African politics, election campaigns, governance, and accountability issues.