VOTERS BIG WINNERS IN SADC'S YEAR OF THE ELECTIONS
| Southern African voters are queuing up again as the third of five national elections
in the region this year takes place on 16 October in Botswana. From a region that less
than a decade ago was plagued with single-party elections, racially exclusive elections,
fraudulent elections, the voters are now flocking to the polls for a chance to exercise
their rights to choose those who will govern them for a fixed period of time in
one-person-one-vote, multi-party, democratic elections. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has five elections this year and a similar number in 2000. The first was South Africa in June. Nelson Mandela was leaving office and Thabo Mbeki, his successor, led the African National Congress to its second straight sweeping victory with a massive turnout of voters. South Africa, after decades of institutionalised apartheid, was holding its second only democratic election in history and professional political pundits in academia and media alike predicted that interest in democracy was already on the wane. Wrong. More than 67 percent of eligible voters said they wanted to give ANC another chance to deliver on the promises made in 1994. A few weeks later, Malawians did a repeat of their first democratic election in 1994 after 30 years of Hastings Kamuzu Banda autocracy. Same thing. The country's extremely politicized tabloid media highlighted corruption, incompetence, and treated its readers and listeners to a series of scandals and court cases, some reporters even calling for a return to Banda-style authoritarianism. But, it was the voters who streamed out of their villages and towns and delivered a proper democratic scare to the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) which barely squeezed back into power in both presidential and parliamentary elections. The results were so close, in fact, that the litigious Malawian opposition has challenged the results in court. The point in both instances is that the people spoke and their wishes were implemented. And now regional eyes will turn to Botswana where multi-party democratic elections are routine, even if the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has won all six since independence in 1966 and seems set to win the seventh. However, the country's only State of Emergency was proclaimed recently to recall parliament to amend electoral laws which would have disenfranchised 67,000 voters, proving that even in the most experienced and sophisticated of democracies things can go wrong. Portrayed usually as an oasis of democracy, stability, economic growth and good governance, the 1.3 million people take their elections seriously, but below the placid surface, there are many issues which the BDF would like to avoid and just as many which the 12 opposition parties would like to exploit. The ruling party will be going into the election led by Festus Mogae who became Botswana's third chief executive when Sir Ketumile Masire retired in 1998 after 18 years as president. He, in turn, had succeeded the country's revered founder, Sir Seretse Khama. Mogae is a British-educated economist who has worked his way steadily through the ranks of government and politics as a well-respected technocrat and some analysts say he took over from Masire in mid-term because, for the first time, the opposition Botswana National Front (BNF) had managed to win 13 seats in the 40-seat (plus four more appointed) unicameral National Assembly. The BDF retained a secure 27 seats. Fortunately for the ruling party, the BNF split, with 11 MPs defecting to form the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) which goes into the election with Michael Dingake as leader of the official opposition while BNF struggles to retain its two seats. There are many other opposition parties as well seeking some of the political spoils. The primary ones to watch, in addition to the two parties with seats in the Assembly, are the United National Front (UNF), a merger of four of minority parties, and the Botswana Alliance Movement (BAM) which is trying to unite a "hodge-podge" -- as a political scientist calls them -- of small parties. The problem, says a long-time political reporter and editor of the leading weekly, Mmegi, Sechele Sechele, is that the political party scene is factionalised within the ruling party and split amongst the opposition. The political centre is overcrowded with pragmatists with long associations and connections to government and civil service. While few doubt the BDF will win, the party is worried that its safe majority could be weakened. Sechele says it still depends on how the real issues can be exploited by the opposition and how united they become. In a strict two-party race, the opposition could easily win, the question being which parties would merge to carry the mantle of change. "It is a struggle in the BDP between old blood and new blood. Mogae is careful, clever and competent but associated with Masire's 18 years of very conservative rule. BDF's real ace is Ian Khama who will undoubtedly succeed Mogae in one or two terms. He is the one out on the campaign trail every day. He has his father's name, he is an army general, an effective administrator, a chief in his own right and very popular in the rural areas," Sechele says. The main opposition parties have their largest support in the urban centres of Gaborone, Maun and Francistown and environs but they also suffer from a need to revitalise, although they had been growing rapidly until the split between BNF and BCP. Had the parties remained united, many think this election might have resulted in a near tie possibly forcing a government of national unity. "Great for the people, they would have got their issues dealt with properly," says analyst Titus Mbuya. With its huge territory (581,730 sq km), diamond reserves and sprawling cattle posts, Botswana is very rich. The diamond industry alone represents 40 percent of the country's GNP, 50 percent of government revenue and 70 percent of its foreign exchange. Its yearly profits are more than US$750 million. The BDP government boasts that its US$20 billion in foreign reserves is sufficient to cover two complete budgets and four years of imports. Fiscally prudent -- to a fault many human rights and gender groups argue -- it rarely runs a deficit. The pula is Africa's strongest currency. Botswana is per capita one of the richest countries on the continent and yet, at the same time 46 percent of its people live in abject poverty, especially rural women and the indigenous San or Basarwa (as the majority Tswana-speaking people call them). Increasingly Botswana is becoming an urbanised nation and rural villages and communal lands are shrinking, creating a large number of urban poor as well. For these reasons, the opposition, most analysts and even the BDP regard rural and urban poverty and unemployment as the key election issues, related to which is the wide disparity between the ultra-rich and extremely poor, one of the widest in southern Africa. Sechele argues that the opposition needs to become united and establish a base of trust among the highly traditional and conservative rural population which, although declining annually, still controls the majority of seats in the Assembly. "The BDP has a strangehold because of the chiefs and their power over the people but agriculture and particularly cattle, are in serious decline -- 50 percent of peasants have none while 90 percent of the country's 3.7 million cattle are in the hands of the so-called cattle barons who constitute less than 10 percent of the rural population." Only five percent of the GDP comes from agriculture and that is almost entirely cattle. This rural-urban split is pronounced with 50 percent of the population now living within 100 km of an urban centre, mainly Gaborone, where housing and infrastructure problems are growing, leaving people to live in ramshackle slums. The other major concern for politicians and people is related to rural-urban migration, poverty and unemployment, and that is the HIV/AIDS pandemic which places Botswana -- along with Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia -- as the hardest hit in the world. Some 25 percent of people are said to be HIV-positive. Results of the voting, to be held on Saturday, 16 October, should be official within less than two days. It is a First Past the Post system and the newly-formed Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), despite its part in the blunder which caused the State of Emergency, is well-run and untainted by scandal. Voters will elect their 40 members of parliament. The party with most seats will then elect the President. Each party wishing to contest the presidency has already nominated its candidate by presenting 1,000 names of supporters to a High Court judge and it is from among these that the new President will be selected. The new Assembly will also select the four MPs who sit in the house to provide expertise and experience, making it a 44-member parliament. The vice-president of Botswana is a member but, while the President may attend parliament, he seldom does and cannot vote. Once the Botswana election is concluded, two more important votes face the region. On 30 November and 1 December, Namibia goes to the polls to elect a president and parliament for the second time since its independence in 1990. President Sam Nujoma is seeking a third term, but second term directly elected post independence. Proportional Representation is used in Namibia for national elections. Mozambique also goes to the polls for its second multi-party elections on 3 and 4 December to elect a president and parliament. President Joaquim Chissano the Frelimo leader will seek a further term, while his main opponent, Afonso Dhlakama, head of the former rebel movement Renamo, will run as the candidate of a newly formed opposition alliance. (SARDC). |
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