Exclusive SA report: Mugabe rigged 2002 elections Posted by HarareFacebookTwitterGoogle+LinkedInPrintE-mailThe 2002 Zimbabwean elections were not “free and fair” the long-awaited Khampepe report by then Pretoria high court judge Dikgang Moseneke and Johannesburg high court judge Sisi Khampepe has determined.The 27-page document found the actual running of the three-day voting process, excluding delays in urban areas Harare and Chitungwiza, to have complied with the legislative requirements and to have been free of violence and or apparent ballot tampering.Read the full Khampepe ReportThe judges, however, weighed that against pre-election activities including intimidation and the deaths of 107, mainly opposition members in the process, lengthy legal battles to change laws in favour of the Zanu-PF, largely around citizenship and the reduction of polling stations in urban areas, where the strongest opposition party Movement for Democratic change just happened to have its largest support base.The report also objected to the Zimbabwe government’s failure to respect and implement recommendations by the Supreme Court of Appeal and the high courts.‘No prospects of success’The findings of the Khampepe report were made public on Friday following a Constitutional Court judgment on the same day, in which that court rejected an appeal by government against a Supreme Court of Appeal judgment that found the documents should be made public. The Constutional Court dismissed the application on the grounds it “bears no prospects of success”. South African presidents Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma have spent over six years fighting against the public release of the report, commissioned by President Thabo Mbeki and applied for by M&Glawyers.Read: The battle to access the Khampepe ReportMbeki had tasked the two judges, now serving on the Constitutional Court bench, with leading the Judicial Observer Mission to cover the March 8 to 10 Zimbabwe presidential elections and drawing up a report on their observations.Despite claims from some observers that Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF had used violence and changing of citizenship rules to sway the vote in his favour, the Khampepe report, as it became known, was never released to the South African public.Then president Thabo Mbeki throughout continued to endorse the Zimbabwe elections and support the view by the South African Observer mission, which also oversaw the elections that they had been “legitimate”. This was the view of its leader Sam Motsuenyane. On March 13, the SAOM told reporters in Harare that the participation of the opposition in the campaign legitimised the outcome of the elections.In going out to vote in large numbers the Zimbabwean people had “demonstrated their commitment to expressing their will in determining who should be their President”. The report concluded that, based on their observations, it “is the view of the SAOM that the outcome of the 2002 Zimbabwe Presidential elections should be considered legitimate”.Mbeki continued to dismiss the importance of the report by the Commonwealth observer mission report which highlighted a number of irregularities, now listed in the Khampepe report.The Khampepe documents were handed over to the M&G lawyers on Friday afternoon following the Constitutional Court judgment.M&G’s lawyer Dario Milo of Webber Wentzel was delighted on Friday following the judgment saying: “We are ecstatic that a five-year battle has finally come to a close. The judgment is a resounding victory for guaranteeing the rights of access to information.”“Now that we have seen the report, it is clear that the presidency had no basis to withhold this report in the first place. It is an indictment on the office of the presidency that it litigated this case. “The office acted contrary to the values of openness and transparency enshrined in PAIA and the Constitution. Three successive presidents opposed the report’s release when they should have known that the public had a clear right to know, and when they should have know that their opposition was baseless and dilatory,” Milo said.The 27-page document weighs up a number of concerns and attempts to offer a balanced appraisal, choosing not to review allegations that the Zanu-PF received more coverage via state-owned media, and radio in particular, than the MDC and the three other candidates.Instead the report occupies itself with the year and last few months leading up to the election.Read: How the ANC spun the 2002 Zimbabwe crisisTurning point in historyIt points out that the 2002 elections were a turning point in Zimbabwean electoral history – seeing the Zanu-PF going from a 93% majority in the 1996 presidential elections to just 51.9% in 2002 “demonstrated Zanu-PF’s dramatic decline”.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:43:11 +0000
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