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Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

WHILE our re-elected president Emmerson Mnangagwa and other victors in the just-ended harmonised elections on August 23 are obviously walking tall in the aftermath of the free, fair and transparent polls, the rest of patriotic Zimbabwean voters representing the ruling and opposition parties are obviously dancing tall with elation on the shoulders of all but one observer missions which endorsed the elections as having been free, fair and transparent.

The African Union, European Union and the Commonwealth election observer missions gave Zimbabwean voters the thumbs up for the peace and harmony which characterised the voting.

But, tragically ironic — and this is very sad for southern Africa — the Sadc observer mission headed by Zambian Dr Nevers Mumba disagreed with all the verdicts of the other observer missions on the elections and in the process dividing Sadc as two principal members of its Organ on Politics, Defence and Security, Namibia and Tanzania — except Zambia — endorsed president Mnangagwa’s victory in last week’s harmonised elections.

Dr Nevers Mumba

It now clearly and obviously behoves on the Zambian president Hakainde Hichilema who appointed Dr Mumba to head the Sadc Electoral Observer Mission (SEOM), to explain to the rest of the world why Zambia did not concur with the rest of the Sadc observer mission on the elections by people in what was once the southern part of one country, Rhodesia, with the present Zambia as Northern Rhodesia then and meaning that in all intense and purposes, as the closest of neighbours, we should still regard ourselves as people connected by desires and wishes for a similar brave new future.

If Zambia does not educate the rest of the world on the reason or reasons why Dr Nevers Mumba acted in the way he did, there is a possibility that some people in the global village might believe, rightly or wrongly, that our Northern neighbours kowtow with Western imperialists, in particular the United States of America, which apparently remains determined to effect regime change in this country as punishment against the ruling Zanu-PF Government for introducing land reform to re-unite and independent and free people with land usurped by those without knees in colonial Rhodesia.

For Zimbabweans at large, elections in a democratic state such as ours should catalyse patriotic losers to work harder in order to become victors next time around because there will ALWAYS be victors and losers in any free and democratic elections.

Those political leaders who refuse to accept defeat in free and fair elections such as the one in this country earlier this month are potential future ruling dictators who will never accept defeat by better rivals in the future.

Zimbabweans must be aware of this potentially frightening possibility and ensure that holier-than-thou politicians are denied the opportunity to lead a country in which the precious lives of gallant sons and daughters of the soil were sacrificed for the independence and freedom we now enjoy today.

Which essentially means that leaders re-elected in the just-ended polls should not sit back on their laurels but must instead re-double their efforts in building/developing our motherland as our popular mantra exhorts all of us so that new leaders may also justify the thumbs up for them by voters to add the momentous to Zimbabwe’s political, economic and social development for all.

And so third republic-cum one home, here we come to stay, the politically beautiful and the politically ugly to await life sets and permanent separations from one another as our God-anointed portions.