THE BIG READ: SADC rubber stamp hovers over Zim poll

The front-page of the state-controlled The Herald newspaper yesterday screamed "SADC troika congratulates President". The privately owned Newsday went for "Mugabe, Khama clash over polls". This blatant polarisation of the media's stance on President Robert Mugabe is normal for Zimbabweans.

The Herald made no mention of Botswanan President Ian Khama's criticism of the July 31 elections as neither free nor fair and his echoing of the Movement for Democratic Change call for an "audit" of the electoral process.

Instead, the newspaper focused on the statement of the Southern African Development Community organ on politics, defence and security cooperation, headed by Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, which congratulated Mugabe on his "resounding victory".

That said, both stories are important and point to a clash that is likely to unfold at the next SADC summit, to be held in Lilongwe, Malawi, later this month.

Botswana has effectively broken ranks with its SADC counterparts, including South Africa, which have hailed the disputed elections as having been "free" and "peaceful" and an expression of the wishes of Zimbabweans.

The African Union took it further, adding "credible" to its assessment of the polls, in which Mugabe won 61.09% of the votes in the presidential election to MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai's 33.9%. Mugabe's Zanu-PF made a clean sweep of the parliamentary election, garnering more than a two-thirds majority with 160 of the 210 seats.

The SADC's election observer mission is expected to deliver its final report on the polls at the Lilongwe summit. The world and Zimbabweans await the report with keen interest after the regional body's mission stopped short of declaring the polls "fair" in its preliminary report, arguing that it needed to hear all complaints before coming to a final determination.

It has come to light that SADC observers were divided over the wording of their preliminary report, with Namibia and Mozambique pushing for the mission to pass the elections as having been fair, but South African and Tanzania cautioning against hastily rubber-stamping the elections.

This brings me to the next issue: just how objective are South Africa and other SADC countries as mediators in the Zimbabwe situation? This question becomes crucial when the stance taken by the US, Britain and the European Union is taken into consideration. All have questioned the credibility of the elections and expressed concern over alleged vote-rigging and other irregularities.

In effect, African countries and Mugabe are pitted against Tsvangirai and the West.

And now that the battle lines have been drawn, it is most likely that the SADC and the AU will close ranks with Mugabe against what they perceive as Western interference in African affairs.

If there is one thing African countries loathe it is being told what to do by the West (which was not welcome to observe the elections in Zimbabwe).

Despite their misgivings about Mugabe, African leaders do not trust Tsvangirai and at worst regard him as a puppet of the West, funded by Britain and the US.

President Jacob Zuma's "profound" congratulation of Mugabe should come as no surprise. Zanu-PF's win is, after all, a victory for another liberation movement. Only Khama's government does not suffer from the liberation hang-up.

In public, the SADC countries may have said that they would support whoever won the elections, but deep down they knew that an MDC victory would have meant the defeat of yet another former liberation movement.

The Zimbabwean political situation has become a proxy for the political fights in South Africa. The ANC government cannot be seen to be supporting the demise of a fellow former liberation movement and so must tiptoe around the stubborn Mugabe. Local opposition parties side with the MDC and an MDC win would boost their hopes of one day removing the powerful ANC.

While questions might be asked of Africa's impartiality on Zimbabwe, the same should be asked of the West. Just how honest are the US, Britain and the EU in their assessments of the election outcome, given that they have made clear their preference for regime change in Zimbabwe?

Are they able to look beyond their hatred of Mugabe?

But when all these organisations and countries have spoken and pronounced their positions, it will still have to be the people of Zimbabwe who have to sort out their issues. After all, it is they who truly have their and their country's best interests at heart.