President Mugabe: 'Zimbabwe will never be a colony again'
brian | 08.06.2008 04:15 | Social Struggles | World
Good article with some perceptive observations.
'The government of Zimbabwe could very easily abandon its militant policies aimed at protecting Zimbabwe’s independence and building its collective wealth – no doubt its ministers would be rewarded amply by the likes of the World Bank and the IMF. Indeed, this is exactly what the likes Tsvangirai are aching to do.
However, Mugabe and Zanu-PF have remained true to their principles and to the people of Zimbabwe. They will not depart from their famous slogan: “Zimbabwe will never be a colony again”. '
'The government of Zimbabwe could very easily abandon its militant policies aimed at protecting Zimbabwe’s independence and building its collective wealth – no doubt its ministers would be rewarded amply by the likes of the World Bank and the IMF. Indeed, this is exactly what the likes Tsvangirai are aching to do.
However, Mugabe and Zanu-PF have remained true to their principles and to the people of Zimbabwe. They will not depart from their famous slogan: “Zimbabwe will never be a colony again”. '
Zimbabwean Elections and Imperialist Propaganda
Just 38 years ago, the last – and most ‘liberal’ - constitution of Rhodesia was promulgated. It allowed for black African voters to vote in just eight of the country’s 66 constituencies, on the basis that blacks had insufficient experience with democracy to be able to sensibly exercise their vote. There was of course some murmur about this in the British press and in Whitehall – if nothing else, such undisguised and unmitigated racism is a bit embarrassing to a ruling class that has learnt to perpetrate its economic and political dominance through more subtle means. Sanctions were even announced (although widespread sanctions-busting by British firms rendered these redundant). However, the denunciation of Ian Smith and his despicable fascist statelet was nothing compared with the treatment that has for the last ten years been meted out to President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF government on account of their putative abuses of democracy.
A pedant might argue that nine parliamentary elections in the 28 years since independence, all of them fully inclusive and all of them monitored and approved by numerous independent international organisations, indicates a significant commitment by the Zimbabwean state to the principles of democratic election. However, according to imperialism, such a position is clearly facile. There is a very obvious problem with Zimbabwe’s elections: the Zimbabwean electors have been voting for the wrong candidate and refusing to play the ‘regime change’ game.
Make no mistake about it: the British state is desperate for regime change in Zimbabwe. In Iraq, they wanted regime change so they could get their greasy hands back on the oil. In Zimbabwe, they want regime change so they can get their greasy hands back on the land and the mineral wealth. Ever since the Zimbabwean government committed itself to solving the question of the unequal and racist distribution of land, transferring a significant proportion of the country’s land from a tiny white minority to thousands of landless black farmers, Zanu’s alleged human rights abuses and anti-democratic practices have never been far from the front pages of the Times, the Guardian and the Telegraph.
During every election in Zimbabwe during this period, the imperialist press has gone into overdrive to denounce Zanu and to promote a more ‘friendly’ opposition. The most recent parliamentary, presidential and senate elections, all held on 29 March 2008, were no exception, with the policy-makers in Britain, the US and other imperialist countries lining up to give their support – financial and political - to Morgan Tsvangirai and his liberalisation-friendly Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
What the opposition really stands for
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) (currently divided into two factions, one led by Morgan Tsvangirai and the other by Arthur Mutambara) is the main opposition party in Zimbabwe. If was formed out of the notoriously racist Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) in cooperation with the shady Zimbabwe Democracy Trust (ZDT) (a powerful organisation of imperialists, including three former British foreign secretaries and a former US assistant secretary of state for Africa), towards the end of 1999. Its emergence was triggered by local and international opposition to the nascent Fast Track Land Resettlement Programme which was, after a century of colonial theft, seriously addressing the question of land ownership in Zimbabwe.
On every issue of importance, MDC has taken a reactionary stand. It opposed the land resettlement programme; it opposed the heroic military support rendered by Zimbabwe to its neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo, which had been invaded by Uganda and Rwanda acting on the instructions of US imperialism; it has advocated an economic programme of privatisation and liberalisation (allowing the dominance of foreign capital); and it opposes the new Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill (discussed below); it has persistently asked for imperialist sanctions to be ramped up in order to bribe the Zimbabwean population into rejecting the Zanu-PF government.
In the words of George Shire, a Zimbabwean lecturer living in Britain: “Keywords keep on coming up in the MDC’s entire manifesto, varied literature and the websites of its supporters. They are seduced by the discourse of privatisation and a dependence on the West. Just in case we have forgotten, privatisation means the transfer of productive assets from the state to the private sector. Zimbabwe’s productive assets include land, natural resources, forests, water, and rivers. These are asserts that the state holds in trust for the people. A majority of the population of the people of Zimbabwe live in the rural areas. Their lives depend directly on access to these asserts. To snatch away these assets and sell them as stock to private companies is a process of … barbaric dispossession ...” (‘Zim must vote to protect revolution’, Zimbabwe Herald, 4 March 2008)
The forces of the pro-imperialist opposition have been bolstered in this election by a new entrant, Simba Makoni, a former Zanu-PF finance minister.
Makoni’s politics are much the same as those of the MDC. He represents the model of ‘development’ that involves lying prostrate before foreign monopoly capital. He is known to be on good terms with representatives of the Bretton Woods institutions, and has hinted at his enthusiasm for the private sector, reducing government spending, removing subsidies and doing everything possible to attract foreign investment.
South Africa’s Independent Online stated as far back as May 2003 that “Makoni is seen, together with MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, as the only contender for the leadership who would be able to raise loans for Zimbabwe from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.”
We all know what the conditions for raising these loans are: privatisation, liberalisation, land reform freeze and a removal of subsidies. In short, opening up the Zimbabwean economy for unfettered plunder by imperialism.
Makoni’s campaign strategist, Nkosana Moyo, is a senior partner in CDC Capital Partners, which describes itself as “a UK government-owned fund of funds, with net assets of US$4bn. We use our own balance sheet to invest in private equity funds focused on the emerging markets of Asia, Africa and Latin America, with particular emphasis on South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.”
In policy terms, Makoni differs very little from the MDC, but his political value to imperialism is greatly increased by his standing independently.
What does Zanu stand for?
Zanu-PF’s record is one of immense achievements of historic proportions. It is Zanu which spearheaded the heroic liberation struggle against white minority rule; it is Zanu which led the land reform programme that resulted, at long last, to the redistribution of Zimbabwe’s land to its rightful owners.
Zanu’s current platform is based upon solidifying the gains made through the land resettlement programme and building the country’s economy through indigenisation and through mutually beneficial co-operation and trade with friendly countries such as China. Zanu’s central campaigning slogan for the 2008 was: “Defending our Land and National Sovereignty: Building Prosperity through Empowerment”, a slogan that clearly highlights the debate that is raging in Zimbabwe. Do we defend and build upon the gains made through the land reform programme, or do we let the new black farmers founder? Do we focus on indigenous development or do we sell ourselves for a ‘quick fix’ of foreign capital? Do we liberalise or do we subsidise? Do we privatise or nationalise?
Mugabe and Zanu-PF stand firmly and clearly on the side of building up the economy on the basis of local ownership and freedom from imperialist interference. Zanu’s plan includes the implementation of a new Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill (see below), as well as the wide distribution of generators, gasoline, tractors and cattle, in order to improve the productivity of the small farms created via the land reform programme.
The government of Zimbabwe could very easily abandon its militant policies aimed at protecting Zimbabwe’s independence and building its collective wealth – no doubt its ministers would be rewarded amply by the likes of the World Bank and the IMF. Indeed, this is exactly what the likes Tsvangirai are aching to do.
However, Mugabe and Zanu-PF have remained true to their principles and to the people of Zimbabwe. They will not depart from their famous slogan: “Zimbabwe will never be a colony again”.
Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill
The April 2005 issue of Proletarian reported on a public meeting held in support of Zimbabwe, addressed by Simbarashe Mumbengegwi (then Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to the UK and now its Foreign Minister).
In his speech, Comrade Mumbengegwi noted that the land redistribution programme, considered to be the ‘Third Chimurenga’ (third liberation struggle) had been highly successful and that Zimbabwe was embarking on a ‘Fourth Chimurenga’ – the economic struggle to hand over control of the country’s businesses to the Zimbabwean population in order to finally remove imperialist influence and pressure from their country and make themselves truly independent.
We are beginning to see the manifestations of this ‘Fourth Chimurenga’. A few weeks before the election, the Zimbabwean government promulgated a new law which stipulates that every company operating in the country must have at least 51 percent of its shares owned by indigenous Zimbabweans. This will ensure that foreign monopolies are no longer able to dominate any section of Zimbabwe’s economy and that the Zimbabwean population as a whole is able to benefit from all areas of the economy. Some of the biggest businesses in the country, including Rio Tinto, BP, Lever Brothers and Barclays Bank, will now have to find local partners.
etc
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brian
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Zimbabwe situation is not so black and white
08.06.2008 15:16
country's land, wealth and income intact. By cutting social provision, structural adjustment removed the very limited safety net for the nation's people at the same time as increasing the overall level of poverty.The final nail in the coffin for the Zimbabwe economy has been the sanctions of recent years.
It must be said also, that Mugabe's anti-imperialist credentials only came to the fore after it became politically necessary for him to do so. If Mugabe was such an anti-colonist before, why did he so gracefully accept a knighthood from the Queen in 1994? The fact is that Mugabe was the favoured bully whose installment into power in the country was brokered by Henry Kissinger in the infamous Lancaster house agreement signed in 1980. The comparison between Mugabe and Saddam Hussain is striking (in their time, the west accepted both were the biggest playground bullies in their respective ponds, but they were both "our" bullies til they bit the hand that fed them). The comparison is striking not least in the western media's penchant for an intepretation predicated upon an imperialist propaganda standpoint, which has accepted a deliberate misreading of historical events (such as viewing the conflict in Matebeland in the mid 80s as a massacre, when it was infact a civil war, and the extent to which land redistribution may have been disproportionately taken by Zanu supporters, which though true, maybe an exaggerated occurance for the purpose of discrediting Mugabe).
It would appear, however, that by virtue of the war-state the country had already been in for several years, first beginning with IMF austerity and then the military intervention in the Congo, land was a bargaining chip which Mugabe was forced to give out to his main fighting force (including the war veterans). The plain fact is, however noble it was for Zimbabwe to engage in wider political struggle in the Congo, to reject the revised stipulations of poverty alleviation and a mandate of transparancy in the disposal of grant money in relation the distribution of funds for the land redistribution programme was a needless folly, stipulations which UK government started to exert after re-evaluating the terms of the financial assistance package from themselves & other donors at the Land Conference in 1998 - in which Zimbabwe had originally agreed to the measures. (The Lancaster House Agreement insisted on a "willing buyer, willing seller" policy, designed to ensure white farmers received adequate compensation for land sales). It would appear Mugabe rejected this arrangement, and so vital funds to compensate white farmers which would have eased the transition to the widespread change in farming being organised across the country were cut off, primarily because the direct implementation of the principles which the British government were exerting had in actual fact been completely undermined by the austerity measures of the IMF. (Note: the IMF's Economic Structural Adjustment Programme concentrated upon reduction of government involvement in the production, distribution and marketing of agricultural inputs and commodities, which included the liberalisation of the Grain Marketing Board and grain prices in 1995. Liberalisation measures involved the dramatic reduction in the number of GMB collection points which rural smallholders and farmers traditionally sold to GMB depots, from where it had been distributed to retail outlets, with a reserve held as the country's Strategic Grain Reserve. The GMB reduced the number of depots in rural areas to zero by 1996, which coincided with the setting up of a regional trading team in Harare by global Transnational Grain Corporation Cargill in the same year). (source: SAPRI). However, Mugabe's rejection of this mandate from it's former colonial masters had the positive byproduct of exploiting the political capital out of resisting this arrangement as his own domestic mandate was under threat from the western-backed MDC, as Mugabe became seduced into being the anti-colonialist.
However, despite all this, why wasn't Zimbabwe more in a position to take advantage of it's economic strength and instead wither to a mere vestige of it's former past after taking a pair of shears to the economic structure that was in place by cutting out it's main basis of it's most productive sector - the 4000 white farmers, even though the main basis if the country's economic wealth was cash-crop farming, ensuring the country was a neocolony for the west, which has been further entrenched by IMF structural adjustment. However, the fact remains that Mugabe hadn't done enough to develop and prepare the country's agricultural development and expertise in the 18 years he'dd been in power before ending the financial assistance programme from the UK. The fact is Mugabe was ill-prepared to drag his country further into the war state because of his convictions of some anti-imperialist stance, because he'dd neglected to nurture the domestic economy and domestic food producing capability of his own country (he could have sought to find ways round stringent IMF rules, but instead had to always primarily materially appease members of his patronage neworks such as the war veterans). Whilst the IMF is cheifly responsible for the shrinkage in the state's capability to invest for the future, the fact is that Mugabe government's expenditure on agricultural development, having increased at independence, declined during the second half of the 1980s. - well before the IMF measures came into play in 1990. The slow progress of comprehensive land reform for the first 20 years of independence is explained by the constraints of the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement which brokered Zimbabwe's independence, with land which was brought forward for redistribution being invaribly of marginal productivity. The post-colonial policy of the UK bears chief responsibility for this. Britain was anxious that large-scale land reform did not take place at independence, and the constitution of Zimbabwe, inaugurated at the Lancaster House agreements in 1979, stipulated that deep-seated land reform should be delayed for 10 years. It is critical to note that the liberation forces were encouraged to accept this agreement by fellow liberation forces in the other Front Line states. The constraints in this agreement were not the choice of Mugabe or ZANU.
The plain truth is that Mugabe's socialist and anti-colonialist rhetoric does partially stand up to what upon close examination does look like the protection of patronage networks predominantly within the ruling Zanu PF party, the war veterans and disproportionately concentrated within amongst his support base (mainly Shona). Mugabe's government abolished the ESAP, something done nowhere else in Africa, and paid off the IMF debt in 2006 - finally enabling it to introduce the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill, legislation which stipulates that every
company operating in the country must have at least 51% of its shares owned by indigenous Zimbabweans.
However, Mugabe's is primarily a political opportunist. Whereas before, in the same fashion as most fellow leaders of african post-independence nation states, the evolution of ZANU-PF demonstrates the incapacity of the bourgeois national liberation movements to exert the slightest independence. Operating in a world capitalist economy characterised by global integration and transnational production, these movements have been transformed into the direct instruments of finance capital (Shaoul, 08/1999). However, as Zimbabwe found itself economically stranded in 1998 with a fai accomplie to accept further reaching conditionality or else, Mugabe and ZANU-PF instead ruthlessly manipulated the central issue of land reform in order to entrench and maintain their own power. Pressure into making this change came from the war veterans who were increasingly getting impatient with Mugabe and Zanu PF to deliver land redistribution for their largely Shona ethnic constituency.
A socialist revolution which doesn't extend it's force for progressive change immediately beyond it's own support base is one destined to fail, which is why the only socilaist revolution which has genuiely succeeded in recent history is that of Cuba, not least because it has done so in the face of such overwhelming odds.
Sources:
1). ZIMBABWE LIBERALISATION OF AGRICULTURAL MARKETS, by SAPRI
Ref:
2).IMF tightens the screws on Zimbabwe
By Jean Shaoul, 18th August 1999
www.wsws.org/articles/1999/aug1999/zimb-a18.shtml
anti-colonialist
ahem - Zimbabwe never was a colony.
08.06.2008 17:42
"To outsiders, perhaps, Zimbabwe is just a name signifying some random geographical boundaries... But for me it is different. Rhodesia was a forbidden country for me, a white man's playland.. I was always outside looking in... And I did not know until years of bloodshed and turmoil later just how sweet life could be here... I had inhabited Rhodesia, but in Zimbabwe I lived."
-Nozipo Maraire, from Zenzele
J. Nozipo Maraire (born 1966) the author of Zenzele: "A Letter for My Daughter", "Tales out of Africa", is a neurosurgeon and campaigner on HIV/AIDS who won prominence at Yale for work on "intercranial cavernous malformations that lead to many neurological disabilities, hemorrhages, and seizures" had that to say about the name of the land where she had grown up which was adopted upon the formal independence granted by the Lancaster Agreement on 18 April 1980. Zimbabwe thus replaced the interim state of "Rhodesia Zimbabwe" which had existed from June 1 to December 12, 1979.
In 1986 a UNESCO world heritage site which was built under the Mutapa Empire was registered as "the Great Zimbabwe national monument". That empire was also known as Mwene Mutapa, Monomotapa or sometimes the "Empire of Great Zimbabwe" it stretched from the Zambezi to the Limpopo, an area of land approximating to modern Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
So if we get silly and call the previous statehoods of Rhodesia etc. colonised Zimbabwe, we'd be even sillier to avoid the question of Zimbabwean imperialism from the 11th to 15th century.
Not being that silly we might thus see that the Rt Hon Mugabe as a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
gurgle ribbid.
Cecil Rhodes ..................
08.06.2008 22:42
Hut Tax Harry
To the 'anti-colonialist'
08.06.2008 23:58
You wrote this:
'A socialist revolution which doesn't extend it's force for progressive change immediately beyond it's own support base is one destined to fail, which is why the only socilaist revolution which has genuiely succeeded in recent history is that of Cuba, not least because it has done so in the face of such overwhelming odds. '
It might interest you to know that Fidel Castro has said this:
'“’There is no country weak enough to be crushed. That is why I am confident in Zimbabwe’s victory despite the obstacles’, said President Castro, whose country has for 43 years resisted a United States-led isolation.
African support
“African ambassadors accredited to Cuba met President Mugabe and reiterated their countries’ support for Zimbabwe in its fight against imperialist forces.
“Cuba has helped Zimbabwe since the days of the liberation struggle. After independence it continued to assist in developmental programs such as training of science teachers and of late has been providing Zimbabwe with doctors.”'
Castro knows a genuine liberation struggle when he sees it. You dont.
brian
fundimentals
09.06.2008 07:26
Under Smith there was work for all who wanted it, there was food on the table, crime was dealt with by arresting and imprisoning people (whatever colour), It was not ideal as the majority was not in charge, but only the most rabid and blinkered could say that it is better now.
They have a real live Despot in charge, the real deal. The mines are full with those who have "been reeducated" normally in the back of the head.
The land is so fertile that you can put a fencepost in and it starts to sprout shoots! The whole country sits on water and mineral stocks that should make it the richest country in the southern half of Africa.
This is not really a struggle of black/white or of imperialism this is all a smoke screen to hide the nasty truth, that for once the world has a real Despot in charge of a country, hes killing people, running others of their land that they have worked for generations and no one is doing anything about it.
A collectivist farm setup is one of the most foolish methods of producing food for a large number of people, putting people on the land does not produce food. Farmers produce food. The whole of that region suffers from drout but only Zimbo does nothing about it.
Zimbo' needs food not words, it needs skills not Das Kapital. We can get all political about it and say that Mugabe is a hero and 'putting it to the west' but hes doing it at the cost of people. He is corrupt and has put the only food sources that Zimbo has got in the hands of the incompetent, all for political gain.
And yet, when I pass by the Zimbo embassy in the Strand, how many people do I see protesting these actions? 10/12 if that, are all the activists too scared of a REAL monster to have a go, just too problematical to oppose a socialist state. I am not impressed and neither is the rest of the world.
I don't expect that this comment will be allowed to stay as it probably breaches some minor rule
Harry Purvis
Brian, I'm afraid you're wrong
09.06.2008 07:35
sanctions.
You're reliance on a quote from Fidel Castro speaks volumes of your misunderstanding of what a genuine socialist revolution is comprised of. The Cuba revolution evolved from being more than the hegemonic rule of one-man; as such, one can take with a strong pinch of salt what one man says about what is going on in a country in southern Africa (not taking away from the knowledge that the Cuban revolution progressed the fight against apartheid by engaging against the western-backed Unita rebels in Angola in the late 70s; in spite of that, Fidel may well retract what he says of Mugabe now - this quote from him may well have come some time b4 the actual circumstances of what has been going on in Zimbabwe has become subsequently apparant to him).
Extracts from "Zimbabwe and the strategy of resistance" by Dale T. McKinley*
There has never been any meaningful degree of ideological consonance amongst left forces/individual activists in Zimbabwe. For the first decade or so, the institutional existence and political dominance of a 'socialist' political party in the form of ZANU-PF, engendered a 'civil society' that was effectively confined to the margins of key political/ideological and social debate and contestation. While opposition to the negative effects of SAPS and a subsequent raft of neo-liberal policy prescriptions in the early-mid 1990s fostered union-based, student and other smaller-scale resistance, eventually leading to the formation of the NCA and then the MDC, the dominant strategy of this accumulated resistance was bounded within a dominant constitutional and legal framework - i.e. to seek, through existing societal and state institutions, an expression of growing popular demands for changing the character and content of those institutions. This strategic orientation, and the tactics employed to pursue it (e.g., the formation of a political party to contest representational power through the existing institutional and legal framework) was understandable given the existence of political-social space at the time, the fact that the MDC
was the first, meaningful and mass-based political challenge to the post-independence hegemony of ZANU-PF and the subsequent 'victory' of the nascent opposition forces in the constitutional referendum.
However, the 'spaghetti mix' (as left Zimbabwean activists have called it) of the MDC meant that once Mugabe and ZANU-PF had connived to steal the 2000 parliamentary elections, and in the process begin to close down the institutional and legal space for political dissent and opposition, there was no dominant ideological foundation to act as the basis for strategic and tactical
re-assessment. As a result, the strategic 'line' remained the same - to gear up for contestation of the presidential elections in 2002 and continue the demands for a new Constitution, using the MDC as the main driver/vehicle and allied 'civil society' formations as fellow passengers,. Tactically, the main emphasis was on using the available (but fast-closing) institutional and legal space to
launch strikes and stay-aways (by a diminishing number of employed workers and an increasingly survivalist general population), mobilise international opinion and support and embark on a standard electoral campaign to influence and mobilise support amongst the Zimbabwean population. Under such a strategic rubric though, there was little the oppositional forces could do once Mugabe and
ZANU-PF began to unleash their war veteran-driven 'land reform programme', youth militias and institutional/legal manipulation as a means of consolidating power (especially in the rural areas) and covering the creeping dictatorship in the cloak of an incomplete 'national democratic revolution'.
Ref:
anti-Colonialist
Zanu-PF must be REALLY worried
09.06.2008 08:32
Brian, you're either staggeringly naive or a ZANU stooge. Mugabe is a dictator who stole the laste election, and is ALREADY wheeling out the thugs for this one> He's about as socialist as Milton Obote
DaanSaaf
Zimbabwe is a race not a class issue
09.06.2008 21:11
Below is a view you NEVER hear from the media or the white left. They will no doubt claim that these leaders are capitalist, neo-colonialists.
If so, please supply the evidence that the black majority in their countries also want Mugabe and Zanu-PF out.
2007 EXTRA-ORDINARY SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY SUMMIT OF HEADS OF STATE AND GOVERNMENT, 28TH - 29TH MARCH 2007
ON THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN ZIMBABWE
…The Extra-Ordinary Summit recalled that free, fair and democratic Presidential elections were held in 2002 in Zimbabwe.
The Extra-Ordinary Summit reaffirmed its solidarity with the Government and people of Zimbabwe…
…The Extra-Ordinary Summit reiterated the appeal to Britain to honour its compensation obligations with regard to land reform made at the Lancaster House.
The Extra-Ordinary Summit appealed for the lifting of all forms of sanctions against Zimbabwe.
Simon
Daansaad you must be worried: Zim last elections were free and fair
11.06.2008 02:37
Brian, you're either staggeringly naive or a ZANU stooge. Mugabe is a dictator who stole the laste election, and is ALREADY wheeling out the thugs for this one> He's about as socialist as Milton Obote
DaanSaaf '
====================
Last election was found to be free and fair:
''Zimbabwe Elections Free And Fair, Says Tonchi
Posted: Wednesday, April 6, 2005
THE head of the Electoral Commission Forum of Southern African Development Countries' observer mission to Zimbabwe, Victor Tonchi, has given his blessing to that country's elections, declaring them free and fair.
Tonchi led an 11-country observer mission to Zimbabwe and said the mission was encouraged by the "peaceful environment" in which the election took place.
"The mission hereby records its satisfaction with the high level of compliance with regulations and election rules which was displayed by the electoral staff at all stations visited," said Tonchi, who is also Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Namibia.
Tonchi's teams observed the opening procedures and voting and counting at 65 polling stations in 28 constituencies.'
brian