Zimbabwe does not need elections but a social contract Philani Lithandane Ndlovu LLD

While elections have been held after almost every five years since 1980 in Zimbabwe, their effectiveness as a means to express the collective will of the people has not been fully realised. The 2008 Presidential elections and the 2018 elections demonstrated the incapacity of elections in ensuring transfer of power from one government to the next. While Morgan Tsvangirai won the election in 2008, political power was not transferred to him. Instead, the loser in the election, Robert Mugabe retained control of political authority, refusing to hand over power to the winning candidate against the backdrop of unequivocal declarations by military commanders that they would not salute the legitimate election winner under any circumstances.
It became very clear that elections are not an effective mechanism for succession to power. In the absence of election effectiveness, it is clear that answers to Zimbabwe's political impasse lie outside the scope of what elections are capable of doing.