In this scholarly paper rooted in reality, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coaltion addresses the issue of electoral manipulation and how to strengthen Zimbabwe’s democracy choices. In advancing the argument, they reiterate the point they make in their earlier Report titled ‘The Military Factor in Zimbabwe’s Political and Electoral Affairs The Military Factor in Zimbabwe and further argue that political parties are not static. ZANU PF is attempting to abandon and/or minimize naked violence in order to reclaim its political legitimacy. What would it take to convince SADC again that the Zimbabwe crisis is not just about state sponsored violence but other modes of manipulating elections, economic governance, societal cohesion and institutional collapse? The current paper focus on a broad definition of electoral manipulation which goes beyond the electoral environment, the electoral process and balloting to include a deeper contextual analysis of the political system, prevailing political culture and the nature of the regime itself. This is in acknowledgement of the fact that recent scholarly work has sought to provide a nuanced distinction between fraud, malpractice (including criminal malpractice) and systemic manipulation. Hence in this report the term ‘manipulation’ is what will be broadly used in order to avoid confusion on the likely distinctions. You can access the full report here: COUNTERING ELECTORAL MANIPULATION
