Zimbabwe: Civil society actors
Extracted from: Susan Booysen and Lucien Toulou 2009 "Chapter 15: Zimbabwe" IN Denis Kadima and Susan Booysen (eds) Compendium of Elections in Southern Africa 1989-2009: 20 Years of Multiparty Democracy, EISA, Johannesburg, 642.
Over the past years civil society organisations have been at the forefront of the fight against authoritarianism in Zimbabwe. As a result, the crackdown on their activities paralleled the harassment of the opposition, allegedly for being the 'stooge of the West' in an attempt to force regime change. This has been the case after the March 2008 Harmonised Elections for the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN). The raid on ZESN offices and arrest of its staff came a few days before the announcement of the presidential results. It was probably aimed at harassing, intimidating and therefore preventing ZESN from announcing election results that would have contradicted the ZEC's official results. The Network was able to deploy 8,800 observers for the 29 March Harmonised Elections and to conduct parallel vote tabulation. However, the organisation decided not to deploy observers for the run-off as it was granted accreditation for only 500 observers, while it had applied for approval of over 23 000.
Analysis
GOKOVA, JK 2002, "The intensified struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe: What options for NGOs/Civil Society?", Kubatana.net, [www] http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/demgg/021013jg.asp?sector=DEMGG [opens new window] (accessed 9 Mar 2010).
Official websites
Kubatana - The NGO Network Alliance Project: [www] http://www.kubatana.net/ [opens new window] (accessed 9 Mar 2010); e-mail: nnap@kubatana.org.zw.
Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN): [www] http://www.zesn.org.zw/ [opens new window] (accessed 9 Mar 2010).
Zimbabwe NGO Human Rights Forum: [www] http://www.hrforumzim.com [opens new window] (accessed 9 Mar 2010).
Kubatana's directory
KUBATANA.NET UNDATED, Directory of Zimbabwean Civil Society Organisations, [www] http://www.kubatana.net/html/dir/dir_cont.asp [opens new window] (accessed 9 Mar 2010).
