MDC vice president Tendai Biti opined that democracy is now under threat in the Southern African region, with opposition political parties being forced to breathe under the water.
Biti was speaking in Britain at Chatham House on Wednesday during the launch of his book titled Democracy Works: Re-Wiring Politics to Africa’s Advantage.
The former Minister of Finance cited Congo, Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana where dictatorial tendencies are on the rise.
In the case of Zimbabwe, Biti said that the country has been holding elections every four years on average since 1980, but they were far from being free and fair. He said:
Being a Zimbabwean, I know a lot about elections. Since 1980, we have had 33 elections, that is an average of an election every four years but those elections have not delivered because of dictatorship, autocracy and electoral authoritarianism.
In Zimbabwe, that has been the disjuncture that for 39 years, for 40 years, we have been run by a group of men and women that we had no relation to, we have been run by a group of men and women that have basically captured State power and used it for personal aggrandisement and reproduction of their survival agenda and power retention agenda.