I know there is such a thing as an overkill and I would have stayed clear of Africa’s multilateral institutions this week, having highlighted a few weeks ago how difficult it is at times to be charitable towards them because of their all too frequent failings. But the no-holds-barred reaction of the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to the charade that played out in Zimbabwe on August 23 and was passed off as a general election bears reflecting on.

Once again, the governing Zanu-PF was declared the winner, as was its leader, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who will be President for a second five-year term.

But before the announcement of the results, the SADC observer mission, led by former Zambian Vice President Nevers Mumba, essentially declared the election a sham, pointing to, among other malpractices, vote suppression in opposition-supporting urban areas, where voters were made to wait in queues for up to 12 hours in some places, owing to the non-delivery of ballot papers. Mumba’s team of 68 observers also took issue with the delimitation of constituencies, voter intimidation, the elections body’s refusal to timely make the voters roll available to opposition parties, biased State media coverage and the hefty fees that candidates had to pay.

Former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who led a team representing the AU and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, was equally unimpressed. Moreover, he decried the arrest of observers from within Zimbabwe for engaging in parallel vote tabulation as a verification measure and described as a major concern the “insincerity of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s (ZEC’s) communication on ballot paper supply and distribution to polling stations”.

The SADC observer mission’s report – the more scathing of the two reports – stung Zanu-PF and the Zimbabwe government to the core, prompting them to hastily convene a media conference where they called Mumba names. But the SADC secretariat would have none of that; in a swift response, it stuck with its man, pointing out that the pronouncements he had made were not his personal views but that he was speaking on behalf of all the 68 observers deployed by the regional bloc.

That African institutions – the SADC, in particular – called out the Zimbabwe government is quite refreshing. This is a departure from 2008, for example, when former South African President Thabo Mbeki told the world with a straight face that “there is no crisis in Zimbabwe”, despite the ZEC pretending that Zimbabwe had suddenly become so backward that it needed 46 days to finalise election results. It needed this time to doctor the results so that the late Morgan Tsvangirai would be denied an outright win, paving the way for a runoff election. To its credit, the AU refused to recognise Robert Mugabe’s ‘triumph’ in the subsequent election, where he was the sole candidate after Tsvangirai withdrew in protest over the violence meted out to his supporters. That’s how the 2009 to 2013 government of national unity came into being.

The forthrightness of the SADC is a clear indication that it’s no longer business as usual for autocrats who hang on to power by hook or crook. If that was not clear enough, then something else should convince them – and that was the absence of the usual stampeding to congratulate Zimbabwe’s Presidents that we have seen in the past each time they ‘won’ elections.

Usually, within hours, there would be a flood of such messages from African governments. This time around, only three were reposted on X (formally Twitter) by the Zimbabwean Ministry of Information’s usually prolific permanent secretary in all of 48 hours. The messages were from the governments of Namibia, South Africa and Tanzania. A common denominator among them is that they are led by former liberation movements, which regard Zanu-PF as a fraternal party.

Of course, I don’t see the election results being nullified, but it’s unlikely that Zanu-PF’s rigging will continue to be as brazen in future elections. This increases the possibility of the true will of the Zimbabwean people prevailing.