THE Southern African Development Community (Sadc) region prides itself as a generally stable and peaceful part of African and aspires to entrench this stability through adhering to principles of democracy that include the holding of consistent, free and fair elections.

While the centrality of elections to democracy is accepted, the fact that elections in themselves are not enough for the democratisation process is equally accepted.

This desktop-based review of a selected group of Sadc States’ electoral landscape was carried out in order to assess the region’s footing in relation to electoral norms and practices.

The five countries selected were South Africa, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), eSwatini and Namibia and all these countries have elections lined up between the time of writing and 2024.

While Sadc, as an institution, has rallied its membership to accede to and localise international instruments on democracy and good governance as well as the conduct of elections, the review sought to investigate the extent to which these find expression in the actual circumstances of electoral practices in the selected countries.

The review reasoned that the gap between norms and practices in the selected State’s recent elections would be a good basis to judge the extent to which the upcoming elections would be credible.

As such, for each of the selected States, an understanding of electoral dynamics was sought within the context of belonging to Sadc and each State’s own sovereignty.

While the sampled States are not similar in many ways, the review noted underlying similarities of relevance.

These similarities included the fact that all were signatories to the Sadc Treaty on which the Sadc Principles and Guidelines Governing Elections is based.

This is important in that there is scope for enforcement of said principles.

Another similarity to emerge is that all States maintain the standard institutions central to the free and fair conduct of elections and these include: Electoral management bodies; courts of law with the capacity to settle electoral disputes; to varying degrees space for media and civic society to operate in around electoral issues; an overbearing power of incumbency negating fair electoral practices; an open-arms approach to Sadc to observe elections; and a stated openness to holding free and fair elections.

There also emerged major differences between the four States polled.

These differences include: The fact that at least one of the countries is prone to military instability (DRC), the other has a system that confers political parties more control over elected leaders than the electorate (SA), in another the principle of separation of powers is not possible on the basis that the monarch is absolute (eSwatini), with a homegrown political system being used that does not permit political parties, and in yet another sampled State, the military has informed civilian politics to the extent of removing a democratically elected leader (Zimbabwe).

What is important about the above, as the review found, is that the electoral landscape of sampled States shows a stagnation that can perhaps be generalised to the region.

A reading of country specific findings led the review to the considered position that there is need for development of informed strategies to proffer best practice alternatives for the constituent members of the sub-region.

With findings indicating shrinking space for the media and civil society to operate in Zimbabwe, the DRC and Namibia, the review takes the view that unless Sadc intervenes to ensure that member States respect these institutions, then the electoral landscape will not yield credible elections.

In the end, the review notes that there is an urgent need for Sadc to move from being a minimalist organisation to one that pushes the agenda for democratisation with energy as a failure to do so will perpetuate the region’s States attitude of cosmetic approaches to electoral processes.

Ciasa