Thinking Democratically: A Comprehensive Approach to Countering and Preventing Shrinking Space

This leads to a complete lack of representation and inclusiveness, where politics is reserved for the
rich and parties serve as a temporary vehicle to attain elected office. When the winners are in power,
they have no loyalty whatsoever to the party neither to their electorate, and will do anything to keep
the deeply flawed system that got them elected in place, so as to ensure future wins.
Even though elections have been organised and conducted in a relatively transparent manner, there
is no electoral accountability at all, as congress is elected by means of closed lists controlled by
parties. Congressmen lead the efforts to restrict civic space, through laws that restrict civil society’s
ability to operate, amongst others with control mechanisms requiring unnecessary permits and
approval for projects. The business and criminal elite has also coopted several judicial bodies in order
to protect corrupt networks and ensure impunity.
In response to corruption scandals and restrictive actions by the government, coalitions of citizens,
media, NGOs and civil society groups have been relatively successful in mobilising people in strikes
and countering such attacks. However, overall there is very little trust in democratic institutions, as
evidenced by the low voter turnout in the 2019 elections.
6.7 Zimbabwe
While the removal from power of long-standing President Robert Mugabe created hopes for an
opening of democratic space, the dynamics of restricting space for contestation have not
fundamentally changed. As Zimbabwe has veered between various forms of authoritarian rule since
independence, civil society has almost always operated under restrictions in exercising their
fundamental freedoms, with waves of repression (2008, 2018-2019) and periods of relative opening
(2000, 2018). While overall the general environment for civil society and the opposition is less
repressive than it was around 2008, with fewer arrests and less use of repressive legislation, the
current regime has fallen back into authoritarian patterns of repression at certain occasions, most
notably during post-election protests in August 2018 and during protests in January 2019.
In the early 2000s, Zimbabwe adopted a series of laws to limit civic space: a law imposing excessive
burdens and restrictions on NGOs (the Private Voluntary Organisations Act); a law limiting freedom
of press and media (the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act); and a law used to
restrict freedom of assembly (the Public Order and Security Act). These laws were later amended to
include more categories of actors and types of activities and applied both by the Mugabe regime and
in the post-Mugabe era. The Public Order and Security Act was, for instance, used by the military in
August 2018, when the army fatally shot protestors demonstrating against irregularities in the
electoral process. Existing laws such as a rural by-law have also been used to target specific people,
including human rights defenders. Violence has also been used against civil society, protestors,
opposition figures and media actors, with a major chilling effect on dissenting voices. For instance,
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