Yesterday I wrote that Mugabe will not face any consequences if the opposition rebels and he decides to crack down — something he would inevitably do if that happens. While western election observers were kept out amid certain criticism of the election, as we have seen a lot from America and the European Union despite this, those monitoring the elections were all from regional countries: Libya, Zambia, South Africa, etc. Being that South Africa is a democratic nation and a major regional power, one would assume that they would exert some pressure over Mugabe. Not so.

In fact, they are coming under a lot of fire for simply hailing the elections as free and fair, before the count even took place.

The International Bar Association has issued a powerful warning to South Africa????????s president Thabo Mbeki and his 13 fellow heads of state in a powerful regional grouping, saying their international credibility is on the line as Zimbabweans go to vote in this week????????s parliamentary election.

The government of South Africa and the Southern African Development Association, SADC, to which it belongs, are among those invited to send observer missions for the March 31 ballot, while anyone liable to be critical of the conduct of the vote such as most European states has been barred.

The statement by the association, IBA, which represents law societies and bar associations around the world and works to uphold the rule of law, says that President Robert Mugabe????????s ruling ZANU PF government has used brutality and torture to instill fear into the populace for so long that it no longer even needs to employ violence on a wide scale.

The opposition MDC is rightly ripping them for morally supporting Mugabe.

ÄWorld NewsÅ HARARE, Zimbabwe, April 2 : The leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition party, crushed this week in elections widely seen as fraudulent, blamed South Africa for morally supporting Harare.

Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change won only 33 of 84 contested seats in Zimbabwe’s 120-seat Parliament.President Robert Mugabe’s party now has a two-thirds majority and will be able to change the nation’s constitution at will, the Telegraph said Saturday.

“I haven’t seen many of the South African observers but it is clear the South African government wants the Zanu-PF regime to continue, and there is nothing we can do about that,” he said.Widespread voter intimidation, beatings and ballot-box stuffing were reported by groups like Amnesty International and the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network.

Of course, I haven’t posted exactly what the SADC has said yet. Here you go.

The Southern African Developing Community (SADC) election observer mission says Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections were conducted in an open, transparent and professional manner. The mission has issued its report on yesterday’s poll, the first by a major observer mission.

It believes voters were able to cast their ballots peacefully, freely, and without hindrance.

The SADC mission says the picture that emerged at the close of poll was one of a peaceful election. It is convinced that the post, election process, including vote counting, will be as transparent as that which the mission observed on polling day.

These election observers were no better than the CIS monitors. They have come to Zimbabwe knowing what they will be writing in their report. This is comparable to lazy journalists in Iraq who have a preconceived notion of what they will write, do not attempt to walk out into the streets, and listen to the Al Jazeera newswires all day for their information.

One woman named Dianne Kohler-Barnard was brave enough to defy the SADC mission she was a part of and has spoken out against their benign satisfaction with the status quo.

On Friday, the last day of the SADC observer mission, I walked out of the final meeting in disgust after mission leader and SA minister for minerals and energy Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka endorsed the Zimbabwe election as “peaceful, credible and dignified”, saying it was carried out in an “open, transparent and professional manner”. She also said there were “high levels of political tolerance and maturity.

It is little wonder I was rounded on by hugely frustrated MDC leader Silas Matamisa on election day, who bellowed, “You! You’re a South African and you’ve already determined that these elections are free and fair but all they want is to turn it into a one party state!”

He was watching as his agents were turned away from polling station after polling station because of what seemed to be either gross negligence or intentional obstructionism on the part of the Chief Electoral Officer who merely looked off into the distance as this enormous man shouted in frustration.

No one who has been in Zimbabwe for the full three-week period SADC requested (a ten person Zambian delegation arrived the day before the election) and actually left their air-conditioned comfort zones to ask the tough questions at the grassroots level could declare these elections to have been either free or fair.

There’s more, and contact information. In response to this sham, Sokwanele blogger Chipo asks us all, “ Why do South Africans deserve basic human rights, but we don’t?“

It seems to me that as long as there is no violence that the observers see with their own eyes, these elections are going to be declared free and fair by the group of friends that Mugabe invited to his party. Anyway, it is a joke for them to suddenly say ‘no violence, therefore free and fair’. We all know there was a lot of violence during the last elections and that didn’t stop these same people declaring the elections free and fair then either. If violence is an issue, then what were they doing the last time?

Anyway, they’re all missing the point. Even if there was no violence at all, no intimidation, no fear, no manipulation, Zimbabweans would still vote for the opposition, any opposition.

You try living in a country where life expectancy is 38 years, where we have the worst AIDs stats in the world but can’t even afford to buy an asprin, where elderly pensioners who have no money have to take care of all their grandchildren after their own children have died, where parents can’t get jobs and have to choose which of their children they’ll educate over others, where eating rats has become a reasonable alternative to meat, where we can’t afford to buy a bus ticket to go to the rural areas. You try living in a country where waving at the president has become a crime, or joking about a corrupt politician can end you up in jail.

If you lived in a country like that, wouldn’t you also want to vote out the government who created the mess and give someone else a chance to get it right? I don’t understand why Zimbabweans don’t deserve what South Africa and other countries have, why we have to live under a different set of standards? We want the freedom to make our own choices too.

I don’t care about Tony Blair and the west and all that stuff Mugabe was going on about. All I care about is my future and my children’s future and how my parents are going to manage to survive when they are too old to work. I am sick with worry about what I’m going to do next. I can’t cope anymore. How are we going to survive even a few more years under this government?

In the interest of being fair, does South Africa wish to respond?