[Chills should be running down our spines!! Here we go again… another Govt/ANC official PRAISING ZIMBABWE! Chills! Chills I tell you. The ANC likes what is happening in Zimbabwe. They love Mugabe. Jan]

Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections last month were so “impeccable” that South Africa must seriously consider learning how to run elections from her northern neighbour, ANC MP Nthabiseng Khunou said yesterday.

Khunou, who was part of the SA parliament’s observer group to the elections, told a stunned audience at the SA Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg yesterday that she and her ANC delegation had been so impressed with how the election was run that they urged South Africa to adopt some of Zimbabwe’s electoral rules.

This led to lively discussion at an election review meeting entitled “Zimbabwe Election 2005 – Interpretations, Implications, Prospects towards 2008” that two members of the audience rose, declared their membership of the ANC, and said Khunou had disgraced the ANC.

But a defiant Khunou stood by her remarks. She said there had been no political violence or repression in Zimbabwe and the election had been held peacefully.

“There are so many negative things written about Zimbabwe but we could not get any evidence to support them. The pre-election process was well planned and executed. There was no evidence to justify food discrimination claims against MDC supporters,” she said.

Khunou said the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, used to shut down five newspapers, and the Public Order and Security Act, under which the opposition required police permission to hold political meetings, had been implemented to “enforce law and order”.

The DA’s Diane Kohler-Barnard said after listening to her colleague’s presentation that she felt she had attended a different event in a different country. She then chronicled a list of developments she said could not have made the election free and fair.

Asked to list Zimbabwe’s electoral rules which she would want South Africa to adopt, Khunou said: “The queueing system. The queueing system at polling stations was very pleasing.”

An incensed Elinor Sisulu, daughter-in-law of Walter Sisulu, told Khunou that victims of torture and rape by Mugabe’s thugs who had fled to South Africa would be seriously hurt by her words. Khunou said she was not aware of such victims. Sisulu countered that Khunou and her party’s “skewed” assessment of the Zimbabwe election was probably the result of observing it from the Sheraton Hotel. – Mercury Foreign Service

Source: The Mercury
URL: http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fSectio…/p>