We struggle on

The fact that the words ‘free and fair’ still crop up in conversations about the forthcoming election amazes me. The relentless harrassment and total crackdown on people everywhere is unbelievable.

Yes, I appreciate that saying it is ‘unbelievable’, when we’re talking about Zimbabwe, is probably just as odd a choice of words in the current climate as using the words ‘free and fair ‘ in the context of the forthcoming elections. I can almost hear a chorus of responses saying ‘Why is it unbelievable, this is Mugabe we’re talking about…?’

The truth is, if a person is a free-minded person, and if that person believes in democracy and human rights and freedom for all, then that individual will always find it hard to comprehend or fathom the absence of these precious things.

I don’t believe in human rights as if they are commodities that some people have and others don’t. I believe in them like I know I have a heart in my body and cells in my skin. They are inalienable to all of us. How can I be deprived of something that is a part of me?

I am struggling, every day now, with a sense of exhaustion, shock and disbelief at how far our regime is prepared to go to hold onto power (and believe me, I have no illusions: I see the pictures and I’ve read the first hand testimony of victims).

I look around me and I see people I know and respect equally as shocked: my head can’t make that leap that Mugabe and his regime are demanding I make and nor can anyone else. The mental leap he demands of us is a dull dispirited recognition that Zimbabwe is not a country of freedom loving gentle people, but is a despot’s toy, disposable and his to break at his will.

I just can’t look at my country in this way, as a place where intrinsic principles have no value at all. I see the pictures and I read the words and I hear the stories and I know the economic hardship, but I also see the anger and frustration and shock of everyone around me accompanied by remarkable continual mental resistance to this incredible story that Mugabe is imposing on all of us.

This is NOT who we are and NOT who we stand for.

Today I see that the regime have now impounded the buses Morgan Tsvangirai was using to campaign:

President Tsvangirai’s election campaign buses were impounded in the morning today by police in Gweru. Police claim that they want to search the buses. President Tsvangirai’s election campaign buses have been searched by police over five times and at every road block over the past two days.

Notwithstanding the fact that the police impounded the buses, President Tsvangirai proceeded with his campaign and was enthusiastically received in the high density township of Mukoba 15. The residents of Mukoba emphatically promised President Tsvangirai that they would, on the 27th of June, turn out in their numbers and vote for change.

Passing one preparatory school, even the small children came to meet President Tsvangirai.

As the President’s team was leaving Mukoba, President Tsvangirai stated that, “we are definitely going to win this election. I have absolutely no doubt about that. The people are ready for change and they will finish what they started in 1999 at the formation of the MDC” (via the MDC)

The man has been detained no less than four times in the past week during the campaign trail. It is utterly farcical for the words ‘free and fair’ to be used. The harrassment is relentless.

It seems to me that the ‘campaign trail’ MT is on is now less to do with winning the hearts and minds of Zimbabweans (he already has those) and more to do with showing, at each step of the way, a recalcitrant SADC community that there is NO freedom and NO fairness in Zimbabwe.

I feel like I am witnessing a runner in a marathon, blistered feet, tattered clothes, and weaving across the road with exhaustion but determined to reach that finish line no matter what. But who is he running for?

Only by being there, and resolutely putting one foot in front of another, and showing how he can’t move for the morons pathetically hanging on to his legs and preventing him from making progress, can he demonstrate that the concept of democractic elections in Zimbabwe is beyond any plausibility or credibility at all.

He has to take SADC by their hand and force them to confront the reality of what’s going on. It’s what we are all doing. The cost, to some of us, is especially steep: those who have been killed, those who have lost everything, those who still don’t know where friends and relatives are.

Do the idiots doing Mugabe’s bidding have any idea that they are turning Morgan Tsvangirai into a hero before our eyes? That when we see this tired man still moving forward, we see someone running for the truth we all have in our hearts. How can our spirits not respond to that? I may not be on the side of the road cheering him on as he comes into my view, but I am clapping for him from the sidelines regardless.

Those of us who are resistant to the notion of heros (and frankly, I am one of them) cannot help but feel our spirits respond to this strength of will and purpose.

Tendai Biti was arrested yesterday and is apparently going to face charges of treason. Treason. TREASON! And just because the guy ‘announced’ that Morgan won the elections before ZEC did. I don’t call that treason; I call that ’stating the bloody obvious’. That ‘treasonous crime’ potentially carries a death sentence. My brain screams back: ‘Are you stark staring mad? Are you totally off your heads?’

The MDC’s press release response to Biti’s arrest yesterday read:

“Tendai is a man of moral courage and vision who knew what the regime had in store for him and decided to risk his own freedom to show to the world its illegitimacy and disregard for the rule of law”.

The point again, it seems to me, is not to win over the Zimbabwean people but to win over a SADC community who simply refuse to do the right thing. These guys who are being harrassed and locked up and are being given a very hard time are all throwing down the biggest challenge to SADC yet. SADC will be judged for how they respond forever.

I just hope with all my heart that the international community know that the Mugabe regime isn’t the only party being tested right now; and that their confidence and trust in SADC leadership is on the line too. I hope that that message is being rammed home daily to the SADC community.

It would be treacherous and even criminal – a shameful lie – to pretend that the elections on 27th June are ‘free and fair’ when confronted with an astonishing array of evidence that this is total rubbish.

What worries me more than anything else is that this head of mine that finds it so unbeliveable to comprehend what is happening in my lovely country, finds it so much easier to believe and anticipate that the Zimbabwean people are going to be stabbed in the back again by SADC.

I don’t see Zimbabwe as this sordid little nation nestled on all borders by nations that love freedom; rather, I see ours as a gem of a country glowing with hope and pride but surrounded on all sides by nations holding up blankets to hide the glow from the rest of the world.

Please, we want to fly. Our nation wants to flourish and grow: why not let us?

This entry was posted by Hope on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 1:58 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.