Calling on South Africans to help Zimbabwe achieve a future free of violence

Two days ago we blogged about a ‘Go Home and Vote’ campaign, coordinated by the Peace and Democracy Project (PDP) and the Southern African Women’s Institute for Migration Affairs (SAWIMA) , which aims to help Zimbabweans go home and vote. It outlines various ways in which South Africans can do their bit to help Zimbabweans go home, and it provides information for Zimbabweans on what they can to qualify for assistance.

There’s more on the campaign here in an article in The Independent (UK). The article quotes Mr Lusinga, the project leader, as saying that “thousands were already signing up for assistance to return and vote.” He said, “There’s a lot of bravery, a lot of people saying ‘let’s go and finish this’.”

Sokwanele is asking all South Africans to do everything they can to help make the ‘Come Home to Vote’ project successful. Please visit www.votezim.com and see what you can do to help.

In addition to visiting the site we’ve produced a flyer which we are asking South Africans especially to download, print it then slice it up into credit-card sized notices. Please carry these with you and hand them out to anyone you know who will be willing to either help a Zimbabwe go home or will join you in keeping Zimbabweans informed. Tell them where they can get a copy of the flyer to print and slice up and hand out themselves.

Give a note to every Zimbabwean you know, and then try and help spread awareness of the campaign more widely. Use the ’share this’ link at the end of this post to alert South Africans.

We suggest you leave the notices in busy public places where people can see them and pick them up: the toilets of garages, in shopping centres, universities, work place canteens. If you live in an area where there are lots of Zimbabweans, please give them piles to distribute themselves. Keep some in your car  and look out  for the guys at the robots or those who are selling their curios by the side of the road. If they are Zimbabweans (and many of them are) ask them to hand them to South African drivers so they can become aware of how they can help, but also tell them to keep some back for Zimbabweans they know as well.

Printing is costly for Zimbabweans, so please ask everyone to read the flyer and then pass the flyer on to someone else.

Take time to talk to the people, and persuade them how important it is. and how much South Africans want to support. If you can help Zimbabweans access the www.votezim.com website, then please do so.

Download the flyer here

Why is this campaign necessary? The Zimbabwe Independent carried a story this week about the police and army being forced to vote for Mugabe:

Impeccable sources told the Zimbabwe Independent that apart from police officers, members of the army and the prison service were expected to vote for Mugabe through the same system before the postal ballot boxes are sealed today.

Zimbabwe is estimated to have a combined 100 000 members of the police, army and prison service.

The sources said the police officers voted at various stations throughout the country, among them Ross Camp in Bulawayo, Harare Central’s Provincial Conference centre and at all stations in Kwekwe.

The officers, the sources said, voted in front of their superiors and the voting process was done in the absence of Mugabe and Tsvangirai’s election agents or observers.

[...]

“The officers were provided with the presidential ballot papers,” a senior police officer said. “They voted in front of Zengeni and Jangara before they placed the ballots into envelopes and into the ballot boxes.”

The officer said SADC observers who visited Harare Central on Wednesday to witness the voting process were turned away.

“The observers were told that no election was taking place,” another source said. “The voting took place in an intimidatory environment. It was not free and fair.”

We had direct information relayed to us from a police source ourselves. For example, our source told us that on the 12th June a ballot took place an urban police station without an MDC polling agent present witness, no other officials and the UN observers were sent away. Apparently uniformed police who were not registered on the roll were forced to vote using the ID numbers of dead registered voters.  We were also told that one police officer who had the courage to vote for Morgan Tsvangirai in front of his superiors was sacked immediately.

This is just one explame of where votes have been stolen. Add to this the numbers who have been forced away from their areas (and therefore deprived of their right to vote) it becomes imperative that we support creative ways to try andadjust to an unlevel playing field. Its this sort of skullduggery that makes it absolutely imperative that every single person who can vote, does vote.

It would be good for the peaceful future we all wish Zimbabwe could have, if our fellow citizens came home to vote with us, so please do all you can to help make this happen.

Outside South Africa?

Please visit the site and consider donating money that will go towards sponsoring travel home.

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This entry was posted by Sokwanele on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 9:45 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.