Back to the waiting game…
This time for the presidential vote; the senate vote; and the councillor vote.
I love Zapiro, who did this cartoon. He and his pencils have been sharp witty friends of the Zimbabwean people throughout our crisis. Jonathan, if there’s a chance you read this blog, thank you for lightening the burden of living under a dictator; you’ve always made us laugh.
The presidential vote is, in fact, the vote I have really been waiting for more than anything. Its the one that says Mugabe has gone, gone gone. And we aren’t the only people who are waiting. Hurry up! Those cartoonists will have sharpened their pencils to stubs by the time it eventually happens!
Town was deserted yesterday evening; a ghost town. A friend with a fantastic imagination said it was like a movie where a huge virus had descended and wiped out the population leaving only the streets and buildings and rubbish buffeted accross the roads by listless breezes.
Of course, nothing as macabre as that has happened.
I imagine everyone must have gone home to glue themselves to the radio to hear the ‘what next’.
Last night’s results came in very late, posted on our blog at 2.55am I think. I have to confess that the sleep deprivation is taking its toll. Even when I do eventually get to bed my head is spinning with the possibilities for our future, or my heart is racing with fears that the potential might be snatched away again.
If the whole nation is like me and my colleagues, staying up to hear the news, then it is also possible that people are going home as quickly as they can to snatch some sleep!
Why on earth, when the votes were outside the doors has it taken so long to announce them? I know its been asked over and over, but WHY? And given they have had them for all these days, I want to chuck out another exhausted question: why when they have had them for so long can they not announce them during sensible hours?
People have fuel to find; banks to queue in; food to try and locate; foreign currency to try and buy; and some of us very lucky ones even have jobs to do!!!
Maybe that’s the point? Maybe they hope we’ll sleep through it and not notice that change has come?
Fat chance of that!
April 3rd, 2008 12:17
Zapiro is brilliant. Where is our beloved Tony Namate, who saw us through so many dark years with his wonderful cartoons? Lots of other Zimbabwean cartoonists have appeared in recent years and we will have need of them in the days ahead… in the soon-to-be-relaunched Daily News (hooray!) and in the soon-to-be-seriously-revised-and-re-oriented Herald … am I dreaming? … hard to believe but yes, soon, it will be true!
April 3rd, 2008 13:05
The Herald has been doing some pretty balanced reporting in their main articles in the last few days, though the dark fantasies live on in some of the editorial material. I think they are softening themselves and others up for Change.
Sometimes the best way to help people to adapt to change is to pretend they were being reasonable all along, and just leave all the baggage behind. This would apply to the Herald, especially once the die-hards among them have sought alternative employment.
April 3rd, 2008 14:28
I suppose we are experts at waiting we wait in all sorts of queues and therefore we will wait for a little bit more because we want MORE.Its real a time to reflect for a lot of people the winners and losers alike. As for the herald though it has softenend its stance one can still smell the vile in it.Today they are talking of zpf having won the popular vote and one wonders where they get that if a constituency has had more people going to vote then its the popular vote.Its really absurd to say the least anywhere I am going back to waiting.
April 3rd, 2008 16:27
What happened to that wonderful commentator Masola WaDabuDabu? His uncle lived opposite me in Byo.