Pointing to a Zimbabwe politician’s perspective

Four days after the closure of the polls we are nowhere near receiving all of the results. I knew at 4am on Sunday morning, 9 hours after the polls had closed, that I had won the Khumalo Senatorial seat. I was formally declared a duly elected member of the Senate at 12.30pm Sunday by the Constituency Elections Officer, in terms of the Electoral Act. I won by such a wide majority (1944 votes) that there was never any prospect of the result being challenged. Despite that, four days on my election has still not been announced by the ZEC.

This is from David Coltart’s website, in an article titled ‘Analysis of the election results so far‘.

While reading it, a couple of thoughts came to mind immediately (apart from the paragraph I quote above because it really emphasises the ZEC waiting-for-results farce we are being forced to endure).

First, the way he referred to the three by elections in this way:

“The remaining 3 seats will require by elections because candidates contesting those seats died (of natural causes) during the election”.

Take note of how in Zimbabwe one needs to make sure people KNOW that the deaths of politicians resulted from natural causes; this is because Mugabe has a propensity to murder his serious opponents (Morgan Tsvangirai has survived three assassination attempts).

Second, David Coltart’s article refers again to the split in the MDC.

The fact is, the opposition majority we are all so thrilled about (and I am THRILLED) is not an MDC Morgan Tsvangirai majority. My post yesterday was misleadingly titled ‘MDC victory’ without proper explanation as one person accurately picked up on in the comments. The opposition’s dominance of the House of Assembly depends on whether the two MDC formations are able to form a coalition and work together.

Anyone following the split in the party will know that David Coltart took a fairly public role towards trying to broker a solution to the split, so its not surprising, given the need for them to work together now and his experiences then, that he would feel compelled to return to this topic again.

But for me, it’s a little alarming; but before I tell you why I should declare my personal ambivalence on this topic right from word ‘Go’.

I stopped following the talks about the split a long time ago because I frankly found the whole thing tiresome and incredibly irritating. It seemed to me that the energy going into fighting each other would have been better placed fighting the Dictator, and I was sure Mugabe was loving every moment of the feud.

I also know that my sense of frustration was (and is) shared by just about everyone I know. The only people who didn’t throw their hands up in despair and say, ‘Oh for heavens sake, please sort it out’, were those who had a deeply invested interest in either one or the other side. And that second group of people would spend time earnestly telling you why the other side was wrong, imploring you to believe their analysis and their take on the situation. It was all totally irrelevant to me when I knew that people I worked with couldn’t eat properly because they couldn’t find food.

There are some really good people in both formations. The split has been hard on those of us who have at times felt under pressure to ‘take sides’. I won’t take sides. My committment has always been to freedom and justice for the people of Zimbabwe. Democracy.

And now? Despite the long drawn out talks and negotiations, and despite their failure to get it together before the March 29th elections, it is simply inconceivable to me that there could be any possibility of the two formations NOT working together now. But am I being naive?

If politics and personalities and whatever else it was that got in the way before, now gets in the way of the job of usurping that horrendous Dictator and his party of thugs, then I will spit! At this point in time I don’t actually care a jot about the whos, whys, whens, squabbles, issues and debates.

I care about food, jobs, education, medicine, peace, security, and us being able to plan our futures.

When the time comes to talk, SORT IT OUT (yes, I am shouting) and work together. If the two sides can’t fix their internal issues, then it will be very hard for me as an ordinary person to ever imagine how the opposition can fix hyper-inflation, poverty, our massive health-crisis, unemployment, starvation, homelessness, etc, etc.

The truth is that, given the enormity of the challenges we have ahead of us, it really is genuinely inconceivable to me that there would be any likelihood that they couldn’t work together (you can put my rant here down to long supressed frustration).

They need each other, and we need them; they must know that. While I am still riding the wave of happiness that we just delivered Zanu PF a non-violent slap back in their face, I have faith in the opposition’s ability to find a way through their differences.

It would almost be criminal for anyone to get in the way of a solution that will start to carry Zimbabweans out of our crisis.

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This entry was written by Hope on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.