Two weeks on, and I’m still struggling
It’s been two weeks since the elections were stolen from us, but it feels much longer. My mind is still struggling to engage with the reality of what happened. I’m still trying to work out how on earth the SA and SADC observers can get away with declaring these elections as ‘legitimate’. How do they manage this, and not hugely discredit themselves?
I remember watching slow motion footage of Sept 11th with my mouth open, not quite grasping the enormity of what I was seeing. But when the realisation did hit me, it came with the force of a sledgehammer.
I’m stuck in that moment again: so far it has been two weeks of being trapped in a twilight zone of incredulity and disbelief. I am numbed to my core, and wishing the sledgehammer would drop so I can move forward in some way.
Is it fair to compare Mugabe and his policies to the tragedy of 9/11? On a human scale
, what we’re experiencing is far worse - we’re not talking in terms of thousands of people dying here, we’re talking about millions starving slowly and invisibly to death. In practical terms, that means people wondering which of their children will die first? We’re an entire nation of peaceful people living in a state of fear. I call that terrorism – terrorism on a grand scale.
But, in a very strange way, it isn’t Mugabe’s terrorism that sinks me into a zombie-like state of shock. I can accept that there are people in the world who are as evil as some of those in zanupf. I can believe that there are people in the world who have no problem with starving and intimidating people to achieve their own ends. I know this, because I’ve lived in Matabeleland my whole life and I know just how bad zanupf and Mugabe can be.
It’s the lack of will that I perceive of ordinary ‘good’ people in the rest of the world to do anything to help us that appals me.
Mugabe is appalling, he is cruel, he is awful. He has taken so much from us, and left us in a daily fight for basic survival. But we’ve always found the strength to kick against the injustices of his regime. And then the Southern African ‘liberation mafia’ rocked up. It feels like Mugabe stole the elections, but that the liberation mafia are doing all they can to rob us of our hope for a better future. I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve that, and I don’t know which action is more criminal.
