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In Zimbabwe, the thrill is just not there
Rangarirai Mberi, The Financial Gazette (Zimbabwe)
March 10, 2005

http://www.fingaz.co.zw/fingaz/2005/March/March10/7972.shtml

"There’s an election this year? Seriously?" he mocks. "Do you know anybody who is going to vote? I don’t."

Of course, it is unlikely that Colin does not really know that there is an election this month-end. But content with sitting in this trendy suburban bar and ordering lagers by the barrel, Colin admits he has no interest at all in the coming general election.

He is not alone though. Colin is just one of many of Zimbabwe’s young urban professionals who are spending more time talking about the legendary arrogance of football coach Jose Mourinho, for example, than they are about the country’s political future.

It should be a worrying sign for Zimbabwe’s political parties, particularly for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which had appealed to young professionals in previous elections. But even more, it should be a worrying trend to organisations involved in voter education.

Five years ago, Colin voted for the first time in his life, one of the hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic, young, first time voters that the MDC successfully pulled to voting stations on promises of a modern and competent government.

There was a buzz prior to the general election in 2000 and the 2002 presidential race, a feeling of something big about to happen, that kind of expectant feeling Bob Marley, the late legendary Jamaican reggae singer, would have called "a natural mystic blowing through the air".

The result was the largest voter turnout since independence in 1980 — at some urban centres, police had to beat thousands of voters away on the last day of polling in 2002 after voting closed.

But now, relentlessly cursing at Chelsea coach Mourinho on TV, Colin wouldn’t care less about who wins on March 31. Just as it was ZTV that drove him mad and sent him running to the polls in 2000, it is something he watched on the same station recently that finally convinced him to stay away from the polls.

"The other night, you had (ZANU PF political commissar Elliot) Manyika saying we should vote ZANU PF because they have brought inflation down from 623 percent to 132 percent. That’s a senior government official’s reasoning. Then you had two more guys, one from the MDC and another an independent saying nothing; all of them are empty," says Colin, who claims to be an "independent financial advisor".

International interest in March 31 has been building up over the past few months, with scathing criticism of the poll coming from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the British House of Commons.

Regional leaders, such as South African president Thabo Mbeki, have also spent time talking about Zimbabwe. But in Zimbabwe itself — apart from the relief at a less violent campaign — the thrill is just not there.

Political analysts say the average Zimbabwean, whether bravely fighting off the wolf from the door or battling to keep his business afloat, has grown weary of Zimbabwean politics — its fraud and the trauma of watching the last two elections being flagrantly stolen through fraud and butchery will take time to heal.

Watching the perpetrators of that violence not only walking free, but in fact now claiming to be peace-loving saints, has sapped the zeal right out of the ordinary person, leaving them with no other wish other than just to be left alone.

The voter fatigue is shared among young urbanites, keen only on getting on with their professional lives, and rural folk, whose lives are a ritual of receiving food handouts from ZANU PF while evading violence from the same.

After the high expectations of 2000 and 2002 collapsed into a painful anti-climax, it will be difficult for political groups to rally the electorate around any strong cause.

The land ticket does not sell much for ZANU PF anymore, so an "anti-Blair" cause is being chased — hardly a cause to whip up passions.

The dour atmosphere that has stayed with Zimbabwe only three weeks to the election has given rise to fears of massive voter apathy at the polls. Many had expected more enthusiasm for the vote once the MDC abandoned an earlier threat to boycott the election, but this turn in public sentiment has never come. It is a vote of no confidence in a political process that once promised a lot, but one that delivered little.

At an interdenominational national prayer meeting for a peaceful election last month, Roman Catholic Bishop of Manicaland, Patrick Mutume, asked: "Why do we allow those we give power to turn and use that power to suppress us?

"We are at fault because we put evil people into power. Why are we rewarding them?"

Perhaps his answer lies in the suburban pubs where young men who just do not care anymore get emotional over English football, in the reeking poverty of city townships where families know no other struggle apart from staying alive, and in the countryside, where ZANU PF has long broken resistance.

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