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Go home and vote, NGOs urge expats
IRIN News
March 11 , 2008

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=77233

Johannesburg - As Zimbabweans prepare for national elections on 29 March, civil society organisations have started a campaign to ensure that those in the diaspora go home to vote.

"Power to the People - We demand: one citizen, one vote, independently-run elections and an end to political violence", says a billboard outside Park Station, a transport hub in downtown Johannesburg, South Africa, placed by Zimbabwe Democracy Now, an activist non-governmental organisation (NGO). The billboard is one of several that have sprung up in South Africa, including on the border with neighbouring Zimbabwe.

A 'Rock The Vote' concert, a few metres from the billboard in Park Station, urges Zimbabweans to go home as part of the "Get out and vote" campaign, a group initiative by NGOs like the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), the National Constitutional Assembly, the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum, and Crisis in Zimbabwe.

It is estimated more than two million Zimbabweans are living in South Africa. "We are saying that those who can go home should go and vote; those that cannot go should pick up the phone and urge their relatives not to forget to go and vote," said Mathula Lusinga, in charge of the NGOs' voter education campaign. The campaign began on 4 February and runs till the end of March.

However, Nonhlahla Sibanda, a Zimbabwean in Johannesburg, told IRIN she would not go home to vote because "I am here illegally and if I cross the border and go home I might not be able to come back."

Sibanda is one of thousands of Zimbabweans who have risked life and limb to cross the border in search of a better life in South Africa. Many are deported. According to the International Organisation of Migration (IOM), they assisted 126,000 Zimbabweans at their reception centre in the Zimbabwean border town of Beitbridge in 2007 alone.

The Zimbabwean government does not allow its expatriate population to vote. Simon Khaya Moyo, Zimbabwe's ambassador to South Africa, recently said there was currently no legal provision for an external or online ballot.

"That is why I sometimes find it rather misinformed or simply mischievous that there are groups, usually comprising youths picketing the [Zimbabwean] embassy, demanding external ballot ... I have always stressed the point that those people, if genuine, should go back home and participate in the electoral processes."

Lusinga, of the NGOs' voter campaign, said, "Some of them [expatriates] would like to go, but they tell us they have no money to go home."

Tendai Mutasa, a Zimbabwean at the 'Rock the Vote' concert, who intends to go Zimbabwe to cast his ballot, remarked: "We want to go home, we are struggling here. I am prepared to go and stay home if I can get a job and take care of my family."

Zimbabweans at the concert told IRIN that every time they called home they where told how expensive it was to live in Zimbabwe. "The money that we are sending home is no longer able to take care of our families. We just hear the exchange rate has gone up, but you can't buy anything with the millions of Zimbabwean dollars."

Although GDP per capita has been falling for over 10 years, it remains well above the the median for low-income sub-Saharan African countries. But an inflation rate running at over 100,000 percent in a country once touted as a beacon of development has pushed households to the brink.

An IOM study in 2004 found that nearly all Zimbabwean expatriates living in the United Kingdom and South Africa maintained regular contact with family members back home, and about three-quarters of those interviewed said they sent remittances. Two-thirds also sent non-monetary gifts, most often clothing (85 percent) followed by food (43 percent).

Two-thirds of the respondents in the IOM study said they would like to return to Zimbabwe and live there at some point in the future, and 21 percent said they might like to; only 12 percent definitely did not want to return.

This month's election pits President Robert Mugabe, 84, who helped bring the country to independence and has led Zimbabwe since 1980, against two other contenders. The outcome of the ballot is widely regarded as key to Zimbabwe's stability and development.

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