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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Zimbabwe's Elections 2013 - Index of Articles
Portrait of a Great Zimbabwe- a memo to all Zimbabweans
Zimbabwe Human
Rights NGO Forum
July
30, 2013
As Zimbabwe
heads
for an election on 31 July, one thing is very clear. We are
teetering at the threshold of a new season. Whatever the outcome
of the election, either way, our country will never be the same
again after 31July 2013! The record crowds that attended the MDC
final ‘cross over’ rally in Harare yesterday sent one
clear message: we are ready for change and are ready to embrace
it with a positive attitude rather than trepidation. By voluntarily
turning out in record numbers to momentarily exercise our civil
and political rights to assembly, association and expression which
we have been denied for a decade, we collectively sent a clear signal
to the authorities: that the new possibility on the horizon may
hold an exciting destiny for our embattled nation. We expressed
a clear portrait of a Great Zimbabwe founded on universal human
values and a collective framework of hope and aspiration on which
a Great Zimbabwe will sit and derive its strength from. Now we need
a strong leader who will make that portrait a reality. On 31 July
we have an appointment with history to make that choice.
For more than
a decade now, we have been harassed and helpless, like sheep without
a shepherd, with our rights trampled from every corner. Our destiny
was derailed, detained but we are not defeated. Just like a great
Hebrew Scholar would put it, ‘We are afflicted in every way,
but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but
not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed’, because as
prisoners of destiny we have this enduring hope for a great Zimbabwe
within us. Now we need a leader who will help us realise that hope
in order to lay a strong foundation for our nation.
31 July gives
us that opportunity to choose a president who has a shepherd’s
heart. While we are clear about the Zimbabwe we want, are we clear
about the shepherded we want? Zimbabweans are not placid and irresolute
but we are clever people whose silence and mendacity could easily
be mistaken. We will make the right choice and only us can make
that choice. Whatever that choice will be, we should live with it
and one day, we should be able to tell our children and our grandchildren
that when our time came we did it right: We chose a leader with
a shepherd’ heart, who walks in front of his sheep to set
an example and who, when he sees the crowds, such as the crowds
we had yesterday, he has compassion on them and doesn’t harangue
them. We need a leader who will seek and reach out to Zimbabwe’s
lost generation scattered in every nation of the world, and like
a father, give them a choice to either remain where they are or
provide them with a compelling and enticing reason to return home.
The choice of
a good leader is not between the MDC and Zanu-PF nor is it between
President Mugabe and Prime Minister Tsvangirai. It is a battle of
values. As a nation we have lost touch with the values that underpinned
our traditional lifestyles. We have grown oblivion to the mutual
obligations which we horizontally owed to each other. Some of our
leaders have promoted a culture of hatred, plunder and violence
and as a result these attributes are now ingrained in our society,
language and culture. However, in all this, there are still perks
and pockets of good that we can redeem in order for us to lay a
sure foundation for a future great Zimbabwe.
31 July gives
us a golden opportunity in a generation to retrieve and rescue the
vestiges of good values and our lost leadership moral compass. As
a nation we should choose a leader who has a compelling vision centred
and borne out of the total sum of our aspirations as informed by
our values. The values of peace, freedom, social progress, equal
rights and human dignity that we all aspire for did not only underpin
our traditional agrarian communities but are indeed enshrined in
the Charter of the United Nations and in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, and are no less valid today than
they were when they were first codified in 1948.
As we choose
a new leader tomorrow, we need a leader who will protect all human
rights as enshrined in Zimbabwean laws and all treaties to which
Zimbabwe is party to. We should be wary of leaders who label human
rights a western creation. Human rights are our birthright as human
beings: they are not the gift of governments but part of our common
humanity.
On 31 July,
in the same way the nations of the world met in San Francisco on
the 10th December 1948, to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, tomorrow, we have that once-in-a life time opportunity to
choose a leader who rallies our aspirations and who helps us define
a normative counterpoint to the evil that our nation has been associated
with.
On 31 July,
casting our ballots should not be taken lightly but symbolically
as an expression of our collective desire and drive to establish
common standards applicable to all Zimbabweans, predicated upon
the respect of the right to life and liberty , upon which all other
rights are contingent. If we choose a leader who, like Abraham Lincoln,
can confidently say, ‘When I lay down the reigns of this administration,
I want to have one friend left and that friend is inside me’,
we know that we have chosen a value-laden and compassion-driven
leader whose outlook of life is not warped by the vicissitudes of
time or the environmental demands. If we do that, one day we can
proudly stand on a pedestal and tell our children that when our
fine hour came, we courageously made the right choice, we chose
the right shepherd.
Visit the Zimbabwe
Human Rights NGO Forum fact
sheet
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