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Zimbabwe's Political Crisis: Whose Problem?
Everjoice Win
June 06, 2004

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/skinned/front_reader.asp?st_id=4243

"MDC’s woes deepen" ran one headline. "Is the MDC heading for oblivion?" asked another.

Analyst after analyst has looked at the recent political developments in Zimbabwe and sought to cast this as the problem facing one opposition political party.

In the part of town that I inhabit, the refrain I hear is, "saka iyo MDC yacho zvapasina zvairi kuita? Manje vachaita sei?" I vacillate between shouting at these people and shrugging my shoulders in exasperation. Where does one begin?

I got my answer recently while talking to a good friend who works in the private sector. Over the last few years she told me that she has nothing to do with politics. That she thinks all this stuff is nonsense and all she wants is to be left in peace. So as long as she did her work quietly, kept her head down, and could feed her family, then there was nothing to get worked up about.

On May 5 her two children were locked out of their private school by the State. She called me in complete shock and anger; "What is wrong with these people? What do they think they are doing?" I listened to her hyper-ventilate for over 15 minutes.

Then she asked, "they cant do this can they?" I smiled into the phone and said very coldly, "yes sweetie they can and they just have. Deal with it".

So, the MDC has lost a few by-elections. My prediction is they will lose a few more, if trends are anything to go by. Everything tells me that in 2005, the Zanu PF think tank whoever is in it, will literally sit down and decide exactly how many seats to give the MDC in the next parliament. I predict that if MDC gets 15 seats they will be really really lucky. There I have said it, so deal with it!

I worry about Zimbabweans who seem to think that the MDC is some kind of Messiah, or that Morgan Tsvangirai is a Moses who will take them across the Red Sea in a blaze of glory while Zanu PF gets buried in the waters. No such miracle has happened and it’s not likely to happen.

I wonder what planet the political analysts who kept telling us that Lupane and Zengeza were "a litmus test"? Test of what? If it was a test of who had more brute force than the other, yes. If it was a test of how many tricks the ruling party still has up its sleeve and to what lengths they will go to win any election – I again agree. If we ever needed any proof of any of those issues we now have it.

The recent by-elections were simply a demonstration of how determined the ruling party is to stay in power. The by elections were also an indicator of just how little structural change has happened to our political and governance system since 1980. These events have demonstrated that the changes needed in Zimbabwe are much more far reaching and deeper than we the populace care to understand.

As my friend Tawanda likes to say, "vanhu havasi kuona kwatiri kuenda ava!" (people don’t quite understand the amount of struggle that is needed). Equally we don’t seem to see where we are coming from.

We are coming from, and are still, stuck in decades of oppression and fear. We are a people cowed into silence and docility by the brutal force that we have seen used time and time again.

Some among us have first hand experience, while others are scared by the stories of others – real and imagined. Whatever the case is, we are desperate for something to happen. Like any other desperate human beings we seek this change instantly and with the force of a whirlwind. We are now seeking a miracle because the object of our anger looks like it won’t even move!

Like a woman in a violent relationship who goes to an advisor and says, "dai mangowonawo zvamungaita". (I hope you can do something). She puts her faith and hope in this external force.

But just like this desperate woman, we must realise sooner rather than later, that nobody else is going to save us. There is no "they must do something". We are the they. In the last year we were hung onto every word Mbeki, Obasanjo, and Muluzi said. Desperate for some hope. It never came. Muluzi is out of power. Obasanjo has too many crises in his own backyard to deal with, besides welcoming new ex-Zimbabwean farmers to Kwara State. As for Mbeki, well, lets just forget that one.

I get really concerned by those of us who think the opposition will miraculously deliver us from our present woes. Interestingly enough these are the very same people who don’t even have the courage to go on a stay away. Even a peaceful stay away, in the comfort of one’s home. They still go to work and then mutter, "inga hapana amboenda pa stay away yacho?" (Nobody heeded the call for a stay away).

So who did they expect to go on this stay away? Does the ZCTU manufacture people, or is it you who was going to be counted as having stayed away? Others can’t even be bothered to write a letter of protest to the local newspaper. Instead they sigh into their wine or cappuccinos with despair, criticising those who have the courage to do something, no matter how small it seems.

There is yet another lot, the type that spends all their time waiting to go to heaven, pretending that they are not living on this planet. I am not saying people must not pray, but if we Zimbabweans spent as much energy participating in matters of national governance as they spent under trees and in all night prayers, we would surely be somewhere by now.

Many still haven’t even got the guts to use these spaces they congregate in to speak out. They will preach some very vague messages about people in the Old Testament, or say something quite opaque about "being God’s children".

How about some relevance for a change? The congregants come out and ask each other, "saka anga achida kuti kudii ko?" (What exactly was s/he trying to say?). No sooner do we come out of these holy spaces than we realise Zimbabwe and its problems still wait for us.

The rulers will continue to mess around with the schools, there will still be no medicine in the hospitals, prices keep going up, and our human rights are violated with impunity. Can’t you just go to one public meeting? Join at least one civil society group? Or write an anonymous letter to the Editor to show you are concerned?

May our knights in shining armour please deliver us from evil soon. Meanwhile, its back to watching Studio 263. Welshman, please let us know when it’s all over!

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