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Save our souls - Zimbabweans plead
Marko Phiri
April 03, 2005

With prices going up, food shortages stalking the nation and deaths being reported as children and old people succumb to hunger and with unemployment chasing 80 percent, Zimbabweans went to the polls on March 31. As if to confirm the galloping price increases, the price of soft drinks and beer went up by between 15 and 20 percent a day after the election on April 1, and people who had imagined this to be an April fools’ joke still had to live with that reality on the 2nd of April. The government everyone was condemning for these hardships still emerged the winner. Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) scooped 78 seats in the March 31 parliamentary elections against the country’s main opposition political party the Movement for Democratic Change which took 41.

In Bulawayo the country’s second largest city, the people’s disappointment and dejection was palpable as residents tried to get to grips with the reality of having ZANU PF in power for five more years before another legislative election. And by then the party will be whooping thirty years old in power. But by African standards, this is still nothing that will make any headlines. A local council employee perhaps summarised the people’s mood here. "Only Bush will save us," he said. He was referring to United States president George W. Bush after his assault on Iraq which toppled strongman Sadam Hussein. Another Bulawayo resident, a self-employed barber said he was emigrating as soon as he could. "And so should everybody," he added.

The parliamentary polls came at a time when Zimbabweans, both urban and rural, face the toughest times ever experienced in the country’s 25-years of independence, but what has baffled many here is how the party that has presided over the ruin of a once promising young democracy could then claim victory. The MDC lost more than ten seats it held from the previous parliament, and some of the party’s top officials fell by the wayside as the battle for parliament and government became a very sad day for many here. Paul Themba Nyathi, the MDC spokesman lost his Gwanda seat alongside the party’s shadow minister of agriculture Renson Gasela.

Because this was an election billed by especially urban residents as "independence day" it is anybody’s guess what the people’s reaction will be. Zimbabweans have had a history as a so-called "peace-loving nation," but observers here argue that this is because the ruling Zanu PF has used the police and the army to browbeat the people and suppress dissent. During the run-up to the election, some commentators opined that the MDC’s loss could trigger street protests but were still wary not to say this was going to be the people’s automatic response. They noted the people here had been literally fatigued by the hardships to take to the streets. Even Mugabe’s harshest critic, Bulawayo Archbishop Pius Ncube a few days before the poll was of the opinion that perhaps it was time for a popular uprising where the people would march to State House and demand a government of their choice seeing the Mugabe regime has over the past 25 years rigged every election. This, the archbishop said, was to be done in the manner mass protests shifted the power base in the Philippines. "What the country needs is a Gandhi," the archbishop was quoted as having said by the international press. Only time will tell. But the brutal history of the treatment of political activists is well documented here, and very few people are (understandably) not willing to stand as the vanguard of street protests.

The irony here that has manifested polarised voting behaviour is that virtually all urban centres were taken by the MDC with all rural constituencies going to Zanu PF. The irony is that the rural communities have been the hardest hit by the food shortages and bad governance but still turned out in their thousands to vote for the very people being accused of running the country aground. Traditionally referred to as Zanu PF’s power base, rural constituencies had the highest turn out as registered voters came out in full force to endorse Zanu PF. But popular sentiment here since 1980 holds that the rural populations have been intimidated by the ruling party as it enlisted rural headmen and chiefs to threaten villagers with all sorts of reprisals. And there have been allegations that ruling party officials told the rural people that their vote is not a secret as it would be known who they voted for. Therefore if they voted for the MDC it would be known and they would be dealt with accordingly. This, observers here say, is what has formed the ruling Zanu PF’s claimed power base. Zanu PF predictably denies this.

Because the rural communities have also been hardest hit by food shortages, this the ruling party has been accused of manipulating and using food to harness support with threats of starving the people. During the run up to the elections, a senior ruling party official and cabinet minister was accused of threatening workers at a horticulture farm which exports to the UK with redundancy. He denied the allegations, and when the election results were announced, he was duly elected member of parliament. Nobody took him to task.

But the people here are still trying to come to grips with the election’s outcome. To register his anger with the rural communities who have literally voted Zanu PF back to power, a security guard in Bulawayo said, "The next time I go to my rural home, I am not buying those folks any beer." The future of the country which many here believed was poised for the better with the coming of an MDC government looks very bleak, and as others have said, it will take a miracle (or George Bush) to save Zimbabwe.

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