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We need new political rituals
Everjoice J Win, Mail & Guardian (SA)
June 20, 2008

It was always going to end in tears. But I hadn-t factored in the thrush, anxiety attacks, depression and sleeplessness. One after the other, these illnesses left me debilitated, un focused and in search of something to hold on to after March 29.

I tried to stop watching TV. I began to hate the endless rumours. The attempts at analysis from professors, so-called political analysts and ordinary pedestrians like myself.

Withholding election results defied logic and every political science text book. Nobody had foreseen that one. Nobody thought it could be done. Finally the news casts on Zimbabwe fell away. Foreign crews packed up. Observers returned to their day jobs and the political analysts moved on to other more "interesting" countries. I went to Guatemala for three weeks, hoping that it would all go away and Zimbabwe would normalize. Thank God my South African cell phone did not have roaming there. I even took to watching news in Spanish. Not that I understood a 10th of what was being said, but it was a useful diversion. Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama-s fight didn-t excite me in the least. But in Spanish it felt like a funny foreign movie. Then the result was finally announced. No fanfare. No outright winner. The earth didn-t move. I headed back to Southern Africa.

Three months later we are back again in the state of uncertainty as we lurch towards another meaningless election: my sleeplessness is back in full force, making me cranky and angry.

Pardon my cynicism, but why does Zimbabwe need another expensive election? To prove what? To whom? Is it to prove that we seriously believe in elections and what they mean? Or is it to prove whose "is bigger than whose"?

No amount of political analysis prepared Zimbabweans for what we are going through now. So-called scenario planning didn-t go far enough. It did not help us at a personal level to figure out what we can do with each of these electoral scenarios. So on the eve of one more presidential election, I need someone to help me fill in the blanks.

Scenario 1: Morgan Tsvangirai wins - Robert Mugabe loses. Please paint me a picture of how exactly the keys to State House will be handed over? I need a mental image to go by. Robert and Grace handing the keys over to Morgan and Susan, the police band playing in the background. ZBC/TV showing footage live from Rufaro Stadium? I need to see a copy of Mugabe-s concession speech, to see him wishing Tsvangirai all the best, laughing his belly laugh. Most importantly I need to know which sunset the military hawks will vanish into? When all of these are clear, then I can plan my personal scenario: move back home, find a school for my son, get a new job.

Scenario 2: Robert Mugabe wins - Moragan Tsvangirai loses. Sadly this is the dominant image in my mind. I am now finalizing my personal plan. Fingers crossed, the interest rates don-t keep rising in South Africa. Move out of flat. Get a bigger house, preferably with worker-s quarters and a cottage. I will need space to house relatives, friends, neighbors and possibly strangers who are looking for jobs and a safe place to stay. Find cheaper supplier of antiretrovirals for ever increasing "orders". Move son to a cheaper school so I can have extra cash to support my extended family. If xenophobia continues in South Africa consider moving to Mozambique, or Ghana. Wish Kenya could stabilize - that would be the best option.

Scenario 3: Sanity prevails - someone finds a round table. This is my ideal scenario. Both Zanu-PF and the MDC realize that the winner-takes-all mentality is getting us nowhere. These (mostly) men finally accept that no one will have a country to rule over if they continue in the present vein. It almost doesn-t matter who is proclaimed winner on June 28, (if, of course, that ever happens). So many people have lost their homes and their livelihoods that no little "X" will give them back what they have lost - no for another three decades, at least. One more election does not make sense to a family sleeping in a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees tent on the streets of Johannesburg right now. Unfortunately this third scenario doesn-t seem to be in the offing any time soon.

June 27 will see me as far away from Zimbabwe as I can possibly get. My body cannot take any more sleeping tablets without collapsing. I am no longer putting my faith in SADC, the African Union or any mediator. My heart cannot take another high expectation dashed day in, day out. The only thing that will make me, and I am sure countless other Zimbabwean women (and I know plenty), revive our faith in the rituals of politics, is a nice round table, where we talk to one another as equal citizens. For that I will even offer to make the tea, and learn how to bake.

*Everjoice Win is a feminist. She currently lives in Johannesburg

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