You can win freedom without being free

By Senator Obert Gutu

” The hardest lesson of my life has come to me late.It is that a nation can win freedom without its people becoming free. I am a  Zimbabwean patriot and an African patriot too. I refuse to accept that we cannot do better than we have so far done, or to reach for easy excuse that all our mistakes are simply a colonial inheritance that can conveniently be blamed on the invaders.”

I have quoted these words from the book , THE STORY OF MY LIFE, by Joshua Nkomo,simply to illustrate that true freedom as envisaged by the founding mothers and fathers of this great nation called Zimbabwe still has to be accomplished. Freedom is not simply about holding regular elections no matter how uneven and biased the political playing field is.

A nation cannot be free when the majority of its inhabitants live in debilitating poverty, fear and repression. It is a complete negation of freedom to have a set-up where might is right and where those who possess and control the coersive power of the State ride roughshod over the basic and fundamental human rights of the weak and poor majority.
 
It is a fact that since 1980, elections have been regularly held in Zimbabwe. It is equally true that the majority,if not all of  these electoral contests, have been marred by violence, intimidation, thuggery and outright vote rigging. Invariably, most electoral results in Zimbabwe have been contested mainly because the process that gave rise to these elections was fundamentally flawed and as a result, the results of these elections were always a fertile ground for contestation.

The problem we have in this country is that our politics, since the attainment of independence on April 18, 1980, have always been the politics of power retention at whatever cost. What has always mattered is whether the political establishment, as ushered in at independence, had been preserved and retained intact; political power, economic privileges and all.

Everything else was subordinated to this primary instinct of power retention. As a result, the dominant political players, during every electoral contest, would throw all caution to the wind and go for the jugular to ensure that, ultimately, they always retained political power and hence, their privileged economic status as well. This is where we got it all wrong.
 
In a democracy, elections should give the voters an opportunity to freely decide who should be entrusted with the duty of running matters of the State. Put alternatively, any election that fails to accord the voters an opportunity to freely choose their political leaders is but a sham election.Do I hear someone talking about the farcical June 27, 2008 presidential election run-off in Zimbabwe?

That internationally discredited  sham of an election is an unmitigated example of how not to run a free and fair  election. My main fear is that I always see the ghost of June 27, 2008. If not thoroughly exorcised, this ghost will come back to haunt us  come the next elections in Zimbabwe.Just mark my words. The situation on the ground in Zimbabwe today, in my humble view, is still far from being suitable for the holding of a free amd fair election any time soon.

Whilst we now have a semblance of political stability and some measure of tranquility, I actually view this as a false dawn. Beneath this facade of peace and tranquility lies the lethal ghost of political intolerance and deeply entrenched mistrust and bitterness. We seem to be living in a fool’s paradise where, unfortunately, some of us have chosen to bury their heads in the sand, ostrich style, and somehow hope that our politics will just get themselves  right without any deliberate and conscious effort to heal the nation.

Sometimes, I wonder what has happened to the Organ on National Healing and Integration.Can somebody please tell me whether or not this organ is still in existence and functional? Only a deranged mind can dispute the fact that the MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai is the most popular political party in Zimbabwe at this juncture.This fact has been proven by various scientific surveys too numerous to mention in this short essay.

As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC will win, resoundingly,  any free and fair election held in Zimbabwe today, tomorrow or at any time in the near future. What is in serious doubt is whether power will be transferred to Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC if they win an election; as they will sure do.

For once, I would be uncharacteristically  defeatist  and openly declare that even if Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC were to win the next elections, it will be a real nightmare for them to obtain total transfer of power from the remnants of the securocrats who still retain a tenacious hold on the coersive instruments of State power today. That is the real tragedy we have in Zimbabwe at this juncture in our political history.

We have never experienced a situation where power has been transferred from one political party to another after the holding of elections. We are just used to the holding of generally discredited, violent and rigged elections where the result is manipulated and the people’s voice is cheated.If this cancerous political disease is not completely cured, Zimbabwe will always be mired in debilitating  political problems which will, inevitably, adversely impact on the economic turnaround that all of us are so keen to embark upon.
 
The instruments of terror and repression are still intact throughout Zimbabwe. Those militias and other State actors who violated and tormented the nation between March and June 2008 are still roaming free.What guarantee is there that these merchants of terror will not be let loose again, in the event that another election is called for today?

My argument is that there is no use in holding an election in circumstances where the people’s will will be manipulated and also, never be respected.It has been a long walk to freedom in Zimbabwe. The terror machinery, manufactured, nurtured and sustained by the former ruling party, ZANU PF, has not yet been dismantled.Holding an election under these circumstances would be like  taking a lamb to the slaughter.We should not use our peace-loving people as canon fodder.

Obert Gutu is the MDC Senator for Chisipite.