OUTSIDE LOOKING IN: A letter from the diaspora.
By Pauline Henson
The news that Mugabe has dropped the court case over the June election date raises all sorts of questions. It was a surprising decision, given that we all know him to be a fairly intransigent sort of character, not given to changing his mind – in public at least.
Perhaps he really has listened to the analysts who have been saying for some time that June elections were just not feasible since the reforms laid down in the GPA are not in place.
More likely, it is the view being expressed by political analysts that Zanu PF would not win a free and fair election that has persuaded him to drop his demand for a June election. Mugabe has to win this election, the alternative is unthinkable.
Instead of ending his political career on a victorious high, he would be forced to retire from the scene as a defeated candidate. Obviously he can’t see what the rest of us can: that it is Mugabe himself who is making a Zanu PF defeat more likely.
Whenever the election is to be held, all the signs are that it will be sooner rather than later. Both main parties are going all out to win voters over to their side before the actual poll.
There was a report last week of Zanu PF ferrying people in Chimanimani around to register in areas which are normally regarded as Zanu PF strongholds, thus strengthening their numbers on the voters’ roll. We hear too that the so-called ‘alien vote’ is being wooed by Zanu PF and the MDC.
The ‘alien vote’ refers to people whose parents were born outside Zimbabwe; people from Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique and presumably the few Europeans left in the country whose parents came from Europe during the wave of immigration in the fifties.
Mugabe’s party is busy telling these people that it is only through Zanu PF’s efforts that they have the vote at all. And in Chisumbanje, the Vice President claimed that the Ethanol Project was in fact the brain child of Zanu PF. In short, all that is good in Zimbabwe has come from Zanu PF!
As for the call by President Zuma and other southern African leaders that reforms must be put in place before elections, Zanu PF hardliners say it’s all part of a plot to overthrow the regime.
There will be no security reforms says Minister Sekeramayi, adding that the reason the west are opposed to the security chiefs – who are still on the sanctions list – is that they were all war veterans who helped to overthrow the colonial regime.
The argument goes that Zanu PF won the Liberation War through the ‘barrel of a gun’ so that is presumably the justification for the increasing political violence in the country. The dreaded Youth Militia has already been deployed in Zanu PF strongholds, such as Mbare.
“Nothing but media falsehoods” says Chief Superintendent Mandikapa. It is the private media who are spreading all these false reports, “the country enjoys wholesome peace” he said. Meanwhile the thousands of Zimbabweans outside the country are still not sure if they will be allowed to vote.
Minister Chinamasa said while he was in London that his party does not support the diaspora vote because sanctions will prevent Zanu PF from ‘interfacing’ with Zimbabweans in the diaspora.
I’m not sure how the Minister arrives at that conclusion – unless he means that the party bigwigs will be prevented from entering the UK to campaign. Even that argument does not stand up since there are only ten top ‘chefs’ on the sanctions list.
One sure sign that elections are not far off is the purchase of 40 new machines to grade rural roads. We can’t have the candidates’ posh cars ruined on rough dirt roads even though the ‘povo’ bounce around in country buses on rough dirt roads all year round!
Yours in the (continuing) struggle, Pauline Henson.