Letter from Zimbabwe: "We have the right to choose our own leaders"

"...we have the right to choose our own leaders; we have the right to a bright and positive future; and we have the right to insist on our rights. We are not criminals and we are not bad people. We do not deserve the life Mugabe and his regime impose on us"

It’s hard to believe that the night before last the news was buzzing insanely with stories that Mugabe was on the brink of stepping down and going.

Tonight the news has swung like a pendulum with talk of a Mugabe crackdown against the opposition beginning. We saw him on TV seeing off the AU observers and almost immediately afterwards (like two fingers thrown up to the world) the news switched to the MDC MT officies being raided and riot police at the Meikles Hotel: apparently Tendai Biti, the MDC MT Secretary General was staying there.

When news reports say things like the ‘beginning of a crackdown’ the words many Zimbabweans hear instead is ‘this is the beginning of the end’. The impact on a very tired activist friend of mine, worn out after long nights of working and years of being heartsore for the Zimbabwean people, was a big knock sideways. She sent me a blog to post up for her and her words speak volumes:

There are times when you have simply run out of energy, the fuel tank is drained and you are stuck on the road to nowhere. For tonight, Robert Mugabe has won the battle. He is a thief – he has stolen our hope, our trust in what is good in life, our dreams and our aspirations. He has taken our children and wrenched out of them their innocence and laughter. He has taken our old people and deleted any happy memories. Their time is spent asking why, where and how will they survive.

That’s what life is here today, it is merely cut down to survival. Our emotions are drained, we are numb and lifeless. How could we not have expected this?

I receive the phone calls – people looking to me like I am the way to seeing the light and I smile and I lie: I say to them “We have won parliament. It is the beginning of freedom. Celebrate our victory over evil.”

How are people going to survive? How we will the food come back into the shelves, into the ground? How are businesses going to survive with an economy in freefall? How are schools going to open when the teachers are fleeing? How are the sick going to heal?

How can we make Zimbabwe whole again?

I know why she is so shattered tonight. It starts with exhaustion, a deep bone-numbing exhaustion. That kind of tiredness genuinely takes a physical toll; quite a few people in our community have come down with bad colds.

The down-swing continues with us ordinary people - who want nothing more than a quiet, decent life - being buffeted left and right and up and down by the powerful forces of media reporting. Those carefully pronounced foreign newscastor voices that I can hear booming from my TV into the room next door where I am working: “…MUGABE HAS BEGAN HIS CRACKDOWN…”. Their voices, filled as they seem to be with drama and impending doom and disaster, can sweep a tired person right off their feet and knock them to the floor.

We drop down further still when our children want to go ‘jolling’ with their friends, but in these uncertain times we aren’t sure if that’s wise….? What if the riots start? What if the police do crackdown and they’re caught in the middle? How will we get to them quickly enough? So we say ‘no, wait a little’ and their frustration grows too and adds more tension to the day.

A good rest is a big help, and I know my friend will feel a lot better in the morning and bounce back fighting as she always does. I’m sure that it will be my turn soon to drop like a stone and for her to say to me, ’stay strong and be positive’.
[...]
I think right now that we need to stay focussed on home and ourselves and our core objective. And that objective is held in the kernal of a simple truth that we have the right to choose our own leaders; we have the right to a bright and positive future; and we have the right to insist on our rights. We are not criminals and we are not bad people. We do not deserve the life Mugabe and his regime impose on us.

I am not a pundit so do not claim to have the answers. But I do know that we are going to need our energy and our strength of character and determination more now than ever before in the next few days.
[...]
I am personally finding the ZEC [Zimbabwe Electoral Commission] intensely irritating and insulting at this stage, and the late nights and early mornings and sleep deprivation were beginning to wear me down and make me lose my rag. But nope, on reflection, carry on ZEC; I can withstand that rubbish. I’m calm now and the tactics ain’t gonna work! I’m a Zimbabwean: I can wait. Besides, if I’m up late so must you be. I hope it wears you down too!

Don’t be conned Zimbabwe. Stand firm. Don’t give Mugabe the excuse that he is looking for and that is to provoke a violent confrontation which he can then use to legitimise using force to steal your rights.

Mugabe is like a pimp or a gun-toting drug dealer; someone who puts a lot of stock in ‘control’ and ‘face’. He needs to swagger and look fierce and tough and strong. He thinks boasting about “degrees in violence” or “coming down hard on the opposition” is smart and strong. But really, he’s just a brat. The people who admire that in him are mindless fools who can’t distinguish between ‘bullying’ and ’strength’.

He really is nothing more than an old man who has come to the end of his years on this earth by fighting his own people. And that’s fairly pathetic, if you ask me. I can only hope that what we’re experiencing tonight is more of the same Mugabe swigger-swagger-strut-stuff.

I am determined to not let Mugabe scare me. I plan to try to consciously hold my nerve in the face of his horrible bullying of our nation - and God knows it probably will be a rough ride and cruel. (What do we expect? This is Mugabe we’re talking about!) But I / we all have important work to do and we can’t afford the distractions that fear brings to the table. Freedom is so close I can almost taste it.

Originally published on This is Zimbabwe.

Comments

[Damien]

Robert Mugabe in a post_prandial philosophical pose,praying for his last moments at the helm of power.Yes,when the people stand up and say enough is enough,no amount of repression or electoral fraud can can stop them.Change will come no matter what.He's just hanging on and playing for time.

[Lloney Monono]

ZIMBABWE, WITH LOVE

Your Excellency, I know you to be a proud man
You fought gallantly to be free of alien command
Then, none could deny you your demands
As you fought to free your beloved fatherland

Yours was a land of plenty under a kingdom
But many like Marley had cried for your freedom
And many also had looked on you to lead on
Carrying the hope of a lighthouse beacon in the region

Time flies doesn’t it? It has been twenty-seven years!
In that auditorium, I sat and listened to you and saw tears
Of joy and happiness undiluted flowing in arrears
You were a hero, triumphing over adversaries, showing no fear

It was said the country was a bread basket
Brimmed with rich produce for the market
Happy farmers with fertile lands and healthy harvests
Sang praises to ‘Good Old Bob’, guarantor of the fest

But the fight wasn’t over, as Nkomo you just couldn’t stand
And you took an enema to Matabeleland
Seeking a strong nation, from a strong hand – your hand
As the dreaded Gukurahundi delivered your demands

You’ve always loved rigid rule by one party
Brooking no distraction from ZAPU and calling for one voice, one country
You then swore the house had a new enemy
And ensured this snake had no place cool enough for its underbelly

You made your word like ZANU-PF stick
And wasted no time wielding the stick
Your position you’d retain with no risk
Little bother if your country ailed and was sick

For, while you concerned yourself to see politics married,
Your ministers and officers enriched themselves without tarry
The passport to riches was the party card they carried
As they amassed fortunes well beyond their salary

But what did you care? You were the only one, supreme
So what if little mice stole some cream?
You had all the power and ministers led the lives of their dreams
As the country spent well beyond its means

Commodities like a bucket to the bottom of a deep well, plunged in
The times became leaner and coffers grew thin from plundering
As oft happens when one takes out more than one puts in
And you now looked on to next in line for finger pointing

Those who sang ‘Good Old Bob’ saw you’d lost your flavour
And realised they now were definitely out of favour
For votes and to energise those for the party’s endeavours
Land was the issue, productive land, to justify their labours

You gave no hoot to the World Bank
Or the erstwhile masters, whom you owed no thanks
You’d get the land by book, boot or by tank
Anything to appease veterans at the gate in their ranks

The country’s horizon shone with a little less shimmer
Here, the potentials by day were growing dimmer
But you’d sworn to make the rich farmers slimmer
Land had to be shared, though GDP outlook was grimmer

Everyone agrees a drunk should go home
But no one fancies that random and clumsy stagger home
The redistribution incompetence and failings could fill a tome
As ministers and cronies waded in for bargains of their own!

Investors took flight like disturbed pigeons
For surety and stability in other safer environs
Where the rule of law was guaranteed in every region
And property was not threatened by one man’s ambition

The economy shrank and faltered
Still your ministers grew fatter
But your tirade you took further
And denounced the ‘tea-boy’ cum MDC’s father

They were traitors !
They were fools, stooges of manipulators !
Still, they were threat to a government of idle perambulators
So you invited your veterans and constitutional violators

Elections were staged to get you out of the jam
But everyone saw, everyone knew this was simply a scam
It was everyone else’s fault but you and your thugs bringing bedlam
Loudly, you said, over construction of a mansion for Grace, your belle dam

The moribund economy in mire did wallow
As fertile commercial lands lay fallowed
The farmers had been seen to the gates without a harrow
So unemployment blossomed and scarcity saw inflation grow

Once thought a gift, heaven sent, indeed you were a Trojan, hell-sent
For, now your people live with inflation, at ten-thousand percent
But, you blame everyone else for the disaster, your government
As unabashedly another term you now seek, and won’t relent

Your Excellency, when you lie in your fortressed palace, do you dream?
Of retirement days free with countrymen milling like children for ice-cream?
Of the country rich again with foreign investors bursting at the seams
Of mismanagement and social unrest, history to be seen only on some film?

Or do you your Excellency dream of your people clamouring at the gates
Mad with hunger and like those for Ceauşescu, taking you to the same fate?
Or the souls of Matabeleland moaning in the afterlife, restless for a rebate
To see you at the Hague like Taylor waiting as the world litigates?

Oh, you’d say these are musings of one who’s chewed too much khat
And laugh scornfully that yours would never come to that
But look about you, there are many wishing things do just that
And may expedite events like Sankara, Kabila or Sadat

Your country has emptied of professionals to make others better
Like your record with NEPAD which makes everyone else’s better
And now no AU state head will send a stern and sobering letter
For critique is taboo amongst those who have made Africa no better

Once it was said you had a degree in violence
I hereby confer you a well earned doctorate in incompetence
For having presided over your country’s ruin and decadence
It’s now bankrupt on its knees, cap-in-hand and in dire indigence

But Sir, I’ve gone on long enough,
Yet scarcely have I said enough
But I’ll tell you what I dreamt of
And hope you take some hint thereof

I dreamt of a truth and reconciliation committee
Which did meet, like Mandela’s post-apartheid committees
To examine your government’s folly, then I saw weeping invitees
Disconsolate about Matabeleland but Tutu preaching peace

Avoiding continual conflict and strife, therein your way out
If like Kaunda you desire to retire at home and walk about
Leave the scene for others capable, but what a mess to sort out?
Yet, one last request before like the beleaguered Nixon you sign out

Presidential pen and paper in hand, commence a letter of love
Which starts Zimbabwe, for it’s all, not just Mashonaland you love
Then implore Tutu to pray for forgiveness, understanding and love
And enjoin us all to pray Zimbabwe casts aside racial and tribal politics -
to move forward, with forgiveness, understanding and love

By Lloney Monono, Culled from the anthology “The Dance Of Scorpions”