Cameron Duodu
LETTER FROM THE NORTH
If your electoral commission was like the one in my country, Ghana, which consistently ignores opposition demands on registration of voters, the reopening of electoral registers, and also rejects indeed any other request that the ruling party does not endorse, you would appreciate what President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF have just done in Zimbabwe.
Despite the enormous noise made by the overseas media about “intimidation” of voters, it is impossible not to admit that the election actually reflected the will of the people of Zimbabwe. That an electoral commission was in existence that was efficient enough and courageous enough to record the people’s vote and declare it for what it was, is very good indeed.
I find those who cry “intimidation” over the vote rather cynical in their view. There is intimidation in most election campaigns in Zimbabwe. No one can tell me that a trade union that has transformed itself into a political party, such as the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), does not know a thing or two about how to treat strike breakers, or those who cross picket lines, and that such tactics cannot come in handy during an election campaign, too.
Yes, it is very sad that during the violence that accompanied the campaign, 30 or so people died and many others were injured. But this should be seen in the context of a campaign that did arouse very passionate feelings.
On the one hand, Zanu-PF supporters felt that the MDC were being manipulated by the white farmers to retain control of the lands, in much the same way as Lobengula had been tricked by Cecil Rhodes out of the land, in the first place. On the other hand, the MDC people thought that Zanu-PF activists were thugs out to protect a gerontocratic leader who had lost touch with his people. Such sentiments do not lead to polite debate. But even then, it has to be remembered that in the run-up to South Africa’s first democratic elections, for instance, more than 1E000 people lost their lives. And some of those murders were carried out by the shadowy figures who used to help Ian Smith and his Selous Scouts (many of whom still live in Zimbabwe).
In any case, what was the Zanu-PF “intimidation” able to achieve? It was widely known beforehand that the MDC would do well in the urban areas, where Zanu-PF has eroded standards of living by carrying out economic policies that have brought about high inflation and unemployment. And what did actually happen in the urban areas?
This:
l Harare (MDC 17 seats; Zanu-PF 0;)
l Bulawayo (MDC 8; Zanu-PF 0).
It was also known that the Matabele people would hit Zanu-PF for sixes all round the field, but that Zanu-PF would reply in kind by bowling everyone out of Mashonaland. And true enough, Zanu-PF trounced the MDC in Mashonaland Central (8-0), Mashonaland East(10-0) and Mashonaland West (10-2). In Matabeleland, MDC wiped out Zanu-PF almost completely except in Matabeland South where the result was MDC 6, Zanu-PF 2.
In the no-man’s-land areas, Manicaland and Midlands, the seats were shared almost equally: Zanu-PF 6, MDC 5; and Zanu-PF 5 MDC 4, respectively. Fair result, no?
Mugabe and his Zanu-PF colleagues must look at the figures carefully and remember what happened to the Convention People’s Party (CPP) of Dr Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and the United National Independence Party (UNIP) of Dr Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia. After triumphing over a colonial/racist regime, an African elite often assumes all the privileges of the former rulers. It becomes effete and self-centred, and becomes alienated from the people.
Look at how it took 10 good years after the lapsing of the impediments put in the way of land redistribution by the Lancaster House agreement, as well as three consecutive, impassioned annual debates at the Zanu-PF party congress, before Zanu-PF tackled the land issue head-on. Even then, it was done in a surreptitious manner, carried out by a War Veterans’ Association led by a man who couldn’t have been invented by experts in “black propaganda” if they tried – an African called Hitler, and trained in a communist country at that.
In his broadcast after the election, Mugabe used the word “cohabit”, and he would be wise now to invite those MDC MPs who are not the stooges of the white farmers to join his Cabinet. They should together work out and implement a programme that is equitable as far as possible.
Now the land question in any country where racists seized lands at the point of the gun and threw out the ancestral inhabitants can never be resolved without inflicting pain. But it’s not done, because one wishes to save the current white “landowners” from pain. The black “land-losers” of yesterday will have to retain their pain for ever.
Intelligent whites of goodwill in South Africa must therefore help the African National Congress to achieve a peaceful, equitable solution in their case, too. Those who don’t know what land acquisition did to blacks should go and look for black and white footage of the Alexandra township removals or the District Six evictions, and watch it. Or they should read Naught for Your Comfort by the late Reverend Trevor Huddlestone. If they had suffered such brutal dispossession of their land, and yet lived now in a “free, democratic South Africa”, would they allow such injustice to stay unredressed?
In a way, South Africans owe Mugabe a debt of gratitude for giving them a preview of the scenario that could be enacted in their own country. But if gratitude is too much to ask for, Mugabe should at least be given his due, for allowing Zimbabweans to give full political expression to their will.