Chitungwiza’s famous market stalls were empty on Thursday as vendors went to the polls in this poor town on the outskirts of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, to vote for a government that will lift them out of destitution.
Chitungwiza is the hub of the country’s so-called ”informal industry”, known for its bustling marketplaces where thousands of jobless residents hawk wares for a living, pushing wheelcarts up and down the streets from morning to sunset.
Built in the late 1970s to house 30 000 people, Chitungwiza is now home to more than two million people, the majority of whom live in backyard shacks.
As Zimbabweans across the country went to the polls on Thursday to decide whether to return President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party to power, thousands of residents in Chitungwiza thronged polling stations to cast a vote they hope will transform their ill fortunes.
”We want a better life … we don’t want to continue like this,” said Morris Chimbira, pointing at an unfinished house where he lives with his family. ”The MPs who win in this election should do something urgent about our housing problems.”
”I have had no job for seven years now, so whoever will make the next government should remember that job creation should be a priority,” said Francis Murasiranwa, a vendor, as he returned from a polling station at the town’s main shopping complex.
Donald Masairo, who said he is looking after three children orphaned by the Aids epidemic affecting one in four Zimbabweans, said: ”As you can see if you look around, our children are malnourished. We need food for everyone, regardless of one’s political affiliation.”
Shepherd Chakanyuka, a presiding officer at one polling station set up in a tent outside the shopping center, said the turnout was ”overwhelming” although he could not give the number of voters.
”Some people came as early as 4am, and since we opened we have not had a break,” Chakanyuka said.
In the last elections in 2000, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won all four seats in Chitungwiza, where the political party was launched a year earlier, drawing support from across a broad spectrum of workers, rights activists, lawyers, farmers, students and economists.
Addressing a campaign rally to drum up support for his party’s candidates in Chitungwiza two weeks ago, Mugabe blamed the town’s perennial housing problems on the MDC.
He told his supporters the MDC MPs did nothing to improve the lives of people in their constituencies and said residents must apologise for voting MDC before his government can chip in to alleviate the housing and transport problems afflicting the town.
Once considered the breadbasket of Southern Africa and cited as an economic example to the continent, Zimbabwe has been in the throes of economic crisis for the past five years, with unemployment unofficially standing at 70% and triple-digit inflation.
The government last month for the first time admitted the country was facing food shortages and that it would begin importing corn meal, the national staple, to feed about 1,5-million needy Zimbabweans.
Three-quarters of Zimbabweans live below the poverty line, according to United Nations figures.
Mugabe says he is ready to talk to opposition
Mugabe on Thursday said his party has always been ready to talk to the country’s opposition — a day after he ruled out power-sharing with the MDC.
Taking questions from journalists after he cast his ballot in parliamentary elections in the suburb of Highfield, Mugabe said he is open to talks with the MDC, a party he has described as a stooge of Britain.
”That is taken for granted, there is room for talks, why not?” Mugabe said. ”As members of the same family we must be talking, outside Parliament and we were doing that, albeit in a small way.”
”The MDC would rather talk with Mr Blair [British Prime Minister Tony Blair] and others in London than talk to us,” he said.
Confident of a two-thirds majority for his ruling Zanu-PF party in the parliamentary polls, the 81-year-old long time leader has ruled out suggestions of a government of national unity with the opposition.
Mugabe said a power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe would be tantamount to asking Blair to govern Britain in a coalition with the Conservative Party.
Mugabe said he wants a two-thirds majority that would allow him to amend the Constitution but denied that such a big victory is needed to help him prepare his departure.
”It’s a victory that Zanu-PF will need all the time, with me or without me, no party can campaign for defeat.
”No, it isn’t in order to prepare for my retirement; my retirement comes at its own pace and it will come certainly whether Zanu-PF has a majority or does not have a majority,” said Mugabe, who has hinted he will retire in 2008 when his current term expires. — Sapa-AFP