One recent morning we had just arrived in Mbalabala in rural Matabeleland. We had stopped at a bus station where women waited for a bus. Some of them were roasting maize to sell. As we started the introductions, one of the women interjected: “I am sorry you have wasted your petrol and time coming here. We have already made up our minds to support you, Simba. You have a lot to do, so perhaps you’d better hurry on to another place where the people still need convincing.”
Prior to going into Matabeleland, we had toured the Mashonaland Central area. In Centenary, one man shouted out: “Matopinda mudhara [You’re in]!” The reception we received in this so-called Mugabe stronghold was as amazing as it had been all across the country, contradicting the claim that I am neither known nor have support in the rural areas.
Our strategy in this election campaign has been to travel the whole country by road, exploring the nooks and crannies often ignored by other candidates.
From the Midlands we motored down to Bulawayo, from where we toured Matabeleland North and South. The campaign strategy sees us meeting our local leadership in any area we visit and then making forays into the rural heartlands every day until we leave. At every stop, crowds soon gather and we tell them our message, dispelling the smear tactics used by Zanu-PF.
While Zanu-PF insists that the country is working fine, we say it isn’t. We ask them how the ruling party and Mugabe can say everything is alright when they face food shortages, collapsing health infrastructure, a dismal education system and even shortages of our own money, for which we work so hard.
In the end, we say that Mugabe can say such things because he is out of touch. He does not know how he has destroyed this country and how much people are suffering. We tell them that while he travels the country by air, we travel by road, witnessing the fields that have been destroyed because Mugabe failed to supply fertiliser and seed in time, and the roads that are almost impassable, making it impossible for food relief to be delivered. Everywhere, people agree that enough is enough and that it is time for the old man to go. And at every stop, we find people eager to hear our message.
In Mashava, a small mining town, we had police clearance to hold a rally in the mine’s stadium, but the mine management had been pressurised to deny us access to the venue. The responsible man ran away from his own mine so that we could not confront him and seek clarification. The people of this town, though, were very eager to hear our message. They demanded that we address them on the open ground outside the stadium. This we did. Soon, about 3 000 people had gathered. The response was amazing.
Here, we also picked up a tail of security and intelligence officers who followed us around in a green pickup truck. As we delivered our message, the Central Intelligence Organisation officers and CID details scribbled furiously in their notebooks. We told the gathering that even police officers and CIO officers were suffering. They too did not have electricity, food or a different currency from our own useless one. They were doing their jobs, since they had families to look after. We did not want their children and wives to die of hunger.
This strategy of campaigning by road, going into the rural backyards of Zimbabwe, though, has been forced on us by circumstances. First, we know that we will not get coverage from the official media. Any mention of us is derogatory, while Mugabe’s rallies are sometimes even covered live on both television and radio. We have made extensive use of alternative media such as independent radio and fliers, but we have had to go to the people physically in order to give them our unfiltered message and to counter the propaganda coming from the official media.
It is heartening that even people in rural areas say that they now do not believe anything the government media tell them. “They speak to us as if we do not live in this country,” complained one woman we met in Plumtree. “We know we are suffering, but they say we are not. Has Mugabe ever been into my house or my village and seen what you have seen, Simba?” she said. The government has helped create fertile ground for us to sow the seeds of our message.
At the time of writing this, we are in Masvingo. The reception is pretty much the same, despite the best efforts of Zanu-PF. In Masvingo South, for instance, the local Zanu-PF leadership cut down trees and used them to block the road so that we could not get through. We pushed them aside and went ahead. In the same province, chief Charumbira left a message with all his headmen that no villager in his chieftancy was to attend a Makoni meeting, but we still managed to hold big meetings with villagers.
In Chivi, we failed to hold a rally even though we had police clearance, simply because a Cabinet minister decided to hold an unsanctioned rally on the same day at the same time. Still, this does not faze us, and we do not mention it to complain, because our message is getting through regardless. When the villagers see this happening, their sympathies clearly lie with us and we are actually thankful to Zanu-PF for campaigning for us in the rural areas in this way.
The fear that we speak about in our campaign is manifested through actions such as these and it is this atmosphere that a Makoni presidency will be determined to crush. People should be able to hold views contrary to those of the president and not be considered enemies of the state or even of the president and ruling elite.
We have a gruelling schedule. We wake up early every single day .We left Harare more than three weeks ago and have not been back since. We will continue the tour until a couple of days before voting day. We do not go back to our hotel until after the sun has set. We have no time to stop for lunch; we eat between stops. In a day, we visit anything between 15 and 20 rural shopping centres or markets and bus termini. It has to be this way because the job of setting Zimbabwe right will require not only physical but also mental stamina. This is a good way to prepare for the road ahead.
On tour, we also have a whole team helping to distribute material. There is Harold, a technical expert who is now helping on the communications team. Memory, George, Misheck and others also came with us from Harare and have been with us from day one, helping to marshal the crowds and distribute fliers and T-shirts as well as being of use wherever the need arises.
We are not a rigidly formalised team and everyone pitches in whenever a task crops up. We also have Denford, who maintains contact with the outside world by arranging interviews and sending off information on our progress to the media.
It is clear the people are ready. We have never been swayed by armchair experts who are not with us on this tour to experience the unfiltered mood among the people as we do now.
Simba Makoni is an independent candidate for the office of president