Consolidating support: The MDCs Pishai Muchauraya in his constituency. (Aila Greenwood)
I am travelling down some of the worst gravel roads I have ever been on, with Pishai Muchauraya, the 39-year-old Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) MP for Makoni South in Eastern Zimbabwe.
He is adept at handling them, often adroitly managing three phones at the same time, but it’s a bumpy business.
He assures me, though, that when the MDC comes into power the roads will be fixed.
“On Thursday there will be a new Zimbabwe,” he says.
Muchauraya’s optimism is infectious. A few weeks ago I called him from Cape Town to ask whether the elections were really going to go ahead. There had been so many rumours over the years it was hard to tell if this was just another one.
“Yes, they are going ahead,” he told me. “We are very optimistic.”
Delusional
Optimistic? From my position, deep in the heart of cynical South Africa, he would be considered delusional at best. It is, after all, Zimbabwe: the country with the canny immortal dictator who cooks election results and hates homosexuals .
What on earth was there to be optimistic about?
But I have come to know Muchauraya over the past four years and I’m sure he’s not mad, though the system he is engaged with definitely is.
After President Robert Mugabe failed to concede defeat in 2008, the MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai found himself brokering a deal, the Government of National Unity, which seemed to do nothing but corner the MDC into compromises.
Still, Muchauraya is a big believer in democracy. He says he is not part of a generation that believes in revolution. It’s time for democracy, whatever the cost, whatever the road.
The last time I was on these gravel roads I followed him while he taught people about the new Constitution. Zanu-PF members were present at the consultative meetings and people were so afraid that they kept silent in case they paid a high price later for speaking their minds.
MDC also compromised
The MDC compromised on the Constitution too. According to Muchauraya, there is also no independent judiciary — but that will all change when the MDC comes into power.
Inspired by my phone call with him I began to move what seems like mountains to be there for the election. His enthusiasm is enough for me to overcome my own fear. I am afraid of Zimbabwe, I’m afraid of the random roadblocks, the potential arrest of anyone with a camera, the everyday intimidation by people in uniform.
When I get here I hear from my local companion (who I can’t name) that the police are arresting people in Harare for loitering, but they’re mostly women. They’re supposed to be arresting prostitutes but that means any woman walking down.
Once you’re arrested they confiscate your phone and you can’t call anyone, says my companion, who knows a group of young women on a sports tour to Harare from Bulawayo who were arrested for loitering on their way to buy airtime.
When I get to Nyazura, the main centre of Muchauraya’s constituency, I mistakenly join a Zanu-PF rally, which is being held at his office. How was I to know? He is, after all, the MP.
The local Zanu-PF people just took it over. It’s part of the game, like the ability of the police to make it hard for the MDC to hold rallies.
Rally
Muchauraya takes it all in his stride; he has been playing this game for almost five years now.
I forget all this when I get to the first rally and I’m immersed in the uplifting singing of the group of MDC supporters wearing their red T-shirts, who greet Muchauraya under the trees.
He stands in the middle of a circle, with men along one half, women and children along the other, and calls out, “Chinga maitiro” (“Change your ways”). They respond, “Maitiro ako aya chinja. Hezvo uko dzii” (“These ways of yours, change them”).
Everywhere we go the singing of MDC songs starts loud and clear. In one small village we arrive to find people singing and toyi-toying down the dusty main drag. Muchauraya and his colleagues cross large tracts of this poor area where you see few vehicles.
There is no sign of “positive outcomes” of Mugabe’s land reform policies here. Farms are subsistence, with no sign of commercialisation of agriculture.
People on the side of the road greet Muchauraya enthusiastically, shouting out, “Honourable” and he stops and chats.
Infectious democracy
This democracy is infectious — the singing and dancing, the chanting. And funny. People laugh and clap.
But when we stop, I hear about the bravery of these MDC supporters; it becomes clear to me that the singing is imbued with something else. I’m beginning to sense that it’s a way for people to forget the horror of their experiences, to shore up the courage to vote.
“I know you have been belittled, ridiculed and beaten for following MDC,” Muchauraya tells the crowd. “That is something we are used to. If that stops, then the MDC is failing.”
He has his own story of intimidation. In 2001, he says, he was taken from a shop in Rusape into the bush and beaten by Zanu-PF supporters. Luckily he was found at the side of a road and taken to hospital.
But even there one of the nurses turned out to be a spy and he was smuggled out in the night and taken to Harare. His home was ransacked, they assaulted his son and the invaders took everything. His sister was beaten so badly that she died.
Muchauraya is beyond fear, as are many of his constituents who line up to tell their stories of Zanu-PF brutality during the 2008 election.
Abuse
An old man was kicked in the groin continuously and was left incontinent. A whole group was assaulted in the same manner: four Zanu-PF henchmen held each limb, while a fifth beat the victim with a branch. When the victims passed out, water was poured over them and they were then turned over a fire, like an animal on a spit, until they were dry.
Then the abuse would start all over again. The pro-Zanu propaganda on the radio and state news is continuous. An advertisement on ZBC (Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation) contains interviews with women who claim to be “Tsvaingirai’s girlfriends” intercut with titles that say, “a lack of decency”. Songs calling for people to support “Team Zanu-PF” are repeated almost back to back.
In the days before the “harmonised election”, as it is called here, Muchauraya is getting three hours’ sleep, with meetings running late into the night.
A man approaches him after a rally: he is too afraid to return to his village because the headman (a traditional leader) has threatened him.
On the last day before elections no one is allowed to hold rallies but Muchauraya needs to make sure that the polling agents know what they’re doing. They’re paid $5 a day for four days to allow for the counting of votes.
“Those who are looking after the ballot boxes, be in position and don’t sleep on the job,” he tells a group as the rain begins to fall after days of bright blue skies.
Election results
The MDC’s strategy is to announce the tally before the time so that Zanu-PF can’t deny the number of votes, but it’s illegal to do so. Muchauraya has volunteered to make the announcement for Manicaland Province, risking jail by doing so.
Election day dawns cloudy and I worry it will rain, but soon the sun comes out. I hope this bodes well. When I speak to Muchauraya, he says that everything is peaceful — so far.
At my hotel, the staff announce that they are off to vote. “It’s the best thing we can do for our country, “ the manager says.
It’s Thursday and I phone Pishai, expecting him to be jubilant, but he says something incredible: “We have lost. Everywhere.”
Later, at the MDC command centre, no one believes this is possible. Here, no one doubts that the vote was rigged and that Zanu supporters were bussed in from other areas to make up the numbers in MDC strongholds like Manicaland. Pishai has lost his seat and this country faces another five years of a Zanu government with even more power than it had before.
“We have gone back to a one-party state, “ I hear someone say. The rest of the world was right to be sceptical about this election, to predict a win for Mugabe. I just pity the Zimbabweans who hadn’t yet given up hope.