In the interest of helping people make informed choices for the March 29 election, I’ve been looking for background information on the various presidential candidates and their parties.

The MDC (Tsvangirai) was pretty straightforward. Their policy document is on our site, and their website is updated fairly regularly.

Similarly, Simba Makoni’s website features a range of statements, photographs, and even Makoni’s CV.

I found “really dark horse” presidential candidate Langton Towungana’s phone number on the Telone directory online, of all places. And I was pleasantly surprised when he answered the phone himself. And was completely charming. As sceptical as I am about this election, and as convinced as I am that the “Plan B” – how we defend our vote after its been stolen – is an absolutely critical part of preparing for this election – I do have a soft spot for Towungana. It started when I first heard him in an interview with Studio 7. When asked about his election manifesto, he said “It’s there. But what’s more important than any manifesto is how we turn this economy around.” He reckons he’s on an assignment from God because of Zimbabwe’s “terrible situation.”

But what disappointed me entirely was trying to get some information out of Zanu PF. I saw that the Herald had published the introduction to the Zanu PF manifesto which they launched on 1 March. The investigating I did down various pathways online looking for the manifesto or the Zanu PF site all came up short. So I decided to give them a call. Even though they’re listed in the directory, it took four phone calls to find their correct number (+263 4 774 146). And I ended up having the most gobsmackingly ridiculous conversation with the woman on the other end of the line (who wouldn’t tell me her name). It went something like this:

Me: Hello, my name is Amanda. I’m phoning from Kubatana. I’d really like to find out more about Zanu PF. Please may you tell me your email address.
Her: Why do you want that?
Me: Because I saw that you launched your manifesto last week. I read Mugabe’s introduction to it. I want to send you an email to request that you send me your whole manifesto document and some other information about Zanu PF.
Her: I can’t give that to you.
Me: Why? Is your email down?
Her: Our email is there. But I can’t just give you the address.
Me: Why?
Her: Because I don’t know you. I can’t just give that information out to you without knowing you.
Me: Oh. That’s alright then. How about you just tell me the address for your website. Then I can go and have a look for myself. Maybe I can find your manifesto there?
Her: But who are you?
Me: My name is Amanda. I work at Kubatana. We help Zimbabweans find out more about issues that matter to them, like this upcoming election.
Her: I don’t know you.
Me: That’s alright. What is your website address?
Her: I can’t give that to you.
Me: Do you not have a website?
Her: The website is there. But I can’t just give you that information.
Me: Why not?
Her: Because I don’t know you. I cannot give you this kind of information over the phone. Best we sit down face to face and we see each other and we discuss. And then once I know you I can decide if I want to share this information with you.
Me: So you can’t tell me your website address unless you’ve met me?
Her: Yes.
Me: That’s interesting. Many political parties these days are hoping that people will vote for them. So they are sharing their information with all Zimbabweans so that the people know more about them so that they can win their votes.
Her: Yes they are.
Me: So I’m confused. I don’t understand why you would not want to share this information with me and with others. Why do you have a website if you don’t want people to go and view it?
Her: I don’t care what you think. This is our organisation’s policy. I cannot give you that information.
Me: Really? Not even an email address.
Her: No.
Me: So what is your name?
Her: Why?
Me: So I can come and see you and we meet face to face and then maybe you’re more comfortable giving me your website address.
Her: Why do you want to do that?
Me: So that I can learn more about your party.
Her: You don’t need to know my name.
Me: So then how am I going to come see you?
Her: Good bye.
Me (To the dial tone): Alright then. Thanks ever so much for all your help.

“Let the people’s voice thunder,” Mugabe said in launching the manifesto. But how are you going to thunder if you’re only willing to speak with people you know?

Not that I have anything against these commemorative days of this and that. I’m sure that, somewhere along the line, increased media attention raises awareness, and makes at least a few people think differently, at least for a little while. But as International Women’s Day approaches on 8 March, I’ve been flipping through the Rape volume of Agenda’s Gender Based Violence Trilogy – Issue 74, 2007. The poem below really stood out for me. How far do our efforts at advocacy and information really go? How do we better ensure that our media campaigns and good intentions can effectively encounter day to day experiences and exposure that tell a very different story. Otherwise, what will our boys – and girls – grow up to think, say and do?

The nice bits

4 15 years old girls walk by in a restaurant
hair scrapped and plastered
smooth, upright bodies
not a kink or a wrinkle
giggle driven with flushed cheeks
little girlhoods sprouting breasts

‘ooh 15 year olds’ says a table sitting says 47 year old male
‘nah they have nice bits but nothing upstairs’ says father 49
pupils slither along the neck line
‘good to look at though’
middle age spread with white teeth chortling

7 year old son looks and laughs
collapses into a cell phone
wide eyes flickering left right left
and I wonder
what will he be?

- Jane Caroline

I was extremely disappointed to read from this week’s Zimbabwe Standard that a lot of local musicians are out of tune on censorship, their biggest threat in the music industry. The Standard said that musicians were uncertain whether they should join the rest of the world in marking Music Freedom Day on March 3 or not. After pleading last week via e-mail to artistes to suggest how to celebrate the day, Mary Jaure, spokesperson of the Zimbabwe Music Rights Association (Zimra) said she had received only one response from musician Dudu Manhenga by Thursday. She later blasted them for their laid back approach to the day. In the same story, DJ Mzee from South Africa was quoted saying: “I think it will be folly for the musicians in your country (Zimbabwe) to forget that this day is more important to them than any other. I know of the struggles people like (Thomas) Mapfumo went through.”

Last week I also challenged our readers to partake in celebrating and commemorating this day, I also hoped some musicians would give us feedback. Zilch. Well, it’s kinda sad; I think musicians should be moved to help fight their own battles. Then the rest of us can just but lend in our support. It’s more saddening considering what other serious musicians go through in order to fight for the right to freedom of expression. They risk their lives and careers through protest music and social commentary. Yet other musicians have such a nauseatingly laid back approach to it all.

But I do have the pleasure of announcing that Cde Fatso will be launching his much awaited debut album, House of Hunger that embodies the many voices of those struggling for justice in Zimbabwe. The struggles of vendors and victims of Murambatsvina, the fights of workers for a living wage, the anger of displaced, marginalized youth who walk the streets of Harare and life under Zanu PF in general. With his Toyi Toyi Poetry, Cde Fatso and his band, Chabvondoka, describe the struggle, describing Zimbabwe as a house of hunger, both literally and metaphorically.

The 28-year-old controversial artist endeavors to create what he calls a new form of urban protest music that will not just disappear after the elections, but will create a continual rebel youth culture in the struggle for liberation. His biggest target audience is the youth, although the music is expected to transcend all layers of the social fabric. The most captivating aspect of Cde Fatso’s music is that it’s a unique blend of instruments, chorus and poetry. For a sneak peep, the album consists of songs like Mastreets, which highlights the power that unemployed youth posess, though many do not realize it. City City describes the daily drudgery of ordinary citizens commuting everyday. They may encounter challenges in this failed state, but hey yo they love this place! Love You like A Riot Needs A Petrol Bomb is a song one is never sure if it is more than a love song.

If you are looking for something that will give you all the reasons why you should go and vote, this album is for you. It tells you the story of Zimbabwe, the quiet hell its citizens go through daily, and even hints on who is to blame.

The performance of Cde Fatso and band were labeled “the best of the festival” at HIFA 2007. They have also moved audiences with their rebel poetry in France, the UK and South Africa alongside artists like Mzwakhe Mbuli, Dizraeli and Chiwoniso.

Fans of protest music, freedom of expression and those who love their rights are invited to the official launch of House of Hunger at the Mannenberg Jazz Club, Fife Ave Shopping Centre, Harare, March 13, 2008 from 7:30pm till late.

There is palpable excitement in the streets of Bulawayo after Simba Makoni held his first rally here on March 1. When the former finance minister first announced he was throwing his hat in the political ring, public sentiment was that this man was a Zanu PF plant, a creation of the feared Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). But when the Zanu PF hate-speech machinery went into overdrive, public sentiment appeared to shift with doubting Toms revising their previous positions and opinions about the man who looks set to change Zimbabwe’s post-independence political history.

He has undoubtedly become Mugabe’s closest challenger, and that he has failed to impress Tsvangirai who has also verbally assaulted him with all sorts of epithets after Mugabe said very unflattering things about the man he previously entrusted with the keys to the famous briefcase carried to parliament by ministers of finance to present the national budget.

Bulawayo has traditionally voted MDC since 2000, but ever since the 2005 split, the once powerful political opposition has paled in popularity with disgruntled former supporters feeling the struggle for a better Zimbabwe has been sacrificed at the altar of self-aggrandisement. It is with great interest then to attempt to look through the crystal ball and indulge in some clairvoyance and interrogate and dissect how the voting patterns will be influenced by the coming of Makoni into the presidential race.

Voters here have been apathetic since the drubbing of the MDC in 2000 and 2002, but it is increasingly appearing this is about to change just a few days before the poll. But one also meets lay analysts in the “invisible press” where the public sphere has become a platform where all sorts of theories and philosophies fly fast and furious. I eavesdropped the other day on some chaps at a funeral wake exchanging their insights about the entrance of Makoni into the presidential race and the Bulawayo rally.

The sentiment was this chap is a creation of the aged and senile Robert Mugabe who wants to split the vote by stealing the ballot from Tsvangirai. It is interesting each time the battle for State House is discussed Mutambara is never mentioned, not because he withdrew from the race to make way for Makoni as he claims, but because he has never been recognised as kosher challenger to the presidency by many here. The guys at the wake were convinced Makoni was a CIO plot/creation and for them Tsvangirai remained the only credible challenger to Mugabe.

They said Makoni was a greenhorn in the lonely and mean streets of the old dirty game and was not about to be taken seriously. They questioned why Dumiso Dabengwa who they accept as a “home boy” was with Mugabe a few days before his grand appearance to present Makoni to the people at the March 1 rally. Because these analysts are potential voters for whom like everybody else information is indeed power for them to decide who to vote for, it raises the issue of claims of vote rigging from the opposition, i.e., Makoni, Tsvangirai and the other fellow who everyone seems to be ignoring in the March 2008 discourse. This is because while public sentiment appears to be the mass unpopularity of Mugabe, his claim that he won the crucial poll when everything else points to his first ever electoral humiliation will only be met with curious if not violent reactions.

This therefore begs the issue of not only vote rigging, but importantly votes being split after the so-called democratic forces refused to approach the polls from a united front. But the fact that Makoni has already said he is not aligned to anyone, and Dabengwa having said they are not seeking regime change but leadership change, it means there never was going to be any united challenge to Mugabe as these men have said they are Zanu PF. It would apparently point to the age old frustration among many voters and analysts alike that the opposition will never win the presidency, and if Makoni wins, this will certainly confirm that! After all, they have already said they have not formed a break away party, but rather seek to reform the party after the old guard dug in their heels about making way for fresh blood and therefore steering the country to its former glory as Southern Africa’s second largest economy.

This would then put a man like Tsvangirai in a fix if the reception Makoni has received so far countrywide is anything to go by. Whether Mutambara is a shrewd politician by his many switches and paving the way for Makoni is for history to judge, but then the question among the people has been why he would give way to an avowed Zanu PF “cadre” and take every opportunity to cast one would be a genuine partner in the struggle for Zimbabwe in very bad light?

Therein lies in the confusion that has plagued voters a few weeks before the poll where loyalties have not been decided thus likely to give the ballot to anyone other than Tsvangirai. If men sitting around a fire at a funeral wake can discuss critical issues and cloud them with conspiracies, it would point to opposition politicians having only themselves to blame when the country is further plunged into a voracious vortex once Mugabe wins the ballot by hook or by crook.

A couple of years ago, we used to enjoy shopping in Zimbabwe. Pushing a trolley and the other hand picking and selecting items from the shelves. I still remember reading one of the instructions neatly printed on the shelves “If you break consider it bought”. In other words if you break, you pay.

Groceries are no longer available from the shops or from the supermarkets where you expect to get meat, laundry stuff, dried and fresh foods. If you get into any of these supermarkets you find people doing hand shopping – not even enough to fill a hand shopping basket. Others will be checking or rather comparing prices of those few items found on the shelves of supermarkets with those displayed on the small tables and empty cardboard boxes of vendors just outside the front doors of the supermarket.

My friends prefer to call them speed markets because the vendors are always running away from the police. However, what is missing only from these speed markets are the trolleys because you can actually do most of your shopping in front of the supermarket. But prices will be chewing your pockets as the pricing will be based on your appearance. If you drive a car, put on spectacles, or look expensive the price will come up to your standard.

I was listening to Studio 7 last week, and I heard the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s Chief Operations Officer, Utolile Silaigwana, say that they would only be using translucent ballot boxes in the 29 March election.

This piqued my interest. A friend of mine got a ZEC flyer in her post box the other day, in which, among other things, it said there would be both cardboard ballot boxes and translucent ballot boxes in this election.

But then again, the flyer also had a host of other mistakes, including:

• Blind people will be assisted with their voting by the presiding officer and a Zimbabwe Republic Police Officer. This is not the case. Only the Presiding Officer and two other electoral officers or ZEC employees can assist a voter.
• The four different ballot papers (President, MP, Senator and Councillor) are each supposed to have a different coloured ballot paper. The ZEC flyer says they’ll each be coloured, but doesn’t explain which colour paper is which.
• Legal identification required to cast your ballot is your National ID OR your valid Zimbabwean passport – not both, as the flyer implies, and you don’t need to bring your proof of residence – the flyer my friend got had this bit scribbled out in blue ink!

Clearly, other people have been complaining about these errors. The ZEC has issued a press statement clarifying things, and in his interview, Silaigwana distanced himself from the flyers, saying that the education department handled the flyers, not him.

All this is a worry. When the MDC agreed to the 18th Constitutional Amendment last year in the South African mediated talks between them and Zanu PF, they were criticised for making too many concessions. But, the MDC insisted, it had to agree to the amendment, because it would legislate the ZEC, and enable the commission to start it work in time for the upcoming election. Now the MDC’s lost its foothold, and the ZEC is constituted, but its competence is questionable.

This year’s harmonised election poses an enormous logistical feat. It will feature an estimated 11,000 polling stations, each with four ballot boxes and four different types of ballots, each needing supervision, voters’ rolls, ballot papers, and other supplies. And never mind vote counting and results verification. All this would be difficult enough in a “normal” economy where basics like fuel supplies, electricity, paper and transport were guaranteed. We’re four weeks away, and it’s a pity we can’t have more confidence that the ZEC is up for the challenge.

Contact the ZEC with your concerns – or suggestions – on zecpr@gta.gov.zw