We have to turn our dreams into action
Comrade Fatso is keeping us inspired and fired UP with his daily election blog. He is one of Zimbabwe’s leading activist spoken word poets – you can find out more about Comrade Fatso by visiting his web site. In the meantime here is his post from the streets of Harare.
Today is peaceful. Calm. Like an anesthetised patient having her stomach slit open. We drove from the elite suburbs of Borrowdale to the peopled townships of Highfields. The queues of the morning had tired into afternoon strolls into empty polling stations. All over this expectant, pregnant town there was a feeling of calm. ‘Peace’. The vote happened. We went through the motions. But it’s a tense peace. Inside each polling station is an agent of oppression – a police officer. Youth militia parade townships ‘peacefully’. As I write on the calm street outside the Book Cafe there are twenty police officers sitting menacingly underneath a tree. Waiting. Yes, there is peace. As long as you vote and shut up. As long as you don’t disturb this fragile shack they have painted ‘peace’. Peace is not the absence of war. Peace can also be the presence of rigging. This is where we stand today. In a peaceful election where my comrade, Godobori, registered to vote in the town of Chitungwiza, had to go to different polling stations in various suburbs of the next door town of Harare after he had been ‘moved’ on the voter’s roll. He finally voted at 6:15pm. It is a calm election of ghost voters and living human beings who are dead to the voters’ roll. The rigging has already begun as dreams are stolen while dreamers sleep. But democracy isn’t about putting an X on a piece of paper every five years. Democracy means people reclaiming their lives and running their communities. Democracy means power at the grassroots where decisions are made face-to-face in neighbourhoods. Democracy means fighting to reclaim your power. So these elections will be determined not by the rigged result but by the people’s reaction. ZANU (PF) want to steal our dreams and tell us it was a nightmare. We have to turn our dreams into action.
For Daily Election Blogs by other MAGAMBA! poets and activists see www.myspace.com/magamba