As usual fearful rumours are circulating fast and furiously in Zimbabwe. And new media is aiding and abetting their viral spread.

I had a “cold one” yesterday evening with a friend of mine, and over our chill out at the end of the day drink, she showed me a text message that she’d just received. The message warned that an informal curfew was in place and that people should be in their homes by 9pm. It was attributed to some fictitious civil society organisation. The whole thing had the regime’s fingerprints all over it. But instead of sending it smartly into text message wasteland, people have been forwarding it to one another and spooking themselves shitless. One has to ask WHY? Why let unverified, random information curb your movement and frighten you?

And then there’s an email that’s doing the rounds which suggests that if you voted in the 29th March election then you have to vote in this one. Otherwise the regime will interpret your absence as MDC support and they’ll come and track you down and chop your head off. That’s an awful lot of paperwork and chopping that they are going to have to do to follow through on this ridiculous suggestion. Again its regime propaganda put out there to intimidate us.

Of course it’s difficult to stay optimistic, hopeful and confident amidst the violence and the harassment that so many of us are experiencing, but at the very least we have to court our courage, rather than let the regime fill us with fear.

And in the meantime, at Kubatana we’ve received frustrated emails from various subscribers criticising the MDC’s late withdrawal from the election. Here is what Shepherd and Regis had to say:

Lest there is some confusion as to where I stand, I do not support the leadership of Robert Mugabe and I condemn the violent campaign he has been waging. But Morgan has showed his lack of leadership skills in the past few days and has left me wondering what his true motives for opposing Mugabe are. He spends months globe trotting only to come back  when  there  is  barely  enough  time  to  campaign. Zanu PF was  already  on  a  violent  campaign  trail  then. Why  didn’t  Tsvangirai  pull  out  of  the  presidential  run off  then? He has chosen to pull out at the last moment and will hand Mugabe the legitimacy he so craves. Zanu PF supporters will vote tomorrow and a handful of MDC supporters will also vote. Guess what that means? And whats this drama of rushing to ‘hide’ in the Dutch Embassy? What happened to him when he eventually came out? Nothing. Whats this nonsense of calling a press conference where only the foreign media was invited to announce his withdrawal before officially informing ZEC and before informing the electorate? Whose struggle is it anyway?

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Yes, I agree that boycotting is the best but would it not be absolutely wonderful if we had more time then we all mobilise the voters to all go and vote tomorrow but spoil our votes. Just imagine more spoiled votes than those who vote for Mugabe. It would show massive support for Tsvangirai but at the same time show that this election is a sham. I wish the withdrawal had been much earlier is this message would have got ot the voters!!!

This entry was posted on June 26th, 2008 at 4:12 pm by Bev Clark and is filed under Activism, Elections 2008, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.