Anticlimax
“Zanu yaora Baba . . . Zanu yaora Baba . . . .” It’s the middle of the night, the 25th of June 2000. I’m in a car full of MDC activists and we’re careening through the streets of Harare, singing our lungs out, high on the promise of a Parliamentary election in which the MDC, barely nine months old, might just win the majority of elected seats. As it turned out, we were close but not quite. And the giddy optimism that, just maybe, we could put Zimbabwe back on the path to democracy in a matter of months, not years or decades, proved hollow.
Eight years, four elections, untold campaigns, and uncountable political-broken-heart moments later, I’m older, wiser, and a bit more jaded about the whole process. So when Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and Robert Mugabe signed their agreement on “resolving the challenges facing Zimbabwe” yesterday, I have to confess to no small amount of cynicism.
But, thinking that it was perhaps unfair of me to be so suspicious of a moment where so many were finding hope, I decided to take my cynicism to the streets and have a look around. I’ve long said that I will know that Zimbabwe is on the right track again when Harare’s Seventh Street – the road past State House – is no longer closed after dark. So I was disappointed, last night, to find it still barricaded, and I’ve been thinking about things like attachment, expectations, and anticlimax.
Speaking with others on my street, the general mood was “let’s wait and see.” So I’m taking their advice and doing my level best to reserve my judgement until we see how things pan out. But I’m sceptical about a power-sharing agreement, particularly about one that seems simply to have expanded the size of the Cake of National Elite so that everyone can have a slice. And I’m wondering how is it all going to work. Where will Morgan sleep as Prime Minister? Will he move into Zimbabwe House, over the road from Bob? The Zimbabwe I dream of is one without any head of state motorcade – not two. And I’m waiting for the Zimbabwe without any head of state portraits on the walls – not two.
In the past few months, we’ve asked Zimbabweans what they think about a Government of National Unity, and what changes they’d like to see in a New Zimbabwe. Once the country starts making progress towards these issues, I’ll know it’s time to celebrate.