So everything is feeling quite festive here in Harare the day before our Harmonised Election. The posters are everywhere, and they add so much colour to the place. There’s people in all sorts of election T-shirts everywhere, and I’m beginning to wish that every week was election week. Things just feel so much more possible.

On the road yesterday, I spotted a whole lot of MDC (Tsvangirai) graffiti, especially on the roads and on the kerbs of the roundabouts. And I wondered if the youth on the MDC spray paint team are cursing the day the MDC split – Vote MDC is just so much easier to write than Vote MDC Tsvangirai! Quicker, uses less paint, and runs you less risk of getting caught in the process. Maybe it’s high time each of the MDC factions chose their own names.

Running this morning, I noticed a $500 bill on the grass on the side of the road. Wet and abandoned, clearly not worth enough for anyone to bother picking it up. The other day, my colleague and I were distributing papers in Harare’s Avenues suburb. I spotted two $100,000 notes on top of the post boxes in one of the blocks of flats – again, so worthless it was just spare change lying there.

But if Mugabe’s biggest opponent in this election is inflation, Tsvangirai’s is the vote rigging which began long back. These elections are being held under such patently unfair and unequal conditions, they’ve been stolen before a single vote has been cast.

So, like Bev Clark was asking yesterday, what’s the plan to defend our vote? At the MDC’s rally on Saturday, Tsvangirai also stressed the importance of defending the vote. But what does that look like, really? I had my bag snatched a few years ago. I screamed like hell, I swore a blue streak at the muggers, and kicked at them when they tried to grope me as well. Imagine if we felt that passionately about protecting our vote.

One of our subscribers wrote in with this recommendation for defending the vote:

How about bombarding Mbeki, Zuma, Guebuza and other influential SADC leaders with examples of ZANU PF’s disrespect for democracy and human rights and demanding action? If hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans write or e-mail these leaders, giving examples of why they are wrong to support Mugabe in his misrule of Zimbabwe they will at least not be able to deny knowledge of the worst atrocities or to claim that these people are in power by the choice of the people of Zimbabwe, and may be persuaded to apply meaningful pressure for change.

This is a good idea, and I do have a soft spot for letter writing campaigns. But what about the campaign here? Surely the president of South Africa or Mozambique is more likely to listen to Zimbabweans’ need for change if they can see us actively doing something to express our frustration here – not simply running to outsiders for help? It’s been one of my continuing frustrations – that we turn to the courts, or South Africa, or SADC for help, rather than reclaiming our vote ourselves.

So yes, I’ve let myself get a bit swept away by the hype and the music and the colours and the anticipation. But deep down I know that, as important as 29 March is, even more important is what we do, collectively and individually, when that vote is stolen, like I know it will be.

This entry was posted on March 28th, 2008 at 3:31 pm by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Elections 2008, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.