Let our joy be drunk with vision
Comrade Fatso reminds us that whilst the fist has faltered it hasn’t quite fallen – yet. And that as the old man goes we must make sure that the new government is held accountable.
Anyone know someone with a truck? There’s a guy wanting to move all his stuff from State House to Zvimba. The jokes spread as text messages refer to our aged dictator relocating to his rural home. People really do believe this is a general election – because our generals decide who gets elected. Another joke walking the streets of Harare is that the only difference between an election and an erection is that you can’t rig the latter.
The mood is lightening in repressed Harare. The sun shines here too. With the MDC having claimed parliament people are beginning to dare to dream. Beginning to believe that the 10 year old dream may be coughing its first breaths. And that’s what it is – the first breaths. Alongside the first breaths of the new are the kicks of the collapsing jongwe. Now is a time where history can be made or unmade. The last kicks of the jongwe could be bloody. And the new birth already seems to have something of the old. There is the likelihood of ZANU PF elements being brought into an MDC government to pacify the armed forces and ZANU PF itself. Some say any new birth is better than the old. True. But the struggle will continue under any new government. We will have more democratic space that we will need to burst open. We will have to struggle to make sure a new government delivers social services, that it doesn’t repay illegitimate foreign debt, that it doesn’t privatise our resources into the hands of the new elites. The struggle will continue. Freedom is always on the horizon. And we have to keep marching.
So in the next few days let our joy be drunk with vision. The results we hear have to be defended by our actions. And when our actions win freedom and a new government let us know that the struggle continues. For our dreams of freedom to be born in our homes, our neighbourhoods, our communities. We are the dream.
This is Comrade Fatso’s Daily Blog during the Zimbabwe Election period. See www.comradefatso.vox.com
For Daily Election Blogs by other MAGAMBA! poets and activists see www.myspace.com/magamba