WITHERTO ZIMBABWE AFTER ELECTIONS 2013
Personal opinion: by By Patience Kasi 16th August, 2013
So, the elections have come and gone. The feeling I get is …, your guess is right, “stunned, beyond belief!!” I, like the majority of Zimbabweans, was actually hoping for change this time around but it did not happen.
If the results of the 2013 elections are anything to go by, then we are in for the ”long haul”. What do you do when your vote is not made to count for who you voted for? What do you do when election results are manufactured and hence pre-determined even before people have cast their votes? What do you do when the SADC (Southern African Development Community) and the AU (African Union), scoundrels though they might genuinely be, endorse the elections as credible, despite the irregularities? What do you do in the face of brutal repression supported by regional and continental bodies?
Well our life President, R.G. Mugabe says that those that are not happy with the way things have turned out can ‘”go and hang”’. He is supposedly reiterating that this is democracy at its best. He says you ”either take it or leave it”.
On the other hand Mr Tsvangirai tried to take the matter to the courts, challenging the poll results. This was, of course to be all in vain and, of course he had to withdraw. To me, everything that he was doing post elections was simply too late. The irregularities he is citing should have been averted had the MDC been vigilant during the tenure of the GNU. Vigilance should have been maintained since the 2008 elections.
It seems to me, as it does to the majority of Zimbabweans that the main opposition was caught napping. They took too much for granted. They had been pacified by 5 years in a GNU and the momentum for change was lost. Nothing towards the advancement of the freedom, justice and human rights cause was achieved.
If anything, as a country, we are where we were before the 2008 elections, if not worse off. Worse off in many ways, not least of which is the fact that, hard as it might appear to swallow, the reality could be that, perhaps, the opposition need to identify and rally behind a new leader with a better vision, more depth, clout and a clearer way of thinking than the man they had pinned their hopes on over the past 14 years.
Whosoever has the responsibility of leading the cause for change in Zimbabwe and with it the restoration of our rights as humans needs to realize that the beast he / she is fighting wants to remain in power so as to avert the possibility of being brought before the ICC for the Gukurahundi genocide and other atrocities committed over the past 3 decades.
