Zimbabwe -- Towards a bloody 2005 election?

Financial Gazette (Zim) ^ | June 19, 2003 | Clemence Manyukwe

[Clive]

"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you" - Leon Trotsky

WITH the 2005 parliamentary elections around the corner, the deplorable lack of common ground between the country's two major political parties casts a long shadow on the probability of a peaceful poll, thereby threatening a nasty replay of the bloody events which led to the 2000 elections.

This is especially so considering the ever-increasing violence which has accompanied each voting period between the turn of the century and now.

Whether it was Bikita west, Insiza and recently Kuwadzana; people who were supposed to regard each other as mere opponents chose to become arch enemies. By-election after by-election, this has been allowed to go on unchecked, providing a probability that they may just be rehearsals of what awaits us in 2005.

But if things are allowed to happen like this we will all be to blame. There may never be any other prize for what we have done and what we have not done for our country. It will be the total cost of our negligence.

We may not want war, we may be regarded as a peace-loving people, but for as long as the current mayhem goes on unchecked, we may be as well reach a point where war itself may be interested in us.

With failure to resolve our differences peacefully, with the country slowly but surely becoming a breeding ground for vigilante groups such as Chipangano, green bombers and other faceless, nameless ones with a belief that a squeaking wheel always gets greased, but not replaced; their growing powerfulness has the potential of bringing unremitting terror or worse on our doorsteps come 2005.

But this can be avoided. It only calls for everyone to voice their concerns or displeasure and that includes those "safely" in ZANU PF. Thinking that one is safe when others are in excruciating pain will only lead to our collective peril.

Marin Neimoller, a German Lutheran pastor who was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp wrote: "In Germany the Nazis first came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I was not a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up for the Catholics because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one to speak up for me."

Similarly, when white civilians were being killed during the liberation struggle, some of us did not speak up because we are not whites. When pandemonium broke out in Matabeleland, threatening to wipe out an entire tribe, some of us did not speak up because we are not Ndebele. When the farms were being turned into sites of utter desolation, some of us did not speak up because we did not own a farm. Right now, there are random beatings in the high-density suburbs and some of us are not speaking out because they do not stay in the overcrowded places.

What monumental folly? Like the Bourbons, we learnt nothing and forgot nothing.

No-one shall ever be safe inside Zimbabwe when his fellow man is subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. No-one shall walk outside Zimbabwe with his head held high when the world is complaining about what is happening in this country.

[Clive]

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[lilylangtree]

And so goes the former economically-thriving independent Rhodesia that is now just another useless 3rd world starving African country courtesy of Robert Mugabe, the country's tyrannical dictator since the country became Zimbabwe in 1980.

[happygrl]

This is a five alarm essay.

It is like Luther's post on the Witternburg Door.

I hope that those who have any residual power in Zimbabwe take this seriously or EVERYONE will loose EVERYTHING.