IT’S election season and for many people, it is the season of fear. Fear derived from the fallacious belief that voters are powerless and politicians are all-powerful.
Delta Milayo Ndou
If 2008 taught us anything, it is that voters wield the power in the ballot box.
Whoever thought that voters would revolt and ensure that an opposition party succeeds in snatching up constituencies out of the erstwhile ruling party’s grip?
It was the voters, not the politicians or the political parties, that changed the tide of Zanu PF’s political dominance.
Essentially, it was the voters who made the difference. And it was the politicians who stayed up in their beds agonising over the outcome – even those who had rigging mechanisms could not be guaranteed that those measures would be sufficient to secure them victory.
We are not the ones who should be running scared. We are the wielders of power and July 31 is our defining moment as voters.
We will determine the course of this country and if we have any doubt of our capacities, it pays to remember that in 2008 an opposition party leader did, in fact, garner more votes than the incumbent.
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The fact that he did not win by a margin sufficient enough for him to change his residential address to State House does not change the reality that Zimbabwean voters flexed their voting muscle and radically transformed the political terrain of this country.
The voters of Zimbabwe have been sold a dummy for many years, convinced that they are powerless and that their lives are determined by the whims of politicians.
I am reminded of a tale about how they train elephants for circus acts in India. It is said that they take the elephants while they are still young and chain them to a tree.
Each time the young elephants try to stray from the tree and begin to strain against the chain, they are severely whipped, over and over again until they learn that trying to escape will lead to infliction of pain.
Zimbabweans have been taught from years of violence that voting will lead to infliction of pain when the reality is that voting is the only path to emancipation – voters are the true wielders of political power.
The desperate campaigning of the politicians across the length and breadth of the country attests to this.
They are not doing us any favours by showing up at our doorsteps, littering our streets with their campaign material, tossing articles of clothing our way and coming laden with foodstuffs — they are wooing us.
And anyone who knows a bit about wooing and being wooed will attest to the fact that the balance of power lies with the one being wooed – not with the one who is wooing.
Back to my tale of the young elephants; apparently even when the chains are removed from their legs, they still would not stray from the tree because of the memory of pain inflicted whenever they tried to go free.
Even when the young elephants grow up and become big elephants, the memory of the pain is so entrenched that they do not try to escape despite their huge size – they remain under the whip of their masters.
Zimbabwean voters are scarred by the memory of pain inflicted, of wounds and beatings, of rapes and burnings, of abductions and torture and of brutality and the presence of danger.
Elections have become a season of fear for voters when they should, in fact, be a season of reckoning for the politicians – we are not the ones who should be afraid.
We are powerful.
Our votes — mere scraps of paper in reality symbolise the collective expression of our free choice with regards who will represent us in political office.
We stand alone in the ballot boxes and we decide. We have the final say and while the possibility of rigging exists, voting in our numbers will serve to neutralise such nefarious and underhanded plots.
We must vote. Because a million votes in favour of a particular candidate are the sum total of the expressed will of each individual who placed an X by that candidate’s name.
In conversations with my friends, acquaintances and colleagues, I have maintained that no matter what happens I will vote. I will simply not be denied.
You see, there are many politicians who have messed up this country and I refuse to give them another five-year lease of political life to further enrich themselves at my expense.
I know that we cannot make them say they are sorry, but we can make them sorry by murdering their political dreams, thwarting their political hopes and massacring their political ambitions on July 31.
Someone’s political aspiration for political ascendency will die a merciless, ruthless and sudden death inflicted by my vote – and that person will not be the voter, but the losing candidates.
We are not the ones who should be afraid. They should fear us. They should fear our vote. But that’s just me. I could be wrong. We can always agree to disagree.
