What will you tell your son on Thursday?

What will you tell your son on Thursday?

• MDC security team foil election fraud

• Over 100 exiles vote in mock elections

• MDC will call victory if it gets more than 60 seats

• Exiles vote in mock election

• Zimbabwe poll shows MDC surge

• Poll tips Mugabe for landslide victory

• Zimbabwe politicians dazzle with hat campaign

• Mugabe's supporters walk out of debate

• MDC, SA observers kiss and make up

• Nyathi: 'We won't cooperate with SA observers'

• MDC delivers snub for SA observers

• Muleya: Zim poll doomed by punny institutions

• Mugabe's Blair blast turned into house tune

• Ncube: 'Mbeki badly misinformed about Zimbabwe'

• Tsvangirai invades Mugabe heartland

• Zimbabwe's police chief denies political bias

By Bekithemba Mhlanga

ON Thursday morning I will take my son along with me to the mock vote in London. This will be my third time to take part in Zimbabwe’s “elections” but only the second time that my son is around me while I exercise my right to vote.

The first time around was in 2002 .On that hot blistering day I dumped him with relatives to go and cast my vote at David Livingstone school.

In my naivety I had thought the process would take a few minutes and I would be back at home with my little boy watching the rest of the proceedings on television. It was not to be. Ten hours later, minus a several litres of petrol and a possible permanent damage to my heart as a result of all the stress I was back at home. I had been tossed around from one polling station to another and finally voted in one corner of Harare that I never knew existed.

One thing I knew for sure was that the whole charade was part of stealing an election, stealing a people’s right, a right that hundreds had died for in the liberation struggle, a right that many more continued to suffer for in a free Zimbabwe. The right to vote. My confirmation came on Sunday morning on national radio when Jonathan Moyo announced that Harare was not Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe was not Harare. Speaking in tongues the Professor had just told millions of Zimbabweans to forget any illusions of any MDC victory or an honesty outcome of the election as Zanu (PF) had this deal done long back. I cursed several times in the car and my son looked at me in amazement. I apologised for the swearing and explained to him that one day I would explain all this to him.

So on Thursday I want to leave up to my promise and explain my un-gentleman like behaviour some three years ago. On the train ride to I will brief him on why we are travelling by train in foreign lands to take part in a mock voting exercise with other children of the soil. It is so sad that such a scared process one that many will die for can be mocked. I will explain to him that the same government that is urging me and his mother , his aunties and uncles in the diaspora on a day to day basis to send money home, does not want us to vote.

"What will you tell your child on Thursday or worse still on April fool’s day?"

BEKITHEMBA MHLANGA

I will tell him of that Sunday when I cursed in the car and why I was so furious. I will tell him that the fury still abides in me. However I am sure I will not swear in front of him as it is unlikely that I will hear that voice telling millions of Zimbabwe that Tsholotsho is not Zimbabwe and that Zimbabwe is not Tsholotsho.

If he does ask me why then the fury I will say to him that not all Zimbabweans are allowed as in the case of myself and his mother. I will tell him that even some in Zimbabwe are also not able to vote. I will tell him that civil servants who are helping out in the voting exercise for instance have had their vote cleverly stolen from them. Most of them have been deployed so far from their constituencies that they will not vote. Further more I will tell him that voting is an outcome of a process. This process involves a free competition of ideas in the political market place. I will tell him that in Zimbabwe’s market place the trading has not been that clean. One set of traders has turned up armed to the teeth with axes and knives to deal with customers who have a different preference of products. The same set of traders has been destroying the market stalls of other traders before they have even been set up. To make matters worse any advertising material about the other traders’ goods and services has been defaced and destroyed. Should he ask me why the traders are behaving like his, as any child is naively bound to ask, my simple answer to him will be that it is because of greed.

At the end of this dialogue, knowing my son as I do, he will ask me why then we did not stay at home and he could have watched cartoons instead of embarking on a meaningless train journey. I will tell him that the experience of what has happened in his homeland must not be lost in anyone’s mind, that his generation deserves better, that at the moment the country has been ravaged to the bone, that he must value his right to vote and other people’s right to do the same. I will tell him that how want him to learn that the market place for political ideas has no room for knives, axes, knobkerries and truants who have no tolerance for other traders’ goods and services. What will you tell your child on Thursday, or worse stilln, on April fool’s day?
Bekithemba Mhlanga is a Zimbabwean journalist and writes from England
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com