This is Zimbabwe » Blog Archive » Zimbabwe senate elections: “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”

This is Zimbabwe » Blog Archive » Zimbabwe senate elections: “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”: "It’s election day in Zimbabwe today, and the fact that the general public doesn’t care is perhaps one of the saddest indictments of the state of democracy in our country."...

But the worst of zanu-pf’s skulduggery for me is the unspeakable cruelty. I was utterly disgusted (but completely unsurprised) last month when I learned that mugabe had decided to bar food aid distribution until after the senate polls were over. We all know that this means food is to be the zanu-pf campaigning trump-card....

There is a lot of information about the terrible effects of the food curfew which lasted throughout the early months of 1984. The embargo on food was total: stores were closed, drought relief food deliveries were stopped, houses were searched and food found was destroyed. The missions kept records of the situation and tried to feed people when they could, but this was difficult for them. They had to watch children fainting from hunger at school and know they were being beaten and detained as well. There was a real concern that people would begin dying in large numbers if the curfew continued.

Can you imagine how you would feel if you had survived that, only to hear the architect of that unspeakable act utter these words a couple of days before an election:...

Zimbabweans are not fools - we know all of this. And this knowledge explains why so many Zimbabweans see these senate elections as a complete non-event....

But it is Angelina Nkomazana’s voice that powerfully sums up for me how many ordinary poverty-stricken Zimbabweans feel:

The 26 November poll date holds no significance for Angelina Nkomazana, a communal farmer in a tiny hamlet in Matabeleland North province.

The day will be spent like any other, trying to make some money doing chores for her neighbours or collecting water for them from a distant dam with a donkey-drawn cart, while other Zimbabweans head for polling stations to vote in the country’s inaugural senatorial election...

I can’t help but be reminded today of the words of Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”. Perhaps mugabe should take note of our apathy and our disinterest and realise that Zimbabwean voters are further away from him and his policies than we ever have been before. Our anger and pain hasn’t translated into the support that he craves; instead, we’ve moved even further away towards indifference. He should be worried.