My Radox Stress Release bubble bath has run out, and so has my patience.

In no particular order, I’m fed up with:

a) vendors selling me over priced trays of eggs whilst I’m crossing the road
b) dead of night tsotsis stealing telephone cables rendering all phones kaput
c) my hunting dog waking me up at 4am, 3 nights in a row
d) civil society fear merchants who say Don’t Do A Damned Thing, or we’ll provoke a state of emergency in Zimbabwe
e) Mugabe
f) waiting

I’ve just been into my bank and the conversation went something like this

“Are you online?”
- yes

“Do you have cash?”
- no

“Is the ATM working?”
- no

As Comrade Fatso reminds us in his blog below, our streets are now our supermarkets, and our banks are dealers on corners.

Torn posters of presidential candidates on durawalls. At every intersection. At every street corner. It feels like something from the past, from another era. But this is the era we are in now. Still hanging on the sun-soaked slogans of these ripped-apart politicians. The fist and the fury is our daily bread, our breakfast. As we sit at the robots, the traffic lights. Still. Not moving.

As they decided to invade farms and arrest election officials this past that we are living in just became a worse future. The parallel realities we live in have become the only reality now. The other one is paralysed. So bread is now hustled on street corners for two US dollars. Like an illegal drug. Milk has also joined the list of ‘goods’ that are sold in our parallel economy. Not in the shops but on the streets. And if you’re looking for toliet paper then just drive to the nearest ‘Give Way’ sign, a Zimbabwean ‘Stop’ sign.

In our country survival was criminalised a long time ago. We don’t know what is upside-down or downside-up. Normal means no electricity and a drop of water from the tap. Yet our rulers fill the news with talk of the need for a re-count before Zimbabweans know the-count. Filling the news like cramming empty shop shelves with toilet paper. A disgusting illusion. A lie.

Chirikure Chirikure is one of Zimbabwe’s leading performance poets. His work is featured on a number of web sites including Poetry International, one of the best poetry sites on the Internet.

Here is a poem written in 1998 which gives some pause for thought today.

We fought the war

Inzwai!
We, in diaspora, overseas, fought this war,
We sourced donations and mobilised foreign support
Yet we never lagged behind in our studies, preparing for the future of our country

Aiwa!
We, the boys in the bush, fought the war,
We pulled the trigger, politicised the masses
We slept in the bush – cold, rain or shine.

Bodo!
We, Mujibha and Chimbwido, fought this war
We were the beasts of burden, carrying arms, reconnaissance,
Washing the fighters’ clothing, cooking for them.

Nyangwe!
We, your parents, the peasants, fought the war.
We supplied the clothes, we sold every beast we had.
We supported with morale and prayed to the ancestors.

Yes, we thank you!
The war was fought, blood flowed, homes were destroyed,
The country we fought for, is now ours, we liberated it.
Now, whoever among you has got the key,
Let him open the granary of the country and give us a little grain to cook the little ones a little sadza.
See how parched their lips are?
Like refugees of war.

If there is a run off for the presidential election in Zimbabwe then Mugabe better start printing new posters.

When I’ve been out walking and running some of the streets of Harare I’ve noticed that Zimbabweans are taking back their power and pulling down presidential election posters glued to the walls of their private homes and businesses. Talking about glue, Zanu PF clearly used a poor quality glue because where Zimbabweans aren’t ridding themselves of Robert, the old man is simply peeling off the walls. In the shopping centre where I work, people waiting for their cash from the ATM have taken things a bit further, and have started scrawling profanities on Bob’s posters next to the cash dispenser.

A friend’s relative called her today from Nyamapanda with the news that Mugabe’s war veterans are roaming the country side threatening violence and accusing people of supporting the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The person conveying the news said that if there is a run off then its unlikely that people will go out and vote for the MDC again because of the fear of a backlash.

There were over 8000 polling stations around Zimbabwe during the election and the MDC was concerned that at many of the rural polling stations there would be so few people voting that the authorities would be able to identify those who had voted for the opposition, and therefore the possibility of retribution would increase. Philip Barclay’s blog about election monitoring in rural Masvingo substantiates this where he states that the vote tally for Zanu PF was as low as 44 at one polling station.

Meanwhile in the office we’ve just been discussing the new Morgan Tsvangirai stickers starting to spring up in Newlands. Vote Morgan Tsvangirai for President – Africa’s Second Mandela. Hey, but this is a bit of a long shot surely? Comparisons are odious, and this one particularly so.

A diplomat with a sense of humour – that’s Philip Barclay. I love reading his blogs because they’re rooted in everyday Zimbabwean experience – no grandstanding just personal reflection. Here’s an excerpt from his latest blog in which he shares some of his election monitoring experience undertaken on behalf of the British Embassy. To read his full blog, click here

I am in a tiny place called Bikisa, deep in rural Masvingo, where Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party has won every election that has ever been held. (Ian Smith did not believe in elections for black folk). So my assumption is that the big pile is Mugabe’s.

But I am wrong. The presiding officer asks for the votes to be counted. The smallest pile is Simba Makoni’s – 11 votes. The middling pile is Mugabe’s – 44 votes. Amazingly, incredibly, the Pisa-pile belongs to Morgan Tsvangirai. The polling officer gets tongue-tied at ‘one hundred and twenty-seven’ and loses count. She sighs desperately and starts again. 167. Tsvangirai has won with about three-quarters of the vote.

I force myself to keep breathing steadily; fainting at this point would not become an officer of Her Majesty’s Government.

Briggs Bomba, a Zimbabwean activist, has written a pretty good article on Zimbabwe’s current crisis. The full article is available online here but in the meantime read a few interesting excerpts:

On South African diplomacy

At this very late hour, statements by South African President Thabo Mbeki that ‘the situation in Zimbabwe is manageable’ and that ‘it is time to wait’ are not only unhelpful but a slap in the face for long suffering Zimbabweans, who at considerable risk and sacrifice went out to vote on March 29. There cannot be any plausible reason why results are not known seven days after voting! No, Mr President, this is not ‘a time to wait’; neither is it a ‘manageable situation’. This is more like a time bomb that can only be defused if the people’s vote is respected.

On possible response to a rigged election

The opposition in Zimbabwe must now show decisive leadership. While it is commendable that we have not seen ‘Kenyan style’ violence in the post election period, Zimbabwe’s opposition must learn from Kenyan opposition that the business of appealing to an incumbent’s courts does not work. There are pending cases in courts from the 2000 elections. In fact, with a compromised judiciary, such as Zimbabwe’s, court appeals only serve the purpose of disarming people’s vigilance by creating a distracting sideshow and reinforcing illusions of mitigation. Already a dilly dance has started in the courts with all sorts of delaying tactics meant to buy Mugabe time until its too late, rendering the court challenge academic. The opposition is best advised to resort to peaceful mass mobilization of people power to defend the vote. The opposition must lead unions, students and the full range of civic society in defending the people’s vote. Mugabe will only pay attention if he is convinced that he can no longer govern in the old way, therefore the strategy must be to paralyze the state through effective, peacefully direct action.