We sent out a Kubatana email newsletter recently and in it I asked our subscribers to give some feedback on the following

We’re reading a lot these days about the “harmonization” of the 2008 or 2010 elections. However, the MDC has experienced what they’ve called “stolen” elections for the last 6 years. It seems that the MDC along with elements of civil society feel that formal elections are still the only way to go and that they hope that the electoral and constitutional conditions will be favourable by 2008 to enable free and fair elections. The mind boggles at this lack of creativity and innovation. Isn’t this like flogging a dead ballot? Do you have some bold ideas? Feel like sharing your daring? What are your thoughts about voting and elections?

We got a lot of feedback and I share a little bit of it with you here

Perhaps I am mistaken, but aren’t parliamentary elections held every five years and presidential elections are held every six years? If so, isn’t this so-called harmonising a once-off event as I have not seen any reference to reducing the presidential terms to five years to bring it into line. (Ken)

It is utterly immaterial when the elections are held, as the regime will rig them, come what may. Indeed they can probably run elections without rigging as the MDC factions will spend most of their energy fighting each other and doing the regime’s work for them. If anyone is naive enough to think that change can come through the bent ballot box, they are living in a fog of self-delusion. I can understand trying something once, twice or even three times, but if you do so again and again and learn nothing, then you are an idiot, pure and simple. Those who wish to waste their energy on opposing this ‘harmonisation’ are reactionary counter-revolutionaries who will divert and distract and divide us – just as King Robert intends. Even if through some miraculous cock-up, zanu-pf fails to rig the elections and fails to unleash an overt coup against whoever wins, without meaningful structural and procedural change, we will merely exchange one set of thieves for another who will waste no time in looting the remnants of the economy while making all sorts of excuses to justify keeping POSA, AIPPA etc while they consolidate power. I for one cannot tell the difference between the fat cat chefs in zanu and those in the mdc except that the mdc ones are perhaps slightly leaner. (Mandebvu)

2008 was not only marked as a year for getting the voices of the people heard through elections, we all even expected a new product on the Zanu PF shelf. We expected Mugabe to simply abdicate the throne and give a wholesome chance to another candidate. At least this could have given the people fresh hopes of a better Zimbabwe since it was this one person who had made this country become a failed state. Can we really blame it all on the opposition and call it a moribund? To that I can only say the power of any revolution lies in the people and not in the leadership of the revolution. That was then going to be revealed in the year 2008. (Clayton)

In keeping with the last opinion, perhaps the poem In Silence We Sing by Zimbabwean poet Albert Nyathi is appropriate

Even the silent ants
Trampled upon by giant elephants
Do sing a silent song
They shall surely know
How to shoot
The great foot
Weighing heavily on them

It’s good to hear that the issue of sexual diversity has been tackled head on at the World Social Forum that’s been taking place in Nairobi, Kenya. Check out this interesting blog written by Adam Maanit, a Co-Editor at the New Internationalist.

Amidst all the huffing and puffing about what constitutes gay rights, Kasha Jacqueline, a Ugandan human rights activist summed it up succinctly

When Ugandans hear that we are advocating for gay rights they imagine we want more or extra rights, but NO; we want what belongs to us which was robbed from us; EQUAL RIGHTS which we are entitled to just like any other Ugandan.

OK, I admit it. I’m in love with Michela Wrong. Do yourself a favour and check out her regular column on the NewStatesman web site. Her latest essay is about the dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Sections of her writing reminded me of our situation here in Zimbabwe. All over the world we are more alike than we care to realize or admit.

Quite often efforts on the part of foreign governments and international development organizations to ease poverty or conflict in other countries are neutralized by their active involvement in maintaining the status quo through the delivery of foreign aid and humanitarian assistance. Wrong highlights this when she says

Diplomats like to present themselves as powerless in the face of Ethiopia’s famous obstinacy. It’s an argument I have never accepted. Ethiopia’s government, which receives an annual £1bn in aid, relies on donors to feed its hungry, build its schools and provide clean water. Throw into the pot Ethiopian ambitions of seeing Addis Ababa crowned as Africa’s diplomatic and political capital, and you have a perfect scenario for applying pressure. Not inviting Meles to sit on Blair’s Commission for Africa would have been a start.

The other love of my life right now (tomorrow will be a different story) is Violet Gonda, one of SW Radio Africa’s presenters. She recently interviewed Morgan Tsvangirai, president of one of the Movement for Democratic Change factions. Her hard hitting questions were right on the mark – what a pity Tsvangirai couldn’t rise to the occasion.

Violet: OK, you said it was the agenda of the Congress, and one example was the Winter of Discontent, these are the timelines that you give as the opposition, so when …

Morgan Tsvangirai: But it was not a timeline, that’s where you make a mistake. It was not a timeline, it was a metaphor making sure that people are mobilised as a discontent but not on a time-frame as to say that because winter is June to May therefore it should happen during that period. I said as a programme of action the democratic resistance of the MDC will start immediately as we finished our Congress in March and it’s an on-going programme and we haven’t abandoned that.

Violet: But it’s over a year now since you said those things. When are we going to see the programme of action?

Morgan Tsvangirai: Well you wait and see, it’s going to happen.

Don’t know about you but I’m dead keen to tune into this programme of democratic resistance. Can anyone tell me which frequency its on?

Last year, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai, said that “a broad-based alliance of democratic forces” was “putting the final touches to a comprehensive programme of rolling mass action designed to push the regime to the long awaited negotiated settlement.” To help you determine how realistic Tsvangirai’s calls for mass action are, our electronic activism campaign discusses lessons from Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies by Kurt Schock.

Using the struggle to end Apartheid in South Africa as an example we observe that social and political transformation occurs only after a sustained period of challenge in which multiple forms of resistance are engaged. Between 1983 and 1990 activists in South Africa used at least twelve different tactics within major campaigns aimed at challenging the entrenched power of the white regime.

To check out the major nonviolent action campaigns and events in South Africa, between 1983 – 1990 please click here.

Two basic conditions must be met for a challenge to contribute to political transformations: (1) the challenge must be able to withstand repression, and (2) the challenge must undermine state power.

Generally, when the interests of political authorities are threatened, repression is used as a means to control or eliminate the challenge. Unlike democracies, where dissent is expected and tolerated, nondemocratic regimes cannot simply ignore protest, as its mere existence represents a threat to the regime. If protest is ignored, the regime will appear helpless in the face of defiance, and resistance will spread. Thus, those engaging in overt challenges to nondemocratic regimes should expect a violent response by the government.

The organizational template most useful for challenging the state through nonviolent action in repressive contexts is network-oriented rather than hierarchical. Compared to hierarchical organized challenges, network-organized challenges are more flexible, are more adept at expanding horizontal channels of communication, are more likely to increase the participation and commitment of members and the accountability of leaders, are more likely to innovate tactically, and are more likely to weather repression. The more diverse the tactics and methods implemented, the more diffuse the state’s repressive operations become, thus potentially lessening their effectiveness. Protest and persuasion help overcome apathy, acquiescence, and fear. Noncooperation undermines the legitimacy, resources and power of the state, and the collective withdrawal of cooperation from the state promotes cooperation and empowerment among the oppressed.

Having a tooth taken out at 8am on a Monday isn’t the best way to start the working week but having suffered a Sunday of throbbing toothache I thought I’d better Do Something. So a strapping Serbian called Dr Paul put paid to my molar, finally managing to extract it after about an hour or so of pushing and pulling.

As I lay there trying to Dig Deep and deal with the pain my mind wandered to a DVD I’d watched the night before called A Patriotic Force. This is a newly released documentary commissioned by the Solidarity Peace Trust in South Africa. The documentary chronicles the behaviour of the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) over the last decade or so. It includes frightening scenes illustrating the abuse of police power in Zimbabwe with some survivors discussing the brutal treatment that they have endured at the hands of our police force. So when I saw Zimbabweans being beaten with batons, or swathed in bloody bandages from their run-ins with the ZRP whilst exercising their democratic right to engage in peaceful protest, I lay in the dentist’s chair thinking that my pain probably palled in comparison.

At Kubatana we’ve been sending out copies of A Patriotic Force to Zimbabweans from all walks of life, all over the country in an awareness raising exercise. If you would like to receive a copy why not write to the Solidarity Peace Trust.

But hang on a sec. Just thinking of the title of this DVD you wouldn’t be the odd one out if the title confused you. In fact a few of the titles of documentaries on the Zimbabwean situation produced by the Solidarity Peace Trust confuse me. Why not just use plain simple titles that tell it like it is. The ZRP is anything but a patriotic force; instead they obey their one master – Mugabe.

Other strange titles include No War in Zimbabwe and a Legitimate Election. At first glance with titles like these you’d think things were hunky dory in Zimbabwe. Instead they’re anything but.

Morgan Tsvangirai has been in the press a lot lately making largely depressing reading. First I saw an article in The Herald that reported on an alleged meeting between Dell the US Ambassador in Zimbabwe and both factions of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Both meetings were separate of course. Anyway when I discussed this article with a friend today she said that the supposed US$1million being offered by Dell to the MDC if they sorted out their differences and united should rather be spent on suffocating the MDC because its become as much of a liability to democracy in Zimbabwe as Zanu PF.

Then I note in the Financial Gazette today that Tsvangirai is apparently “talking tough”. Unfortunately that’s about all he can do – Mr All Talk And No Action. I mean maybe it’s just me but aren’t you sick and tired of statements like “the time to act is now” (duh) or “we are guided by an urgent call to save our country”? In fact in the fatuously entitled email, “The MDC President Speaks” published by the MDC yesterday, the phrase “the time to act is now” was used at least three times.

It appears that the MDC is banking on two things to “save Zimbabwe”. One is the Save Zimbabwe Campaign. I found it rather disheartening to read that the leader of our largest opposition party is “pinning his hopes” on a seemingly fictitious coalition of civic organizations acting under the rather worn out name of the Save Zimbabwe Campaign. What does this say about Tsvangirai’s vision of his own political party and their ability to seriously challenge Mugabe? Of course whilst I completely agree that its time that pro-democracy forces within civil society support the MDC’s call for political change, I wonder what exactly about the Save Zimbabwe Campaign gives Tsvangirai all this hope and confidence? Have you had the opportunity to meet the leaders of the Save Zimbabwe Campaign? Have they encouraged your participation in the formulation of civic campaigns? Have you attended one of their events? Do you know how and where to contact them if you wanted to get involved and find out more?

In short, have you ever seen any of them?

And then Tsvangirai believes that elections are the way to go, either in 2008 or whenever. Never mind that we’ve had the last several elections stolen from under our noses. Yes of course we agree that the conditions need to be rectified in order to hold accountable and transparent elections but we also know that this is the very last thing that Mugabe will allow because it would be shooting himself in his own small foot.

So therefore we have the two dominant political parties in Zimbabwe playing the same old games. Zanu PF is bound to win, and the MDC is bound to lose – unless the MDC stops ploughing the same old barren fields of thought and action.