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Convince me to vote for you

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Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 by James Hall

I am a voter. Thus far, I see a struggle for power and little to convince me that you wish to serve me and my country.

You are counting on my vote. You are counting on the fact that I am fed up with the state of the economy and the every day hell I am going through as a Zimbabwean member of the electorate. Well you must think again. I am fed up by more than that. I am also fed up with the basket case that Africa has become as its leaders continue to take its people for granted. I am fed up about the stories coming from Chad, Kenya and before that Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Angola, Nigeria and just about every where in Africa. I am fed up with the raping of the African people by a power hungry elite.

I have seen what the Zambians did when they were tired of Kaunda, only to bring in a person who exacerbated their suffering, selling off the country to investors who enjoyed a business boom but left the people behind. I do not want to be left behind after 29 March. I want to vote for men and women who are serious about creating a positive sustainable future for posterity and for the country, not for people who are looking for positions so that they too can get on the gravy train. Are you worthy of my vote? The reason for the breakdown in re-unification talks in the MDC was over who would take which seats! Fighting for power before they even have it! It is a disgrace and a betrayal to the cannon fodder they used in the name of democracy and Christianity. It is a betrayal to all the youth who braved tear gas, beatings and torture over the last seven years, the older men and women who endured similar situations and more; losing their children to the oppressor’s bullet in the fight for democracy.

While I would never give my vote to Zanu PF, I am challenging you, the opposition to convince me not to withhold it from them either. My vote is sacred and I am not prepared to hand it over to an opposition that is displaying the classic symptoms of the men and women who have driven millions of Africans to despair. My heart is pained but I cannot and will not aid and abet a crime against the Zimbabwean folk. Simba Makoni and Morgan Tsvangirai; you need to take heed and take stock of what I am saying. For my suffering and the suffering of our people to finally have meaning and a purpose, you must do the right thing and present one face of the opposition. A week is a long time in politics and it is, therefore, not too late to do the right thing. The country and the people come first.