Nelson Chamisa, the Movement for Democratic Change spokesman is recently quoted as saying

“You saw and heard what happened in Kenya. It’s nothing compared to what we will have here if Mugabe rigs the elections again,” said the Movement for Democratic Change’s secretary for information, Nelson Chamisa.

“You can’t have a thief rob you twice and let him keep his hands,” Chamisa told hundreds of party supporters at the launch of their election programme in a suburb of Harare.

Utterances like this illustrate the MDC’s political immaturity. The Kenyan Red Cross has estimated that nearly 600 Kenyans (so far) have died in violence following the country’s rigged election. Countless others have been injured, hundreds of thousands displaced, women have been raped and shops have been looted. The post election violence that Kenyans have meted out has been on each other. The looting has been described as being opportunistic, with looters, for example, ransacking electronics shops over others with less valuable merchandise. Instead of channeling their frustration towards the Kibaki government and its pillars of support (police stations etc), Kenyans took their anger out on each other.

Pausing for a moment we have to ask ourselves what good has come from the post election violence in Kenya? Kenya has called in its third mediator. They don’t seem vaguely close to a re-run of the election. Odinga has declined to form a government of national unity. Yes the violence did make the rest of the world sit up and take notice but to what end? Will other African or western governments think twice about rigging their elections? Possibly, but most certainly, the overriding observation is that we must do whatever we can to avoid such heartbreaking violence.

So quite honestly I shudder when the spokesman of Zimbabwe’s most prominent opposition party suggests that the same will happen here in a seemingly welcoming tone. The Movement for Democratic Change should rather, in true statesmanlike fashion, be encouraging Zimbabweans to do their utmost to avoid bloodshed and violence during and after our next election. The MDC should use the Kenyan example to reject violence in all its forms. This is not to say that they should ignore or marginilise the acute frustration that we are experiencing in this country after years of dictatorship. The MDC’s challenge, which is a difficult one, is to provide visionary leadership to a nation that is vulnerable and depressed. Resorting to violence to solve our problems is admitting defeat.

As Gandhi said, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

The New York Times ran a very interesting article in December on street cleaners in Iraq. Street cleaners are given a “bonus” of US$8 if they agree to clean up a bomb site. A street cleaner had this to say

Although we get US$ for each bomb, we do not want to see explosions, we don’t want to see this. They are Iraqis, Sunni, Shia or Christian, they are all Iraqis.

Of course the question on everyone’s lips is “so what do we do then, if we don’t violently express our outrage and discontent.” It’s certainly a hard question to answer but the solution does not lie in encouraging or facilitating the harming of each other, no matter what tribe or political party we belong to or support.

Note: subsequent to this blog the MDC thought it wise to set the record (sort of) straight

This entry was posted on January 14th, 2008 at 11:46 am by Bev Clark and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.