I’ve been sifting through photographs of Zimbabweans beaten in the weeks following the 29 March Harmonised Election, and I’m feeling sick. What do I do with the outrage that boils up as I look at image after image of horrific brutality. And how do I stomach myself asking the question “which one portrays this horror ‘best’?” I’m angry with myself for even asking the question, and I’m angry with the “crisis what crisis” mentality that means I have to ask the question in the first place.

As James Hall wrote, is an African life so cheap, that 1,000 must die before there is a “crisis?”

I heard a bit of the BBC’s Hard Talk with Allan Little and Morgan Tsvangirai the other day. Little was asking Tsvangirai what the MDC was going to do about this latest election theft, and whether it was planning some sort of People Power solution like what was undertaken in Serbia or the Ukraine. Tsvangirai said no, he didn’t think that sort of approach was appropriate in Zimbabwe. Why not, asked Little. Because, Tsvangirai said, the regime in Zimbabwe is so violent, any sort of popular uprising like that would be brutally and violently crushed.

But isn’t this violent enough already? We are not already in a state of war, as MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti himself said recently. In which case, it’s about time we started fighting back.

We received this appeal to South African President Thabo Mbeki from a subscriber today:

Mr Mbeki 18th April 2008

Mr Mbeki,
It is late,
So late,
And we, a nation
Watch through the barred gate,
Of justice.
Which you walked through
To be president,
Above apartheid
And hate.
But, you make us wait
For just words you will never say.

Like Pilate,
You wash your hands
Of what has been in your power to do.
You slip through a side door
And allow
This Mad High Priest of the Past,
Mugabe,
To crucify,
Fourteen million people.
And the living water
Of deliverance,
Shimmers,
In your still hand.

Blood, exhaustion and sickness;
And filth and misery
And hunger
The pall of Hell,
Covers us.

And, you say,
“Zimbabwe ? Not today.”
To the Security Council.
And so, a nation is hung from a tree
And ZANU murderers walk free.

We ache with questions.
What scales cover your eyes ?
What steel seals your ears ?
What vault insulates your heart,
From the drum of echoing truth,
Of millions of voices ?

Does your conscience never wake you,
With the doves at dawn,
And warn,
Of our horror ?

Justice stands on a high hill.
Lord, deliver us from Dialogue and Debate.
As our People crawl through the river, mud and wire

To your Limpopo shore
To implore;
“Work..?.”

Our stolen elections lie scattered,
Like silver pieces
In the fields of the dead.
Blessed by your election monitors from the past,
Who will be asked, again,
“Why, did this happen ?”

It is late Mr Mbeki, so late
And your stubborn will
Has finished many of us.
What obscene loyalty compels protection
Of this geriatric murderer.

A liberation hero who kills his own people,
Remains a hero, no less ?
These stale lies of brotherhood
Gall the ears of mourners
At our funeral pyres.

Already night is falling
And the devil moves in darkness
His hyenas hunt again
And we the living,
Strain,
To hear the voice of any Shepherd.

Mr Mbeki,
If only I could make you
One of us here, the unseen,
For a day
To see what you have ignored.
To feel the grief, to taste the fear
Racing across parched fields
And empty huts
Like the wind called
Gukuruhundi
Like the storm called
Murambatsvina
Maybe then your heart would break
And you would awake.
Too late…

So, for want of any inspiring solution to the fiasco Zimbabwe’s 29 March election has become, we’re turning to humour.

Alex Magaisa recently sent us some creative answers to the classic question Why did the chicken cross the road?

Some of my favourites are:

Patrick Chinamasa: No. The chicken did not cross the road. In fact we need to verify whether in fact it was a chicken. As far as we know, the chicken is still there. It could have been an eagle. We have to wait until verification is done.

Robert Mugabe: The chicken will never be allowed to cross the road. Not in my life time! Let those that run away to Bush and Brown do so. Not my chicken! My chicken will never cross the road. It will never be colonised again!

Tendai Biti: We have irrefutable evidence from those who were at the road that the chicken has, indeed, without any shadow of doubt, crossed the road. I hereby declare that Chicken Huku Inkuku is now the legitimate resident of the other side of the road.

Judge of the High Court: Whether or not it crossed the road is a matter for the officials to declare at their own time. They have the power to order a re-check and verification as to whether it crossed the road before they can make the declaration.

Zimbabwe Electoral Commission: We are not in a position to say whether or not the chicken crossed the road. There are some people who have complained that it probably wasn’t a chicken at all and others saying it was being pushed or dragged against its will. We are currently considering whether to do a re-check before we can officially declare if the chicken crossed the road. We will take as long as we want to be fully certain that it was a chicken that crossed the road.

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I’ve read that Morgan Tsvangirai believes that shuttle diplomacy is the way to go right now. If I had my way I’d put him on a shuttle and send him straight to Mars. I read in the Zimbabwe Independent that Tsvangirai, his family and his advisers have set up camp in Botswana because Zimbabwe is too dangerous. I’m not sure how much more insulting one can get but Tsvangirai certainly takes the cake.

I was at a lunch on Saturday and I just wish Tsvangirai could have been there because the derision with which his name was uttered would surely have made him sit up and take note. I wrote recently about finding these ridiculous stickers in Newlands in Harare likening Tsvangirai to Mandela . . . yeah right.

Zimbabweans are suffering a devastating lack of leadership from Morgan “Asylum” Tsvangirai. He should be here, on the front lines inspiring hope and being among his supporters. He’s worried that he’ll become a “dead hero” – well pretty soon he will be dead in the eyes of Zimbabweans because so many of us are entirely unimpressed with his sorry arse. We all run the risk of assault and imprisonment, many without the glare of publicity and glamour that the likes of Tsvangirai generate when he’s chucked inside.

Will you participate in a re-run for this man? I won’t.

OK. So I don’t have an election Result, but I now have a bottle of Radox. It was hand delivered by a messenger with a stunning smile. Amazing what a lament in a blog, and a gorgeous friend from afar will do for you . . . my bottle of Radox promises me “clear thoughts” . . . bring them on. Although I can’t get any clearer about the fact that Bobby Must Go Now! It’s early afternoon in the Kubatana offices and we’re taking back Independence in Zimbabwe, playing Dr Alban – loudly. His insistence that freedom is our goal is our reprise.

It has been widely reported in the press, today, that Kenya has “stepped back from the brink” following the swearing in of opposition leader Raila Odinga in to the Prime Minister’s position. Over a thousand people died so that the “will” of the people could be reflected by this appointment. So it is it fair to assume that, had two thousand people died, Kenya would have gone over the brink?

Who sets the brink? Is present day Iraq before, in, after or recently back from the brink? Is Iran speeding towards the brink or does Dick Cheney think not fast enough? What about Darfur? Is Somalia, with its gung ho pirates who could not organise a piss up in a brewery, way beyond the brink and in the abyss? How many steps does Somalia need to take to climb out of the abyss and then take that monumental step back from the brink? How many people does it take to die for there to be brink?

Is there a crisis in Zimbabwe? Starting when? With the deaths of twenty thousand people in the early eighties or was that a different kind of brink? An inconvenient brink during the cold war? Should we colour code brinks and have a brink-o-meter? In fact, should we have a brink-o-meter for the economy as well? Because at 165 000% official inflation, Zimbabwe is not at the brink. It does not even have a crisis! It is simply setting a world record. The Tiger Woods of failed economies. There is, however a “crisis” according to many because election results have not been released. Mbeki does not agree; his benchmark for a crisis could well be that 1000 dead bodies mark. Before that, it is a manageable solution. Was Rwanda not manageable before the radio broadcasts began?

What about a stable country, like say Botswana or Swaziland, with some of the highest rates of HIV AIDS infections and related deaths? Does that constitute a brink or an impending catastrophe? Is Arsene Wenger, having thrown away what was to be surely a premiership championship on the brink?

Back to Kenya, a reporter asked who the opposition was going to be since everyone one is now in government. Given that there is no longer an opposition in place, is democracy there on the brink? Has Kenya really stepped away from the brink? What brink?