Source: rense.com
February 3, 2008 Author: Cathy Buckle
Dear Family and Friends,
What is happening in Kenya is making us very nervous here in Zimbabwe. A disputed election result; over 800 people killed; 250 thousand displaced and a stable and prosperous country spiralling into chaos in just a single month. As the violence and killing has gone on day after day, it soon became obvious that this wasn't just about a questionable election result, but about a number of past disputes and old grievances that had never been resolved. It's also about poverty, unemployment and inequality - all factors that are predominant in Zimbabwe's chronic situation.
Everyone is asking if what's happened in Kenya could be us in two months time and as fast as we shake our heads and say, no, that won't happen here - it's hard to find reasons why not.
For eight years we've been a country in deep turmoil. Opposition MP David Coltart wrote recently that of the 39 parliamentary election challenges brought after the June 2000 elections, not one had been concluded by the courts at the end of that term in 2005. He went on to say that the 2002 legal challenge to Robert Mugabe's election as President was also nowhere close to being concluded - and this term ends in just two months time in March 2008.
The election challenges are just the beginning. To this day the perpetrators of hundreds of cases of rape, murder, abduction, arson and torture - all committed in the name of political violence since 2000 - have yet to be brought to justice for their crimes.
Aside from the court challenges, political violence and oppressive legislation, it is the day to day things that have brought most people to the end of their tether. Everyone has had enough of living like this: no food in the shops; negligible production from all those thousands of farms grabbed by the State; electricity and water cuts that go on for days at a time, or worse; not being able to get drugs when we are sick; not being able to afford to send children to school; not even being able to get our own money out of the bank. In urban areas we are fed up with municipalities who take our money but do nothing about sewers overflowing onto the streets, dustbins not collected for many months, drains and roadside vegetation not cleared, long grass not cut and roads so littered with potholes and gullies as to be almost unusable.
There are plenty of reasons why one more disputed election may just be one too many here. This mayhem began in February 2000 when Zanu PF lost a referendum. They have had eight years of chances just as the people have had eight years of suffering and decline. Within the next week candidates for the elections have to be announced and in them the hope for the future lies and the prevention of another Kenya. A daunting task indeed.
Until next time, thanks for reading,
love cathy.
