If everyone viewed politics as work most of the problems we have would come to an end or at least be reduced.
The general populace or what are called members of political parties would cease receiving the shorter end of the stick if not nothing at all. They would think about time spent on campaigning for the so-called leaders, composing songs and singing sometimes for the whole day for nothing.
They walk back home tired with nothing to put on the table for their families. I have seen elderly men and women jumping up and down and dancing the whole day for nothing in terms of material gain.
By saying that I see them working hard for no material gain, am I suggesting that politics is about material gain? Yes, I am. I have written previously about that politicians are job seekers in Zimbabwe at the present moment. The crop of leaders and the situation right now is not attracting the calibre we had for the liberation war.
There were no jokes then and those who took part knew they had to work for a promised land. They wore no suits or nice clothes because they knew there was nothing nice about the game. It was a fight for something serious.
Am I suffering nostalgia now and wanting to glorify the past? No, instead, I am trying to make us see that we cannot, as citizens continue to view politics sacrificially because politicians themselves long stopped doing so and began to look at it as work.
Citizens must, therefore, stop being the pig character in the animal farm, contributing bacon while others contribute what reasonably leaves them alive.
Zimbabwean elections have been marked by violence since time immemorial and this is known to everyone. Let's first talk about the psychological violence associated with this. We have had elections happening for many years with the political parties we have doing the same things, dressing nicely, and creating hope for the citizens only to hurt them when results are announced because they have been the same, with nothing changing.
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This creation of hope that that gets exciting, with presidential aspirants making such declarations as ‘when we win…’ and not ‘if we win…’raise unbelievable hope among many unsuspecting and naïve people. They get excited only for their bubble to get burst when results are announced. This is psychological violence.
Some presidential aspirants are cruel indeed, making a couple of individuals attend their meetings under trees and giving them the impression that they are contesting for the top office of president. This is abuse and cruelty because this individual is doing this for themselves and not for them. The time spent in those meetings could have been spent by these individuals selling something to put food on the table for themselves and their children. Citizens need to be awakened and laws need to be crafted that protect these workers who get nothing from their labour and toil.
Then there is actual violence that gets people killed. People get injured and some even die fighting for their chosen heroes to get into power.
Let us look at the model of our politics and see the contradictions inherent in it. We claim as a country that we use the secret ballot system and that a citizen’s vote is their secret. There are glaring contradictions here because we do our politics publicly. If my neighbour is Makwiranzou and he supports the CCC, I will know that because they will wear their bright colours of yellow and attend rallies in broad daylight.
In a normal situation where political maturity rules, there would not be any problem with that because we would greet each other as neighbours and wish each other well in our different choices of political leaders.
Zimbabwe is not politically mature because violence, intolerance, and every wrong thing defines our politics.
Why then do we pretend that everything is alright? Why do politicians continue to expose people to violence by not being secretive about who supports their party and who is going to vote for their party?
It becomes a public secret who supports which party and who is going to vote for which party.
As I said earlier, under normal and mature circumstances there is nothing wrong with that, but our situation is different. We announce, not in so many words that we belong to a certain party, and this risks our lives and our homes. Some have had their homes burnt to ashes because they actively supported a party.
Am I suggesting that the right to associate with a party and freely so should be violated? By no means. What I am saying is that we need to understand that our situation cannot afford that luxury just to let politicians brag about how many people attended their rally wearing party regalia.
Yes, it is true that this happens everywhere in the world, but this does not mean that if something is wrong, we should embrace it because it happens everywhere. I have heard this kind of excuse where, if you suggest anything different, your voice gets drowned in such rhetoric as ‘come on man, this happens everywhere, even in America…’
Come on, we might be referred to as third world, but we have brains.
We can analyse the peculiarities of our situations and make home grown decisions that carry us.
If we were serious about the lives of our people as politicians, we would think seriously about the safety of our people.
This might sound unrealistic but, in my opinion, we do need to make the secret ballot system translate to safety in terms of the general populace.
This can be achieved by banning party regalia and making it illegal to create any.
For everyone’s good, no one should be used by politicians as optics because this risks their lives.
We claim that we are a secret ballot country but the only time one is not allowed to wear party regalia is on the day of voting when they are on the queue.
That is shameful hypocrisy because even as we pretend that my vote is my secret, people in the neighbourhood know who you vote for and if violence erupts you become a victim.
They do not just kill randomly or burn houses randomly, no. They know who supports who and who attended which rally wearing what and chanting which slogans.
Why do we pretend at polling station queues that it’s a secret who we vote for?
We need to be serious and party regalia and public membership should be regulated by law. Rallies and the way they are conducted needs the law.
I am not talking here about the law to protect a certain party, no. I am talking about laws to protect the citizen and bring sanity and integrity to our politics.
*Bhekilizwe Bernard Ndlovu’s training is in human resources training, development and transformation, behavioural change, applied drama, personal mastery, and mental fitness. He works for a Zimbabwean company as human capital executive, while also doing a PhD with Wits University where he looks at violent strikes in the South African workplace as a researcher. Ndlovu worked as a human resources manager for several blue-chip companies in Zimbabwe and still takes keen interest in the affairs of people and performance management. He can be contacted on [email protected]
