Cathy Buckle's Weekly Letter from Zimbabwe !

WHO GETS TO COUNT?

Dear Family and Friends,

An air of quiet anger has settled over Zimbabwe in the past week as people have come to terms with the reality of what happened to opposition and civic society leaders at the hands of police. Those beatings followed bythe refusal to allow two victims to leave the country for specialist medical treatment and then the assault with iron bars of an oppositionspokesman just increased the anger and disgust. Ordinary people are bitter, they say they shop in the same stores as the police, they live in the same neighbourhoods and streets as the police and find it incomprehensible that the up holders of law and order could have done such things. For the last seven years police have largely turned a bind eye to war veterans and government supporters inflicting bodily harm. They excused their inaction by saying: "it is political." That was one thing but this now is a different matter altogether. There is a distinct feeling of tension in the streets but also an air of expectation. People are waiting for something to happen knowing that things are very close to coming to a head.

Yesterday Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube, clutching a brown bible, spoke passionately about what has to happen next in Zimbabwe. "We must be ready to stand, even in front of blazing guns," he said, ''I am ready to stand in front." The Archbishop described himself and the people of Zimbabwe as cowards and said:' if we gather a crowd of 20,000, the government will not use its guns.'' No one in their right minds would describe Archbishop Ncube as a coward - for seven years he has not been silenced and has stood as a bright light in the darkness -for believers and non believers, for mothers and children, for the beaten and brutalized and for the poor, desperate and hungry people who are dying out of sight of the cameras and world headlines.

Even as we Zimbabweans wait for the unknown, we pray that what ever will lead to an election and not to bullets, bombs and bodies. We have begun asking the questions that so desperately need answering. how do we go to a truly free and fair election? What happens to the hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans who have been stripped of their right to vote because, not them, but their parents were born outside of Zimbabwe? What happens to the three or four million Zimbabweans in political or economic exile in a score of countries around the world - how do they exercise their right to vote? With 80% of the population unemployed and hungry, how do we stop vote buying, with sugar, cooking oil, maize meal or just dirty banknotes? What happens to the utterly shambolic state of the voters roll, to the government control over every aspect of elections? What about the hundreds of thousands of people who do not have identity documents or passports because the Registrar General stopped work some months ago saying there was no money? What about the estimated 300 000 people displaced during farm seizures and the 700 000 people internally displaced after Operation Murambatsvina - most are no longer in their home and voting constituencies? How do we stop the intimidation, threats and violence that

invariably shadows the campaign rallies. And, even if all these issues could be satisfactorily resolved - who gets to count the votes, I mean to really, honestly, truthfully count the votes?

There are only eleven months until the scheduled March 2008 Presidential elections. Zimbabweans at home and abroad should already be working night and day for the path that will lead us to a truly free and fair election. Out here, in the dusty villages, the Zanu PF meetings at which attendance is compulsory, have already started. Propaganda and rhetoric aside, the clock is ticking.

Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Copyright cathy buckle 24 March 2007http://africantears.netfirms.comMy books: "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears" are available fromorders@africabookcentre.com