Zimpapers Logo

Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

AS the clock silently but relentlessly ticks away, Zimbabweans at home and those sojourning abroad are silently, but raring to go for next year’s harmonised elections with Government authorities here urging diasporans to return home in their numbers and register a decider on who and from which party will next usher our free and independent state into a brave new future.

It therefore behoves on every uninverted patriot and eligible voter to ensure that the harmonised elections pass with distinction the litmus electoral test of free and fair elections.

To that extent, Zimbabweans should seriously take heed of President Mnangagwa’s call on Wednesday on those in political leadership to practice tolerance in the run-up to the elections.

The President said, when delivering the State of the Nation Address during the official opening of the New Parliament Building in Mt Hampden, that politicians should lead in promoting peace and tranquillity ahead of the poles.

It is common knowledge that intimidation and political violence in the run-up and/or during voting processes are always wont to tarnish the image of both the elections and a country holding them.

It also becomes imperative, in this communicologist’s humble opinion, for Zimbabweans permanently resident at home to be alert, beware and in those respects remain insular to any inimical influence by Zimbabweans returning home from the diaspora as some among them might be bearers of disfunctional and divisive propaganda they carry from their host masters and which are inimical to the peace, tranquility and national unity — values essential in underpinning national development in our motherland.

It is known, for instance, that some members of opposition political parties here but who live in the diaspora, especially in the West, were and probably still are supportive of illegal economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies with the primary objective of removing the incumbent Zanu-PF from power as punishment for introducing the land reform soon after independence in 1980 to reunite our people — courtesy of the victorious armed revolution — with land arbitrarily taken away from them by white settler farmers in colonial Rhodesia.

No one should rule out the possibility that some of the diasporans coming home to register for elections might be hell-bent on casting negative votes against the ruling party on behalf of its rival political parties.

It is obviously also incumbent upon those in power right now to ensure that any former senior employees in the previous government who may have left the country in a huff on being voted out bears a clean slate insofar as externalisation of large sums of money abroad prior to the current, Second Republic Government.

Such people might have lived lavishly on the unrepatriated resource badly needed for development back home here and might apologise for having left the country as a way of seeking acceptance by those who stayed on here at home.

But who knows, for sure, that such returnees are not backed by Zimbabwe’s external enemies to pass a death knell vote against Zanu-PF in the forthcoming elections.

Meanwhile, Zimbabweans ought also to be aware of what clearly seems to be a desire by the US, after its sanctions failed to cause fatal damage to the Zanu-PF Government as intended through the illegal embargo.

Last week the Voice of America, a mouthpiece of the US government, broadcast a statement about the way that country conducts its elections.

Diasporan votes were accepted with voting at home staggered to allow some people to cast their ballots in advance of the voting date as a way of overcoming the effects of long queues.

It therefore, became known before the elections were concluded, which political party was leading.

The broadcaster said that Zimbabweans in America, one representing Shona speakers and the other on behalf of Ndebele speakers, would repeat the broadcast in their home languages.

No one at the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission could be reached yesterday for comment before going to press to say whether Zimbabwe was amenable to America’s voting systems.

But why were Zimbabweans and no other foreign nationals in America, specifically chosen to repeat the same broadcast if the hidden agenda was, and is not, one intended to influence our country to adopt a voting system that is a carbon copy of America’s.

This writer’s mind boggles.