Of Voting and Youth in Zimbabwe

I was first eligible to vote in June 2000. That was the year of the famous constitutional referendum in Zimbabwe. People came to our high school and took us through the document. Most of it went over our heads, we had serious exams coming that November, exams that would determine whether or not we made it to university. I was still 17 when people voted anyway, in February of that year.

But in the same year, June 24-25, a week after my 18th birthday, I could have voted in the parly elections. It didn’t occur to me to register, I was a mere student. My participation was limited to keeping a tally all night of MDC vs ZANU PF seats, this at the behest of my late maternal uncle Sekuru Blessing, MHDSRIP, who had keen interest in politics (he was the artist responsible for Manica Post’s Wasu cartoon). We shared a love for tea, bottomless preferably. And so as an obedient Mzaya (niece) I kept the tally, enduring the monotonous voice of one Tobaiwa (Mudede)as he announced results throughout the night on ZTV. I also kept the tea flowing in sekuru’s lounge at the lecturer’s residence of the teachers college in Mutare. By early morning it was clear the race was tight and the MDC would get a decent share, but not majority. The whole college vibrated with shouts of dissatisfaction and disappointment when the final results were announced. It was then that I suspected politics mattered.

And so late 2001 found my roommate and I, daughters of teachers, walking to the Paddonhurst shopping center in Bulawayo with the intent to register to vote in the March 2002 presidential election. The bored station officer told us in simple English to go (back home) to Harare. We could barely afford the ride to go to campus, never mind Harare, so we shrugged it off, and went back to our claustrophobia inducing one room lodgings to make mealie meal porridge with insufficient sugar for lunch.

March 2005 parly elections and November 2005 senate elections came and went. I had exams and a new job, respectively, on those occasions. (Final year exams had been in May 2005 so I was still — not home — in Bulawayo, thinking in other terms at NUST.)They started me off on a 10 million dollar salary and my pay slip was more important than a senate I didn’t understand anyway. Me, I was gonna be a kick-ass investment analyst, do CFA, marry a graduate and get many loans.

It was the 2008 harmonized election that shook us up. I say us because I vividly remember gathering around a colleagues' desk in our corporate finance department office and discussing at length the likely scenarios - yet another use for permutations and combinations learnt in form 4, now that one Simba Makoni, of Mavambo (bright yellow) had thrown his hat in the ring. After several grocery trips to Mozambique from late 2007 as a newly married woman, the novelty of travel had worn off and I was more than ready for a fresh face in leadership. We conspired to register to vote with some few close friends, but we all faced challenges at every point we went to; they were out of stationery here, they referred us there, they needed more proof of residence everywhere and we were not yet homeowners. Fatigue set in. We reasoned that ALL of us had been inspired, so a few of us not voting would be okay. Surely others would usher in a new Zimbabwe? We were wrong.

The results of March 2008 took long coming. We shared jokes via email (most of us had not started using Facebook seriously) with the punchline ‘meticulous verification’ — a term that was used to explain the delay. We became ardent readers of the Zimbabwe Situation, an online portal that was just crowdsourced text on a dull grey background, but potent. We started to patronize news we had never cared for. And still the results did not come.

During that last month in May 2008 I was headhunted by a 'local financial holdings company’. I put in my resignation due to my failure to resist an offer of 34 million per month (twice my current job salary) and the prospects of driving a brand new Mazda 3 (vs. the Nissan Almeras I was being refused at present employer). These were the things that concerned me at 26, oblivious of the occurrences leading to June 27. All I heard was that that yellow party had cost us.

I can never forget the period from June 2008 to mid 2009. As an investment analyst I was required to keep track of several markets, in the main equities, fixed income,commodities. Things changed daily due to inflation . I started to hate my job, especially when "your governor" — the man then at the helm of the Reserve Bank called himself — would make an announcement and everything went haywire and clients wanted reports,updates, forecasts. But also we congregated dailywith workmates and conversed in hush tones about the atrocities that we heard were happening around us, the kidnappings, the signing of the GPA and what it would mean for our portfolios and our lives. We also shared regret that we had not done more in the first election, and vowed to be present, whatever the cost, in 2013.

I made good on that vow in July 2013. It was a cold day but we braved it with some friends, and voted for someone. A couple of youths offered themselves up to run as MPs but didn’t make it, but at least they tried. Well one tried, the other attempted to rig his way in.

When I wrote all the above on a Facebook post in late June last year I concluded:

I am left with one last opportunity to vote as a youth. I will use it, in spite of the poor quality candidates and their baggage, but I have since accepted that change comes in stages. Line upon line and precept upon precept. Pore pore. In each of those stages there are people who do catalyze certain elements and all of them matter, the firebrands, the extremists, the opportunists, the critics, the analysts. All of them contribute.

I celebrated my 35th two weeks back, this was supposed to be part of a very long post but I later decided I'd rather put most of the material in a memoir work someday. I have no regrets about my youth (15-35years), if anything I am amongst the fortunate young Zimbabweans who live a simple decent life. I feel daily for those who have never known what a job is, not because they are lazy, but they can't find one and their entry level opportunities are occupied by mothers and fathers with fees to pay. I also feel for the disoriented that are strongly inclined to apathy because what is there to vote for really when they are all the same? But, perhaps, one last push?

We have a serious problem if the literate among us only vote for the first time aged 31. I know too many who have never voted before and are 40 or close. Let the young ones emerge because some of us will not be youth in 2023, we will be nearer, ahem, presidential age. Some that are 13 now will be 18. Hopefully we will orient them better than we were oriented. For we have stories of how the past 20 years have impacted us as youth and they are many and varied, stories of those that have remained since that fateful day in November 1997.

Then I did not know or forsee the changes in the political landscape that would occur, again in November, exactly 20 years on when Mugabe would resign from his role as President of Zimbabwe, albeit with an Asante Sana moment in between. I did not know that three months later, we would lose Tsvangirayi, the MDC President and the only man to have been courageous enough to stand up to Mugabe in our time and lead the strongest challenge against the ruling party, ZANU PF. I had also not made a concrete decision to contest in the 2018 elections as an independent candidate for council in the constituency I’ve resided in for the past twelve years, though I was certain about 2023.

I had been slowly working on a collection of fictional short stories, maybe combine them into a memoir inspired by true events for release on 14 November 2017, the 20th anniversary of a day that signaled a significant change in the life trajectories of those of us who were youth then. The very next day when the coup /military intervention/whatever of 15 November 2017 occurred changed many things, and I will hold on to my writings so that I can hopefully document a complete cycle inside 21 years as I see it. The first line in my draft reads as follows: My entire youth coincided with the demise of the Zimbabwean economy. (I hope it will not be edited out!)

I’d always wanted to serve in a public position because I believe that building Zimbabwe from the bottom up would require progressive Zimbabweans. However, I was not interested in doing so before the age of 40 because I felt I’d waste my best years with the way our politics are/were organized. In fact, in conversation with close family and friends, the thought was that "unopera" that politics in Zim would drain you unnecessarily and take more than it gave you.

Sometime in the last week of December, I sent my husband a WhatsApp message venting about how I was tired, tayad of including time to fetch water every other day in my weekly plan because council water was toxic. My 8 year old son has never drunk tap water in Harare. My Toyota Platz car boot has been ruined by collecting clean water after hours, additional work I detest after ‘hustling’ in my small business. I have a baby whom I cannot confidently bath in that sludge, and I ensure no one drinks that water so we get it from a borehole tap 1km away. (Please note I don’t walk there, I drive and fetch water with my car, wearing shades, sporting a pedicure and possessing a Master’s degree in Development Finance from a reputable business school!)All this in urban Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe, in the 21st century. I said to him I am running for this thing because clean water and just basics! So many obvious things in other countries are missing, and the quality of leadership included.

I also hope that after these year’s harmonized elections, I can live in a better Zimbabwe. I am tired of living in a crisis mode where nothing works.

My belief is that once the basics are in place, it will take us very little time to build the Zimbabwe we want. Our people are reputed for their work ethic and we have brilliant pedigree across the world. The digital age presents a great opportunity for us as a nation. We can catch up on artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of things, Blockchain, 3D printing, wireless power and build smart, inclusive, regenerative cities. Some have already on started on these but the present ‘crisis mode’ environment does not allow them to scale or flourish. Our nation has many young, energetic people who number one desire is jobs — because we are raised to know the value of work and earning an honest dollar. We can convert our high literacy to something meaningful. We can leverage all our resources, people included.

It is my hope that we can salvage time and shift the path of our nation. For many the damage is done but I am, in classic Zimbabwean manner; full of faith that in the next few years we can have a normal country. It is my hope that all of us young people will come out to vote and be co-creators of our destiny and secure the rest our parents and grandparents who have suffered for us deserve and need. That we can gift our children a country they can proudly call home, and participate in the global economy as equals and contributors rather than consumers. It is my hope that we will realize that it is time for us to take charge. We are, indeed, the ones that we have been waiting for.