Mashonaland provinces. From the time the MDC was formed, it became a constructed reality that rural areas were Zanu (PF) territories while urban areas were for the former. The media is equally culpable for perpetuating this illusion.
Directly put, it is a myth to classify some areas as Zanu (PF) strongholds in terms of voting numbers. That party has no strongholds, far from it. What, in fact, enjoys strongholds is a culture of fear among the voting population.
At the outset it is important to point out that the fact that a person votes for you does not necessarily mean that they support you. Right from 1980, Zimbabwean elections have been decided on the basis of fear, and fear is what has entrenched the belief that Zanu (PF) enjoys overwhelming support in some areas. Since fear is the thing that has frog-marched people to polling stations, voters have, to a very large extent, not been making free choices.
When a ceasefire was declared in 1979 between Rhodesian and guerrilla forces, and a general election was announced, Zanu (PF) used intimidation to coerce people into voting for it. I was still young then, but I remember joining my father on our small FM radio in the then Hartley (now Chegutu) to listen to the news when Robert Mugabe threatened that Zanu’s armed wing would go back to the bush if people’s will was “subverted”.
Granted, back then, the main forces to reckon with were Zanu, led by Mugabe, and Zapu, led by Joshua Nkomo. I will acknowledge that it was clear, on tribal lines, that Zanu was the numerically dominant party.
Zapu was mostly concentrated in Matabeleland and the Midlands, with small pockets in areas like Mashonaland West. Zanu had allegiance in Mashonaland, parts of the Midlands, Manicaland and Masvingo.
In that regard, Zanu would always win, considering the ethnic statistics and emotional rather than rational attachment to a particular party. But even then, it would always be wrong to say the votes that Zanu got were what the party deserved, given the fact that the threat of a renewed war loomed large in the minds of Zimbabwean-Rhodesians.
Then came the tribal clashes between former Zanla and Zapu’s Zipra fighters who had been integrated into the new majority army shortly after independence. This, of course, was followed by Gukurahundi, when more than 20,000 innocent civilians were killed in an attempt to sniff out a small band of dissidents.
The unmistakable message that came out of these disturbances was: Big Brother is always watching, so be careful! Thus, when we went for the next round of “majority rule” elections in 1985, people still lived in fear, and voted in fear. They had seen enough of what the now renamed Zanu (PF) was capable of doing, and were not prepared to vote in a process that would bring back the blanket of terror. Needless to say, Zapu had shrunk into a more-or-less regional party mostly confined to Matabeleland because the people had been taught—and were still receiving harsh lessons—about what it meant not to support Zanu (PF).
That was the time when the myth of Zanu (PF) strongholds gained a significant profile. Increasingly, as we inched towards the 1990 polls, the fable of Zanu (PF) dominance gained height. This was helped by the fact that Joshua Nkomo and his party were blistered into the 1987 Unity Accord by their counterparts in Zanu (PF).
In this sense, the accord was itself a product of fear that left voters with no choice but to snowball the myth of a Titanic Zanu (PF).
Needless to say, save for a lame attempt by Edgar Tekere and his Zimbabwe Unity Movement in 1990, and the Chipinge-based Zanu–Ndonga, Zanu (PF) no longer had any competitor, thanks to its fear campaign.
By this time, Zimbabwe had virtually descended into a de facto one-party state. If USSR’s Mikhail Gorbachev had not decided to adopt the history-changing perestroika and slackened on his communist march, Zimbabwe would, by 1990, have turned into a legal one-party state.
Now we hear that Zanu (PF) enjoys massive support in this and that province. That’s a total lie! The people of Muzarabani, for example, might once again overwhelmingly vote for the party in the next election, but that does not mean they support it. While they have been used to beating up political opponents in the past, they are afraid that voting otherwise would bring the sword down on them. So, they would vote from fear, not choice.
Over the years, rural voters have been told that there are machines that detect how they would have voted. Many thousands have been tortured, raped and maimed and some now live as refugees in their own country. They are unsettled about the possibility of yester-year’s violent campaigns. They are fearful voters, not Zanu (PF) supporters, and they do not constitute strongholds. – For feedback, please write to majonitt@gmail.com
Post published in: News