Zimbabwe and the diaspora vote
July 2016; members of Zimbabwe’s diaspora protest against Robert Mugabe in Johannesburg. Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee / Groundup
Zimbabwe is a constant joke, I tell you. Nothing illustrates our hilarity more than the hullabaloo surrounding the so-called diaspora vote.
The so-called President of the so-called republic has announced that there will be NO diaspora vote, and embassy voting will be limited, as usual, to government employees on national duty.
Any other citizens? Screw your constitutional rights, because “we don’t have the resources.”
“We are not there yet in terms of resources, we do not have the resources to make sure that you vote from where you are. Voting won’t take you 10 minutes, so if you want to vote, just come home and in less than 10 minutes you will have finished voting and go back to your work.”
Bullshit. You could raise $1m from Zimbabwe’s diaspora before dinner to fund the diaspora vote, if you wanted to. It’s not a lack of resources that plagues us, it’s a lack of political will from ZANU-PF’s military junta.
New dispensation, indeed.
There are anything from three to five million Zimbabweans abroad, so if I just say two million are of voting age, divided into one million dollars before dinner, that equals a hypothetical fifty cents per hypothetical voter. And that’s just before dinner, tonight.
And also, how interesting is it that the so-called President of the so-called republic has pronounced that it will not happen, even after the Constitutional Court has kicked the can down the road and reserved judgement on the matter?
Or is that judgement being released in ten years or something? It wouldn’t surprise me.
And then I hear shit like “… just come home and vote …” from a fellow citizen. I find this very strange – baffling, even.
If you’re comfortable with MY rights (which are constitutionally protected by the way) being so easily abridged, what makes you think that YOU have any rights at all?
Today, It’s my right to vote being infringed upon, and you say haaa just come home and vote, man, (because we all have $1200 lying around of course).
Yet tomorrow, you’ll get arrested for your journalism, or have your house demolished, or even for something stupid like taxes or whatever or at a roadblock and the cops or soldiers may beat your ass, then you’ll come crying to me for support!
Listen – if ANY Zimbabwean has no rights, then NO Zimbabwean has any rights.
Today you’ll say “Joe come home and vote, what constitution what ConCourt blah blah,” yet tomorrow you’ll be whining about how the same constitution guarantees you the right to clean water, and then wonder why there’s nobody there to speak up for your rights.
This is, of course, for the ordinary citizens who have taken up this no-diaspora-vote mantra.
I’m not talking to the ED / ZANU political operatives – like I said before, those can feck off forever.
I don’t argue anymore; I just swear.
