Democracy will only come if the electorate are educated on the true value of the right to vote!

I have come to the opposite conclusion; the bloodier the revolution the greater the chance of it spawning tyrants and not democrats. Those who reach for the gun are impatient, they do not have the time to reason nor listen to counter arguments, they want a revolution and have no time for evolution.

Whilst people like Mugabe would swear that only the gun would have brought Ian Smith to the negotiating table. It is no surprise that he now believe it is the bullet not the ballot that decides who is to rule. In fact it would be more accurate to say he has never believed in anything else.

We have to break the cycle of violence and blood shed in the name of freedom and justice. Freedom and justice are not born out of violence; only love and reason will produce freedom and justice.

The challenge before us is how to educate the masses to appreciate the vote can deliver the freedom, human dignity, economic prosperity and peace we all crave for just as it has done in all democratic nations the world over. The second thing the masses have to understand is that the vote will deliver all these things on one condition – that it is used wisely. It is not enough to vote for A and not B; one must have good reason for picking one and not the other. Having voted for a particular candidate, it is the solemn duty of the electorate to ensure that he/she delivers on their promise.

The vote is like a knife, in a skilled doctor’s hands it will give life and in a ruthless thug’s hands it will take life. In Africa the right to vote has become more a curse than a blessing because the unscrupulous leaders have granted it to an electorate whom they have done everything in their power to keep ignorant and frightened out of their wits.
It is hard enough to ask someone who has been denied his or her basis human rights, freedoms and human dignity to be patient. It is even harder to ask the same person to have to work hard up front before they get these benefits. But what makes this task near impossible is to make oneself heard over the cheap rhetoric of zealots like Malema and Mugabe offering the poor prosperity from institutionalised looting.

No individual or nation has ever prospered from looting. The mismanagement, corruption and looting by Mugabe and his cronies has turned a once prosperous nation full of promise and hope into an imperished nation. In the six year from 2002 to 2008 the nation's economy shrunk a staggering 84%. Instead of taking the responsibility for the economic collapse the regime has stepped up its brutality to silence the masses!