Kamala Harris is Democrats VP running mate, another milestone - where USA progress we in Zimbabwe regress W Mukori

 Many people have made a big song and dance about how California Senator Kamala Harris “is the first woman of colour to be on the presidential election ticket of a major political party in America!” You know what they are right, it is an important milestone to show how far women and people of colour have come. 

I happily joined in the celebration with a tune of my own and did a double shuffle jig. Dancing is dancing; even if it is dirty dancing! 

There have been many hard fought battles to get Kamala Harris on the presidential ticket. One notable battle was the one, 100 years ago this month, culminating in the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States of America’s Constitution. 

Passed by US Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted American women the right to vote.

“Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920,” commented a US Government source.

In Zimbabwe the country had universal suffrage when it attained her independence in 1980, before that only the whites had the right to vote. The country has never ever held free, fair and credible elections and so black Zimbabweans are yet to exercise their right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country by casting their first free vote. 

Before independence the clarion call was “One man! One vote!” It was a compelling and unifying call the oppressed and exploited black majority could not resist and the nation rallied behind Zanu PF, led by the late Robert Mugabe, and PF Zapu led by the late Dr Joshua Nkomo.

However, long before the goal of black majority rule was attain it was already clear that both Zanu PF and PF Zapu had already abandoned ‘One man! One vote!’ in favour of a one-party dictatorship. Each party hoped to emerge the dominant party and attempts to unify the two came to nothing. 

In the 1980 elections, which should have been the country’s first democratic elections, Robert Mugabe deployed many of his Zanu PF freedom fighters whose message to the electorate was that if Zanu PF failed to win the elections the civil war would continue. The freedom fighters should have been in the assembly points as agreed. The people voted to end the war; what else could they do! 

If anyone thought Zanu PF’s threat to use violence to win the 1980 elections was just political rhetoric, this was settled by the events of the 1983 to 1987 Gukurahundi. Zanu PF used the national army to crash Dr Nkomo and PF Zapu. The massacre finally stopped after Dr Nkomo agreed to dissolve his party and join Zanu PF. Mugabe got what he wanted, a de facto one-party dictatorship.

Zanu PF has blatantly rigged the elections and denied the people a meaningful say in the governance of the country for the last 40 years and counting. The party has argued that it was the only party competent to rule and could be trusted to safe guard the independence and sovereignty of Zimbabwe. 

Instead of open debate, democratic competition and regime change been seen as healthy and necessary for a free and vibrant democratic nation; Zanu PF banished them as seed of disunity and division. Those seeking regime change were labeled enemies of the state and treated accordingly. 

In November 2017 Mnangagwa toppled his former Zanu PF boss, Robert Mugabe, in a military coup. He declared Zimbabwe a “new dispensation, a Second Republic” and promised to root out corruption and to hold free, fair and credible elections. This was a public acknowledgement that the first republic led by Mugabe had failed to honour its promises of delivering economic prosperity and uphold human freedoms and rights, including the right to free elections and even the right to life. 

A few dismissed Mnangagwa’s overture with the contempt it rightly deserved, since he had been Mugabe’s chief enforcer all along. Indeed, it was Mnangagwa who had spearheaded the blatant cheating and wanton violence in the 2008 elections to keep Mugabe in power although Zanu PF had lost the elections. Still a number of Zimbabweans wanted to give him a chance! 

The first big surprise was that he did nothing to end the wholesale looting of Marange and Chiadzwa diamonds. Next, he did not implement even one token democratic reform to ensure free, fair and credible elections. The promissory note of free and meaningful vote turned out to be just as worthless under the Second Republic as it was during the First Republic!

"It is most unfortunate when men of cloth begin to use the pulpit to advance a nefarious agenda for detractors of our country. Those who want to enter the political realm are welcome to do so,” said Mnangagwa on Tuesday.

"They must come out and form political parties. As Zanu-PF, we are ready for the 2023 elections. We are a people's party, a party that believes in unity, love, peace and in championing development.

"We fought for the empowerment of our people. Zanu-PF is a party that fought for democracy, upholds constitutionalism and the rule of law. Those that choose otherwise will be exposed and rejected.”

Mnangagwa was responding the growing public unrest over Zanu PF’s failure to revive the country’s collapsed economy, to end rampant corruption and it failure contain corona virus pandemic. In its determined effort to hide its blundering incompetence in the handling of the pandemic the regime has not been testing and tracking the virus; this has allowed the virus to spread far and wide. And to silence criticism and dissent the regime has resorted to the use of violence repression.

America’s 19th Amendment granted women, a segment of society that had been left out until then, the right to vote. That is progress. 

Zimbabwe’s independence was supposed to extend the freedoms and rights including the right to vote from the white minority to the black majority. What actually happened is that we all, blacks and whites, got a promissory note promising us all the freedoms and human rights but Zanu PF had no intention to honour any of the promises. That is not progress but regression!