Rural voters speak on historic poll
ONLY a week before Zimbabwe’s harmonised elections, voters in some of Zimbabwe’s rural outskirts are enjoying a period of unprecedented peace and calmness, as violent encounters that characterised some of the country’s past elections seem to have died with the old order.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has used almost every function and rally to preach the gospel of tolerance and on the evidence of an incident free campaign period, his message seems to have hit the right chord with peace loving Zimbabweans.
Sunday News
last week went to rural Umzingwane District in Matabeleland South to see whether the country’s rural areas, so often reported to be the scene of bloody encounters between political opponents in the past, have been truly violence free.
Violet Tshuma
(89)
said although memory now failed her because of her advanced age, she considered this year’s poll as peaceful she has ever participated in. She said although she could not remember the year in which she had first voted in a democratic Zimbabwe, she remembered the late VicePresident Joshua Nkomo as the defining figure of when political activists first knocked on her door and begged for her vote.
“I’m old now and I can’t tell you much. I don’t even remember the year in which I first voted but all I remember is that this was during the time of Joshua Nkomo. But I’m proud to be taking part in this election which is the most peaceful even though memory fails me now. I’m also proud to have raised children that are aware of the fact that voting is a right that they have to acknowledge and use,” Mrs Tshuma said.
Although she is mostly stuck to a chair from where
her children tend to her, Mrs Tshuma said she was determined to cast her vote on 30 July, as she felt her tick on the ballot would go a long way in honouring the memory of her late husband, a colonial era political activist.
“The man who was head of this house was also a politician and helped during the liberation struggle. So he made his sacrifice and if he were alive today he would be proud of the way that his own children and grandchildren seem to be utilising their right to vote wisely,” Mrs Tshuma said.
Mrs Tshuma was flanked by her son, Mr Jonny Tshuma (62), who unlike her mother vividly remembers the 1980 election that ushered in black majority rule.