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Eyewitness account of Zimbabwean elections

Published Apr 6, 2005 4:09 PM

Following are excerpts from remarks by Omowale Clay from the Brooklyn-based December 12 Move ment organization on the April 1 broadcast of the Pacifica-based radio show “Democracy Now!” hosted by Amy Goodman. This segment focused on the recent elections in Zimbabwe, in which President Robert Mugabe won a significant re-election victory. Clay traveled throughout Zimbabwe before and during the elections. Go to www.democracynow.org to read entire transcript.

I am speaking to the Pacifica audience from Harare, Zimbabwe. I have been here with a December 12 International Secre tariat foreign-observer team, which was invited by the government of Zimbabwe to participate in observation of this historic election. I have been here on the ground for two weeks.

We have traveled through three major provinces and on election day we viewed over 15 constituencies in terms of different polling stations. Yesterday the people of Zimbabwe resoundingly said they will never be a colony again. Unofficial results have confirmed that Zanu-PF has won a major victory, and by all counts will capture over two-thirds of the electoral vote, which will give them the ability to restructure their constitution.

Democracy in Zimbabwe is not anything new.

For the past 25 years, democracy was brought to Zimbabwe through national liberation, armed struggle, and it was never given to the Zimbawean people. But since 1980, when the first elections took place, there have been six major parliamentary elections and three presidential elections that have taken place. So no one can teach Zimbabwe democracy.

Zimbabwe is teaching it to the African and pan-African world, as well as to the neocolonizers who are trying to re-colonize Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has over 5,700,000 registered voters. For this election there were polling stations numbering 8,256. There were 50,000 translucent voting boxes so that everyone could see the ballots that were in the boxes.

There were over 7,000 international observers on the ground here and over 203 international press crews. SADC, the Southern African Development Community, has election observers on the ground and it is important to note that Zimbabwe is the first country and the only country to hold its elections along the guidelines and principles of the SADC election law.

The question of the elections in Zim babwe is really more tied to the question of whether Bush and Blair, Britain and the United States, are able to capitalize on their plan to re-colonize Africans. We all know that the land question in Zimbabwe is why Zimbabwe is in the news.

There have been elections and corruption going on all around the Third World. Why is all the attention on Zimbabwe? Why is Tony Blair interested in the elections in Zimbabwe? Since the A1 and A2 land reform programs have been instituted, 14,955,967 acres of land have been returned to over 138,235 households in Zimbabwe, and this is historic. Never in the history of the African world has there been a mass transfer of land, wealth, the real wealth of the people been transferred back to the households. So this is what the real issue is in Zimbabwe.