Grace Mutandwa

Pisa in Bikisa

The light from the candle on the trestle table catches Tobias’ face, casting Rembrandtesque upward shadows from his features. A big-eared bug lights on his shoulder, but Tobias is concentrating so deeply on the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission manual that he doesn’t notice the creature, which appears to be peering down to study the impenetrably bureaucratic guidance too.

Tobias inhales.

“Now we can open the seals on the ballot boxes. But first I must warn our foreign observer from the British Embassy that once I break these seals you cannot leave until the counting is fully complete.”

I nod. Some fiddling with keys and sealing wax; and suddenly a pile of ballot papers pours onto the table. Slumbering polling officers spring to life and grab ballots chaotically, shouting out and flinging papers at each other:

“ZANU-PF!”

“Makoni!”

“Tsvangirai!”

Tobias tries to referee the frenzy and finally persuades his colleagues to collaborate in producing three piles, one for each of Zimbabwe’s presidential candidates. I am so captivated I find I’m holding my breath. The piles take shape. One is just a few papers; the second is a decent pile, about as tall as a doughnut. The third is a tottering, towering Pisa of papers.

I am in a tiny place called Bikisa, deep in rural Masvingo, where Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party has won every election that has ever been held. (Ian Smith did not believe in elections for black folk). So my assumption is that the big pile is Mugabe’s.

But I am wrong. The presiding officer asks for the votes to be counted. The smallest pile is Simba Makoni’s – 11 votes. The middling pile is Mugabe’s – 44 votes. Amazingly, incredibly, the Pisa-pile belongs to Morgan Tsvangirai. The polling officer gets tongue-tied at ‘one hundred and twenty-seven’ and loses count. She sighs desperately and starts again. 167. Tsvangirai has won with about three-quarters of the vote.

I force myself to keep breathing steadily; fainting at this point would not become an officer of Her Majesty’s Government. Though I suppose I could plead hunger. Anticipating that I would be locked into the count for hours, my bag is full of chocolate and other essential rations, but I feel too self-conscious to stuff my face while this little piece of history is happening right in front of me.

Bikisa, of course, is only one of 9,400 polling stations. So my result is just one small head of mealie in a very big field. But it’s suggestive, and as I travel round other polling stations and speak to British Embassy and DFID colleagues in remote parts of every province, it’s the same story. Tsvangirai has done well and his Movement for Democratic Change has made gains in areas where its activists used to be beaten for wearing a party t-shirt.

Tobias, like a million other Zimbabweans is a decent and principled professional, who has done his job scrupulously and well. This election may be fiddled, but not by him. By the time he releases me it’s the early hours of Sunday morning. The Milky Way stretches over me. Weakened by lack of chocolate I am overcome by whimsy – I see a starry pathway to infinity paved with hope and new possibility. Definitely time to take a breath and eat some chocolate. Not, sadly, a Milky Way.

A policeman sidles up and whispers in my ear:

“Mr Philip, we are so pleased you are here, but do you really think there is hope?”

Tonight the answer is yes. Tomorrow, who knows? Will they ever dare to release these results? How does a country that has only ever transitioned by violence accept peaceful change? Next week’s questions. Now to bed.

Posted at 12:53 07 April 2008 by Philip Barclay  |  Comments[5]