Grace Mutandwa

Respect for life is invaluable

I found myself recently wishing we had the gift of prescience.

If we knew what the future held in store for us we would be better prepared to deal with some of the problems that face us today.

We would know whom to vote for with certainty. We would know the consequences of some of our decisions. We would know when trouble was headed our way and we would avoid it.

Being helpless is debilitating. Having no control over your present or future is a frightening thing. You go to work and in a normal society you expect that your family will be safe at home and that you will also safely re-join them after work.

A week ago I was torn up because one of my aunts visited some relatives in the capital and found out they had not had a proper meal in two weeks. They were surviving on boiled sweet potatoes and avocadoes.

On visiting yet another branch of the family, she found they too were existing on the same diet. They had for two months failed to get cornmeal to make our staple sadza (thick porridge).

In the extended family system we share what we can get. It is painful to see your relatives suffer. It is even more so, when you yourself cannot offer any help. Our earnings belong to the whole family and its various extensions.

Grappling with a lack of adequate food is one thing, but being faced head on with the brutality visited on one's members of  family is another.

I am sure someone somewhere figured that if you want to break a person's spirit, you burn their home and beat them senseless. You do not stop there - you burn their grain and cause whatever harm you can to their livestock. This is what is being visited on people perceived to have voted the wrong way. But what does such senseless violence hope to achieve? Roots in families run deep. You kill or brutalise one family member and the whole family stands against you.

These are stories some people see on television but some of us have to live with. Only people who have experienced this bashing of spirits and burning of homes will fully understand what Zimbabweans who are not seen as being politically correct are going through right now.

In all this, we all still have to go to work, our children go to school if they can and carry on as if everything is normal. Friends and relatives who have lost homes, been brutalised and displaced need our strength and help to carry on but we feel sapped and at most helpless.

No, this is not a normal life. We never signed up for this. Belonging to a country must mean more than being bashed every now and then. Governance and democracy must stand for the protection of every member of society irrespective of their political affiliation.

Now is the time for everyone to realise and accept that a political rival is not an enemy. Difference of thought, perception and association is what makes a people and this is not a crime. We should embrace our diversity as a blessing that can be harnessed for the greater good.

And on the 27th of June Zimbabweans will go back to vote in the presidential run-off. My sincere hope is that we will all vote for respect for life and greater respect and understanding of our political and social diversity. A nation and a leadership without empathy is lost. We desperately need to regain our respect for life.

Posted at 10:47 09 June 2008 by Grace Mutandwa  |  Comments[1]