What can the elections process in Zimbabwe teach the West?
“Nothing” you say? I beg to differ.
The Zimbabwe elections have several ingredients to them that the West would be wise to learn from and model after:

1) Don’t confuse democracy with capitalism: democracy brings corruption

As we are on the verge of witnessing potential democracy in action in Zim, we also see blatant capitalsim taking place in the food stands and market for bread; fluctuating prices every second; 7mil to 20mil by the time it takes you to walk to the checkout queue…or is it?
Evidence that capitalism and democracy are synonymous is circumstantial at best, and we must not make the mistake of assuming democracy = capitalistic marketplaces. From Zim (and the blatant price rigging of bread) to a more subtle yet equally (if not more so) deviant commodities trading up and downs during the U.S. election year.
Someone is making money in a corrupt fashion; and its not capitalism…shall we instead say corruptibility perhaps?….a key component to democracy, of course…

2) Stick with the Truth:

One of the detestable things about Western politics is the propensity of political figures to exaggerate, make false claims, take credit for things that aren’t theirs and prophetically speak in victorious terms throughout the campaign and elections process.
Zim’s answer? A Mugabe spokesperson said it best, on claiming something not yet proven to be true: “it would be called a coup d’etat and we all know how coups are handled.”
This is poetic. Imagine, if western politicians were held to the same standard? Every single one would be held for treason, every single one would be guilty of figurative “coup d’etat” and would be summarily handled; which would be even better if they were handled by the means insinuated by the spokesperson quoted above: take them out back, surround them with military artillery vehicles and blast the holy shyte out of them…this would truly shape up Western politics a bit, and we wouldn’t have to hear any more false and empty claims of “victory” spewing out of the mouths of these “public servants”…

3) Loyalty:

“We will serve no one else,” claims Mugabe’s cabinet and advisers in the event of a loss of elections.
This sort of loyalty can be found where in the west? Um, nowhere.
In fact, in western culture, perhaps we could use a little more TIA attitude than CYA.
As soon as something goes wrong in the West, there is always someone to blame, always a fall guy, always a flip-flop of policy or position; its disgusting.
What we see in Zim however, is a loyalty unto death attitude. An attitude that we will bring death to us before flipping sides; something unheard of in the West, where people tend to believe death will never come for them, let alone ever make a commitment that would ever lead them to death…

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 8:37 am and is filed under Front. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.