If Only Kids Could Vote

"If only kids could vote then Mugabe would have been really beaten", says my partner's 11 year old child. "They should let us vote because there are more kids than adults. All my friends at schools want MDC to win", she continues. Asked why her and her school mates don't like the old man she replies “He’s boring and old. He needs to go.” Radical common sense has now become common currency in Zimbabwe. Even amongst teacher-less school children.

The waiting game has infected our social lives. Today’s House of Hunger Poetry Slam was maybe more interesting for its crowd than its performers as rowdy audience members shouted election-related comments. The three year-old live poetry competition at Harare’s Book Café had young, angry, subversive poets performing to our town’s impatient residents. Each time the crowd disagreed with points awarded to a poet someone would cry out that the score was rigged. Others shout out that the judge in question is from ZEC, Zimbabwe’s unpopular electoral commission. And when it comes to the final round of poetry performances the crowd unilaterally decide it’s a ‘run off’, a reference to the probable second round of voting between Mugabe  and Tsvangirai. Harare is waiting. So in the meantime all we have from the election is freedom to use its jargon. 

This is Comrade Fatso's Daily Blog during the Zimbabwe Election period.

See www.comradefatso.vox.com

For Daily Election Blogs by other MAGAMBA! poets and activists see www.myspace.com/magamba