I AM standing by our village rubbish pit, (gomba remarara), as Yona’s pick pounds the hardened manure .
Occasionally his pick strikes a metal object and the resultant sound is quite irritating.
I caution Yona about the bad composting habits.
Rubbish to the pit should consist of organic material only.
We carefully put on one side the stubborn matter and the rubbish archaeology turns out to be quite interesting; clay pottery pieces, old metal cups, plastics, scud containers, broken down sewing machine and a piece from an oil presser.
I immediately recall the story of the sewing machine and oil presser remains.
These were donated through aspiring Member of Parliaments (MPs) in the run-ups to the 2005 and 2008 elections.
I involuntarily let go a smile at these election artefacts.
Soon we are joined by Nyakudirwa and Moyondizvo and I am denied, to my relief, the chance of relieving Yona in the pit.
I make myself useful by helping my mother organise tea for the working party.
Over tea we joke about the election artefacts we had unearthed.
I enquired about the missing 2013 artefacts and was told donations from the two main contestants were directed at youths and consisted of chicken farming inputs and scuds.
The first and only batch of the chickens did very well, were sold and revenue shared, most of it spent on scuds.
So in a way both were represented in the rubbish pit archaeology.
There is expectation for more as the clock ticks towards 2018.
One aspirant, donor redu, has already promised the local congregation free transport to the August Church Circuit conference.
From the tone of the discussions, they are mocking the donations spirit.
This is not what they expect from an aspiring leader, but all the same, they welcome the generosity of a rich fool.
The insanity that comes with elections never ceases to amaze me.
I recall my father’s one-man-one-vote sermons during my early childhood.
Back in the village and on his end-of-month visits from Mutare, he spoke eloquently about key players with strange names; ‘Hume’, ‘Pearce’, ‘Smith’ and ‘Muzorewa’.
Naturally when the war finally arrived in the village, I assumed the war was against Ian Smith and was for ‘one-man-one-vote’.
Indeed, universal adult suffrage finally arrived and Zimbabwe exercised it with gusto in 1980.
The result was emphatic, but it was also a strange and new concept that only my father had appeared to understand in our village clan in the early 1970s.
With historical hindsight I now know throughout colonial rule, the vote had been a topical issue within the white settler regime which sought to qualify franchise on race, property, income and literacy levels.
A voter had to be someone of means.
From 1896 up to 1953, voting qualifications favoured males aged over 21, who were British subjects, had property (real estate) and could read and write in English.
In reality, this meant white people.
Africans, because of land laws of that time, had no real estate and property.
When land laws later created Native Purchase Areas with title, there was consternation among whites fearing creation of an African voting bloc.
In 1951, the property qualification was raised from 75 pounds to 500 pounds.
The result was a voters’ roll that was 99 percent white.
Among early nationalists were many not opposed to qualified franchise and universal suffrage, one-man-one-vote did not become a key demand until much later.
In 1980 a prospective voter was any Zimbabwean aged 18.
Vote, as in electing rulers, is a concept alien to our political/cultural history.
There is no Shona word for it.
Fittingly we have had to create Shona terms around it, ‘vhoti/kuvhota/kuvhotera/kuvhoterwa’.
We may term it ‘sarudzo’ and equate it to ‘sarudza’, but it just does not fit.
‘Sarudza’ is a courtship concept as in the child’s play ‘Sarurawako’ or in ‘kusarudza nzungu’ as in grading nuts.
In courtship ‘kusaraudza’ is a gamble influenced by mundane issues like facial beauty, complexion and height.
In our traditions and customs, leaders were not subjected to ‘sarudza’, selection trivia.
They were identified and ordained/installed.
It was a process based on established rules, implemented by elders under the direction of the ancestral spirits.
Leaders were born leaders and our earthly task was to identify and install them when their time came.
Since the 1950s we have sought to inculcate in our societies the concept of choosing them for their earthly attributes.
These attributes usually relate to leaders’ ability to buy our vote.
Consequently, prospective leaders must have fat pockets.
They must buy scuds and donate various trinkets to ever impoverishing communities.
The rubbish pit archaeological remains attest to this trend.
The vote has been a cancer to our political systems, divisive and an albatross.
It has made us short-term planners and selfish.
A prospective MP budgets for campaign scuds and donor hand-outs.
He must have a fat pocket or be backed by some fat pockets.
Once elected, they must repay the fat pockets backers with business opportunities.
The MP has no opportunity to pursue a medium or long-term vision.
Before they have hardly settled in their compromised MP role, they are back on the campaign trail for the next election.
The cycle repeats itself and development evades us.
The ruinous nature of elections was quite conspicuous as I drove to the village via Hwedza recently.
The road includes a good tarred surface that runs past the Save Bridge and comes to an abrupt end near the Kwenda Mission turn-off.
Between 1997 and 1999 I was a regular traveller on this road and construction work on this Hwedza to Sadza stretch was quite work in progress.
There is still 10km to go which has been like that for over a decade.
One kilometre a year could have been fair promise from an aspiring Chikomba East MP.
A similar promise could have been enough from the Chikomba Central aspiring MP, the road will ultimately bring travel convenience to Marondera and Harare-bound constituents.
In general we would settle for this stretch knowing very well that our preferred Range-Sadza road tarring project, a good 70km, and cutting across all three Chikomba constituencies, would require at least 70 years to complete.
We require medium to long-term planning, but we measure our MPs on short-term objectives.
Consequently they go for short-term plans, low hanging fruits as it were.
Beer to our youths, unsustainable income projects for our mothers and bales of second-hand clothes and shoes.
The more impoverished we become the easier it is to meet our immediate needs and win our votes.
‘One-man-one-vote’ takaibatira pamusoro.
Are elections every five years helping the development agenda?