Apathy: When voters simply don’t care
There are adults in their 40s living in Zimbabwe who have never voted in their lives and yet Zimbabwe has had roughly nine elections since Independence. It’s either they don’t have an opinion or they simply don’t care

There are adults in their 40s living in Zimbabwe who have never voted in their lives and yet Zimbabwe has had roughly nine elections since Independence. It’s either they don’t have an opinion or they simply don’t care

Nick Mangwana View from the Diaspora
This column has recently covered the issue of apathy in Zimbabwean elections. It noted that the level of indifference was too high to be good for democracy.

Nearly half of the people that are registered to vote don’t bother and a lot more don’t even actually register.

There are adults in their 40s living in Zimbabwe who have never voted in their lives and yet Zimbabwe has had roughly nine elections since Independence. It’s either they don’t have an opinion or they simply don’t care.

There are swathes of citizens who are not happy with both the ruling party as well as any of the four dozen other political groupings in the country. They feel a strong negativity towards the whole political system and culture and therefore they vote by not voting at all.

Most of those disaffected by politics are the younger generation who just can’t be bothered. They therefore withdraw their democratic engagement.

There is declining confidence in political parties and their ability as well as their sincerity to deliver desirable outcomes for the people.

There are people that now believe that the genre of politics is such that political parties no longer represent their aspirations. And in many a way they are right. This is one of the reasons that we got such a low youth turnout in the last election.

The factions in all political groupings show how pathetic and visionless the whole political system is. Every faction in all these parties is about individuals, their ambitions, egos and a need to protect what they have and never about issues or ideology.

To expect straight thinking people to occupy their precious time talking about emblazoned coffee mugs or someone’s claim that certain elders wanted her as a president to sleep with all of them is an insult to their intelligence and a distraction from real matters. This type of politics is alienating our people.

We need a genre of politics that would make younger people want to be a part of it. Politics that would encourage younger people to aspire to join politics.

Why would parents encourage their children to join politics when all youth leaders do is bootlick so pathetically?

Who wants to be part of politics that rewards praise singers at the expense of value adders therefore, positively reinforcing sycophancy? The only way you can turn a graduate into that is by not creating employment.

There are of course those that join politics because they know that’s where one gets freebies as well as have a chance of getting a rich. This again promotes mediocrity at the expense of merit.

Links to political parties should not be an avenue to richness or impunity. We don’t build a nation with such mediocre practices. What value does a party get from a person who joins it for access to freebies? Maybe a vote, but where does the greater good of the nation fit in all of that?

We need our politics to offer real opportunities to our people and not freebies. Who wants a donation when they can procure for themselves?

Freebies undress our people of their dignity. Jobs and opportunities raise self-esteem and empowers them.

A job is not just a place one gets money. It is a place where they start their journey towards self-actualisation. Not everyone is an entrepreneur and it is this type of politics that kills off the social capital that is imbued in the youth.

The best empowerment among our people is to make them feel powerful enough to change the course of their own destiny. Freebies only serve to emasculate and disempower them. It is a deliberate ploy to create a perpetual need in a person.

You then make yourself so powerful that you control their lives, as you would have proved that you are the only one who can address their needs. We can’t claim to be champions of empowerment when all we do decimate social capital.

Maybe it’s time to bring it closer to home for the reader.

If one is Zanu-PF and they are not interested in the petty issues of factionalism that have captured the party, what do they do? The truth is that the factions (we hear they are three now) have adopted the attitude that whoever is not with us, is against us.

So one is damned and doomed if they join a faction, and they are equally damned and doomed if they don’t. This causes a lot of disaffection. The next thing people will do is to sit back and watch it play out.

What is being described here is a faction-developed apathy within an organisation. And the biggest disappointment in all this is that these are factions of personalities. Such political mediocrity.

As noted, a lot of people feel estranged from all political parties on the Zimbabwean landscape right now. They can’t identify with Zanu-PF because they feel it’s letting corruption escalate. They can’t identify with the opposition because they never hear a vision behind, “Let’s all come together and remove Zanu-PF from power” or the “Mugabe must go” mantra.

They ask themselves, should these people get their wishes, what will they do with the country in the aftermath? There is no answer to that question.

At this point they are disheartened and leave it to be. That, there is political apathy. Come election day, they are presented with a very difficult choice, a no choice. So they don’t bother.

And what further complicates matters is the expectation in our political culture for citizens to be dedicated to individuals and not an ideology or a political system or the State. This is found in all political parties.

We hear statements like, “I believe in president so and so” being uttered. That alienates all others who feel that the ultimate loyalty should be to the country. Anything else that threatens the viability of the State should be resisted with mighty vigour.

Straight thinking citizens who realise that they are not expected to believe in the State, to defend it with every ounce of courage and strength will shun politics when an individual replaces the State.

The same applies to those who followed a political system led by personalised political parties. They cannot identify with a political party whose name is suffixed by an individual’s surname.

No straight thinking person who has an iota of ego in them would allow themselves to be subjected to that. This type of deification of political leaders alienates the post-1970s generations and whether we like it or not, they are the majority.

Some might ask why broad political participation is important. Well, the word “democracy” comes from two Greek words. These are “demos” and “kratia” whose meaning comes to “rule by the people”.

When people are dissatisfied with the current political parties and the obtaining cultures, they decide not to identify with any of them. That tends to deplete our political and economic systems of the intelligentsia amongst many other necessary social groups.

It leaves only bootlickers and mediocrity to deliver a nation’s hopes. This scenario retards a country’s development and progress.

Some, however, are happy with this state of affairs. After all they retain control of their political entities. The less the participants, the better for them.

But anyone who has the interests of the country at heart knows that we need every capable Zimbabwean’s contribution, for Zimbabwe to properly take off and be where it deserves to be.

The talented Zimbabweans out there keep away as they don’t want to be contaminated by the rot.

There is a serious disconnect between how Zimbabweans would want their politics and democracy to be and the actual political culture and practice. This is causing a lot of disillusionment.

A lot are leaving themselves to fate and cling to the hope that something will change. But those more gifted than us have said that hope is not a strategy.

Let not disappointment with Zimbabwean politics lead to disengagement from the politics that determine the future of our country. If you don’t take part, don’t complain when you are led by those who do.

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