Election Sunday With Rejoice Ngwenya: Readiness for Elections Is A Science: Not An Art

By Rejoice Ngwenya Last week Zimbabwe Elections Support Network (ZESN) hosted a Twitter Spaces online dialogue program that attracted over one thousand ‘followers’. They sought an answer to one question: are we Zimbabweans ready for elections? As expected, responses were as diverse as the political interests represented. The ruling party ZANU.PF was absent from the debate panel, for reasons only that party can explain. Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) was not invited because this event was designed only for political stakeholders and civil society. Electoral preparedness in Zimbabwe must be more of a science than an art. It puts one through a whole cycle of structural, emotional, administrative, strategic, financial and technical value chains. It seems to suck in everyone into the vortex of uncontrolled enthusiasm tinged with a pinch of anxiety, at worst, fear. Even when one eccentric citizen represents a contraption of a ‘political party’, we seem to embrace them with the same vigour that we accept delusional psychotic candidates whose only claim to political fame is a badly designed campaign poster. Elections are a combination of a final examination and a wedding.