Just over a month ago a great wave of optimism was building and sweeping across Zimbabwe. People were furtively - then later even openly - daring to hope that they would ride in on the great wave that was forming. For some the mood was becoming euphoric.
The election took place and the wave broke. Deeply shocked, we all went down like Jonah and came up spluttering, washed up and beached on the same old desert shore from where we had started. Once again we were faced with the tedium and the disappointment of more mis-governance, more kleptocracy, more injustice, more corruption, more burnt earth and more shattered dreams. After being forced to endure so much for more than a decade, we question how we can take any more.
Eddie Cross, the MDC-T MP for Bulawayo South and one of the valiant criers from the wave crest, wrote the following in a moment of realism after being sworn back into the new ZANU PF-dominated parliament.
"We left Parliament two months ago - then holding a majority in the Lower House, have come back as the Opposition with 72 seats in a House of 270 Members. Unable to block legislation if we want to but providing a voice for the majority in this beautiful, but broken land. After 13 years of struggle, five elections and four years of the Government of National Unity (GNU) we are no further forward than we were in 2000, in fact we are further back than we were then..."
What has gone wrong? How was the wave able to be undermined and broken? Why should Zimbabweans have to continue wandering around aimlessly in the desert for yet another five years under an octogenarian leader whose hunger for personal power trumps all other concerns? Why did SADC not only allow the theft of the July 31 elections - but then applaud Mugabe and crown him as the next leader of SADC when his people are getting poorer, hungrier, more desperate for jobs and leaving the country?
There is something intrinsically sick, evil even, in the Orwellian parody of it all. What is wrong with our African leaders that they should endorse such a fraudulent, dishonest result in this election? They saw the suffering and grieving on the funereal faces of almost all Zimbabweans as the results came tumbling out from Mugabe's election rigging machine.