A Good Man in Africa: Vanguard of A New Zimbabwe
Robin Neilson
Day One of the mayoral election in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city. David Coltart, Shadow Justice Minister and Member of Parliament for Bulawayo South, didn’t expect any particular trouble, but he rose early nonetheless, planning to vote before touring various polling locations in the area.
By 7:00 a.m., the day promised to be blisteringly hot. Around Bulawayo’s City Hall, crafts people had begun spreading out the brightly patterned clothes on which they would display rows of hippos carved from smooth stone and circles of beaded bracelets. Vendors stacked piles of newspapers on the street corners, headlines heralding the election.
The city needed little reminder. Bulawayo sits in the heart of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe’s western province and stronghold for the country’s opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Only two years old, the MDC is presenting the first serious challenge to President Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF, which have governed Zimbabwe since Independence in 1980.
In the fight for the position of Bulawayo’s mayor, the MDC candidate, Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube, faced ZANU-PF’s George Mlilo. Despite millions of Zimbabwe dollars poured into the campaign by ZANU-PF and an unusual visit to the area by Jonathan Moyo, the government’s Information Minister, the MDC predicted victory.
By 8:00 a.m. that morning, David Coltart was in Sisters Restaurant in downtown Bulawayo. He had already visited two polling locations; his name had not been listed at his assigned station, but he discovered it on the rolls at another station and voted there. Now Coltart and a group of MDC party members were having breakfast before continuing to tour the area and survey how the voting was progressing.