The Fear

I am both amazed and inspired by people around the world who struggle for basic human rights.  Hundreds of ordinary citizens are killed in Syria for demanding the right to free elections, free speech and a free press, and the demonstrations continue.   I keep thinking about the guy I met at the Earth Day event in Jim Thorpe who was so proud that he never voted.

Peter Godwin’s book The Fear details the struggles in Zimbabwe to establish a real democracy.  People opposed to the dictator Robert Mugabe are killed, beaten, raped, and tortured.  In June 2008 in a runoff election, supporters of the opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai were attacked without mercy.   Mr. Tsvangirai finally withdrew his candidacy.  He said he could not ask his supporters to vote for him when that would cost them their lives.  

Godwin details some of the horrors the people of Zimbabwe have suffered for opposing Mugabe.  “When those who survive, terribly injured, limp home, or are carried or pushed in wheelbarrows, or on the backs of pickup trucks, they act like human billboards, advertising the appalling consequences of opposition to the tyranny, bearing their gruesome political stigmata.  And in their home communities, their return causes ripples of anxiety to spread.”   The people of Zimbabwe have a word for that--”chidudu,” which translates as “the fear.”

And still brave people in Zimbabwe persist.  They literally give up their lives for democracy.  And our turnout in the primary in Carbon County was about 35%.