When the Levee Breaks

If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna to break (thank you, Led Zeppelin, for the line). If the waters of revolution keep churning, the grip of dictator-driven governments are going to crumble. For decades, dictators have been in power, people who led revolutions of their own in years gone by are clinging to the wealth that they've accumulated while their people starved. Laws have been changed at the whim of a select few across Africa. We heard from political commentators on Aljazeera that Gaddafi would enact laws overnight and send out his henchmen to enforce them, often to the detriment of the Libyan people. In Zimbabwe, the law-making was more bureaucratic – they needed to be pushed through parliament, but often they went unnoticed by the general public. The constitution of Zimbabwe has gradually morphed into a document that gives the head of state ultimate power.

The rain has started. It began in Tunisia; now across North Africa and the Middle East, people are rising up en masse to protest the poverty and lack of freedom. We've seen governments topple, crushed by a wave of public emotion. The sparks of unrest caused by decades of desperate poverty in Zimbabwe – and by that I mean often people can afford at most one meal per day, consisting of cabbage and maize-meal, possibly supplemented by wildfoods gathered from the bush – have been flamed by pre-election intimidation (read: soldiers and ZANU (PF) thugs going from house to house, beating people). Last week, forty-six protesters were arrested on suspicion of plotting treason (for watching videos of the Egyptian demonstrations). Whatever their motives for meeting to watch the videos, rumour has it around Harare that it is likely that protests will happen as suspected.

If there isn't change, a radical re-organisation of the power dynamics in Zimbabwe, something's going to happen. Just like in North Africa and the Middle East, the desperation of peoples' personal situations now make death in a revolution seem a more attractive option to dying of starvation. Granted, I'm lucky enough to have been born on the nice side of town; I have the option and opportunity to leave if/when things get desperate, so I'm probably not going to be there chanting and toyi-toying and being shot at or beaten. However, my lack of personal participation doesn't change anything: it's raining, and I don't see an end to the storm; the waters are churning; if they don't do something to relieve the dissatisfaction, the levee's going to break.