The youths are on the loose in Norway, campaigning. Young men and women, all over the place. The pavements are red, not with human blood, but with red roses. My most favourite party is the one distributing red roses. Young men and women giving you a rose at every street corner. They talk to you rather gently, persuasively, wondering if you would like the bunch of roses. I never refuse roses except those given by some god-forsaken dictator. I know even tyrants like roses.
As I return to my desk, I have more than twenty red roses in my hands, as if I have just come from a flower shop to buy flowers for for birthdays and other special occasions.
I cannot resist thinking of home, election time, Zanu(PF) against the rest of the world, a matter of life and death.
The media are flooded with policy statements accompanied by counter-statements, arguments fought with zeal against counter-arguments from all corners of political party houses. I walked through the streets in a rather rainy afternoon, Not warm either. The voters are minding their own business as usual. Workers go on with their work, digging the streets to clear drainage systems, or building an extension to the tall building next to the City Library.. Buses are punctual as usual, without banners of any political party. In the bars, no one viciously talks about politics. It seems they know one another's political inclination. No need to waste drinking time with political arguments. They would rather argue a little bit about their favourite soccer teams and leave politics to the politicians. A bad sign when such a serious matter is left to politicians alone.
But my walk in the streets is rather pretentious. I appointed myself an election observer, just to see, to poke my nose into Norwegian political campaign systems.
'I don't know what they are promising the voters,' an Ethiopean man says to me. 'Everything is generally working. Buses are on time. Trains travel when they should. They have their big salaries and a tight social security system. The roads are fully repaired. Water and electricity work all the time, sometimes cheaper, at times a little more expensive,' he giggles cynically.
Indeed, the observer of these elections would hardly have much to write about, as if there are no urgent issues at stake. Maybe there are none. One does not seem to see anything serious and furious on the faces of the politicians on TV every night. The winners will have nothing much to add to what is already there. They might strive to build a new highway somewhere just for the show. Nothing much!
The only angry political party seems to be the ultra-conservatives who agitate for stricter immigration policies. They suspect in fifty years, original Norwegians will be outnumbered by people of foreign origin. They are particularly averse to the increasing numbers of people of Arabic, Islamic origin. These Ramadan weeks seem to irritate the extremists.
'They are fasting and they spit all over the place,' one rather drunken Norwegian burst out in our measured conversation. He was probably not quite sure what my response would be. On asking him if I had spat anywhere as we sat in the sports bar watching a soccer match, he stared at me and wondered if I was a Moslem.
'Yes, of course. I am a Moslem,' I calmly lied to him. His eyes then focused on my rather long beard. He nodded and immediately changed seats, continuing to stare at me from a distance as if I had passed bad air.
In my afternoon walk in the ten or so streets near the library, I amassed a bunch of over twenty red roses, feeling like a maiden being courted by twenty desperate potential lovers. One party has a red rose as its symbol. So they dish out roses to every passer-by, even non-voters like me.
'Our party is in bad shape. I don't think I will be foreign minister for much longer. But I will be in parliament,' the Norwegian foreign minister had said to me in a freedom of expression seminar. He did not sound bitter about it. Not a matter of life and death.. The ruling coalition has been cricized for its foreign and international development policies. But the final lap of the elections is in the ballot box, not guns, bullets and violence.
As I sit down to write, I cannot avoid thinking of home, our elections. When will a big political party, like Zanu(PF) learn to distribute flowers instead of political corpses at election time? When will the language of persuasion replace the language of threats and vulgar insults in the politics of the motherland?
When will we not be forced to see charred remains of political opponents floating on our rivers and lakes?
