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Holding Zimbabwe’s Leaders Accountable Through Poetry

VPM | By Ofeibea Quist-Arcton

Published July 17, 2013 at 8:00 AM EDT

Updated April 20, 2023

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Zimbabwe is preparing for elections this year. Given its history, brutal suppression of the opposition and accusations of stolen votes, there’s pressure on the politicians to do better this time around. One group is trying to hold the country’s leaders accountable through poetry.

In the capital, Harare, NPR’s Ofeibea Quist-Arcton has been chatting with a couple of the young protest poets.

ROBSON ISAAC SHOES LAMBADA: Is it politics? Is it poli-tricks? Or it’s now poll-tricks?

OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Robson Isaac Shoes Lambada recites “Politicians and Governancy.”

LAMBADA: Politicians and governancy, politicians in governancy, politicians governing governancy, governancy governing politicians. Politicians reiterating the rhythms and the rhymes of political ruthlessness, and insulting the poem and the poet’s consciousness.

QUIST-ARCTON: With elections on the horizon this year, it’s open season for Zimbabwe’s creative writers. Shoes Lambada is the coordinator of the Zimbabwe Poets for Human Rights. And the wordsmiths are not letting the country’s political leaders off the hook.

LAMBADA: The poem speaks specifically to how elections have been manipulated by politicians and how they have used violence, and how they have tried to make sure that people vote for them. So it’s generally how politicians manipulate the populace, to make sure that they gain the votes when election time comes.

QUIST-ARCTON: Michael Mabwe is another of the rights’ poets.

MICHAEL MABWE: What shall we say and do when politics is no longer the battle of ideas but the conquering of masters who control the greatest number of thugs? What shall we say and do when the dead are more than the living on the voters’ roll? What shall we say and do when politicians have become hyenas devastating our communities? (Foreign language spoken)

QUIST-ARCTON: Mabwe says Zimbabwe’s youth must jettison apathy, rise up, register, and vote to make a difference.

MABWE: We are concerned with issues and not individuals. So what we exist to do is to make sure that that people of Zimbabwe are well informed so that they can make informed choices. If that choice becomes Morgan Tsvangirai or it becomes Robert Mugabe, that’s a different issue altogether.

QUIST-ARCTON: Political opponents, President Mugabe and Prime Minister Tsvangirai, have been locked in an uneasy power sharing marriage under a regionally-brokered deal for Zimbabwe since 2008. This was after violent elections, with killings that rights organizations say were state-sponsored and left more than 200 people dead. The political rivals should be facing off in the presidential race due this year.

Poet Shoes Lambada says young voters must be alert.

LAMBADA: What should the youth say and do when they let them lie to the ah-bodda-bigga-boon? Wibbly, wobbly walking in a grotesque parody of motion, with worn out emotions, and hopeless like skeletons of prehistoric animals. Voting is the beginning of the ending of complaining. And abstaining is donating your right to choosing. I choose to choose by voting and choose laughing over fighting, voting over sloganeering and voting over fighting.

QUIST-ARCTON: Shoes Lambada says this is a direct message to young Zimbabweans.

LAMBADA: What people must understand is that if they don’t vote, they’ve actually voted. They’ve donated their vote to where they didn’t want it to go. But the challenge we have is that we are saying that as a people we must go out there and vote for a government of our choice. So that when those people fail us, we also take blame to say we chose these people to be in power.

QUIST-ARCTON: But does speaking out mean getting into trouble? Again, Michael Mabwe.

MABWE: Sometimes we do. We have had to dodge police after performing at some functions. We have had to live with threats from people who would think that you are, you know, attacking them directly or their policies. So there are so many risks. But we have come to a point where we have said, OK, this is our calling. We have a duty to make sure that we do this. Because if we don’t do this, then who will do it? So that keeps us going.

UNIDENTIFIED MEN: Lonely forever, lonely forever. (Foreign language spoken)

QUIST-ARCTON: Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Harare.

UNIDENTIFIED MEN: (Foreign language spoken) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Ofeibea Quist-Arcton

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton is an award-winning broadcaster from Ghana and is NPR's Africa Correspondent. She describes herself as a "jobbing journalist"—who's often on the hoof, reporting from somewhere.

She spent her early years in Ghana, Italy, Britain, and Kenya, and has lived and worked in Europe, the US, and all over Africa—most recently based in Senegal, traveling across the continent as a journalist, commentator, host, and media trainer.

After completing high school in Britain, she earned a degree in French studies with international relations and Spanish at the London School of Economics (LSE) and studied broadcast journalism at the University of Westminster, London.

Quist-Arcton joined the BBC reporter reserve in 1985, working at regional radio stations all over Britain, moving two years later to the renowned BBC World Service at Bush House in London. There, she served as a producer, reporter, editor, and host in the African Service. She traveled and reported across the continent.

She spent the year leading up to 1990 in Paris, on a BBC journalist exchange with Radio France International (RFI), mainly working with RFI's English (for Africa) Service as a host, reporter, and editor and in Monito, providing programs and content in French for radio stations in francophone Africa.

In 1990, Quist-Arcton won one of the BBC's coveted foreign correspondents' posts, moving to Abidjan, the commercial hub of Ivory Coast, to head the corporation's West Africa bureau. From there, she covered 24 countries, straddling the Sahara to the heart of the continent—crisscrossing Africa from Mauritania, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Mali, to then Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Congo-Brazzaville, via Chad, Equatorial Guinea, and Cameroon. She contributed to BBC outlets, covering the flowering of democracy in the region, as well as the outbreak of civil wars, revolutions and coups, while always keeping an eye on the "other" stories about Africa that receive minimal media attention—including the continent's rich cultural heritage. Quist-Arcton also contributed to NPR programs during her reporting assignment in west and central Africa.

After four years as the BBC's West Africa correspondent, she returned to Bush House in 1994 as a host and senior producer on the flagship World Service programs, Newshour & Newsday, and as a contributing regional specialist for other broadcast outputs including BBC Africa.

Quist-Arcton laced up her traveling shoes again in 1995 and relocated to Boston as a roving reporter for The World, a co-production between the BBC, Public Radio International (PRI), and WGBH. She lived in Cambridge and enjoyed getting to know Massachusetts and the rest of New England, learning a new language during winter (most of it related to snow).

For The World, she traveled around the United States, providing the program with an African journalist's perspective on North American life. In 1997, she spent six months as a roving Africa reporter for The World, covering—among other events—the fall of President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire.

In 1998, after a stint back at BBC World Service, Quist-Arcton was appointed co-host of another BBC co-production—this time in Johannesburg, with the South African Broadcasting Corporation on the flagship radio drive-time show, PM Live.

In 2000, she left the BBC to join allAfrica.com (allAfricaGlobal Media) as Africa Correspondent and Bureau Chief, covering the continent's top stories, in all domains, and developing new radio shows for webcast and syndication to radio stations around the continent.

After six years in South Africa, Quist-Arcton joined NPR in 2004 heading the network's second Africa-based bureau and moving back to her home region of West Africa, this time to Senegal.

Quist-Arcton has spent the past 15 years reporting on the continent for NPR, covering a wealth of stories from the last years and funeral of Nelson Mandela and the funeral of his former wife, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, to the outbreak of Ebola in three West African nations and floating along the Congo River. She has received awards along the way including a Peabody and an Edward R. Murrow.

Quist-Arcton says sharing Africa's stories—good, great, creative, inspiring, humorous, bad, and ugly—is a privilege and an honor from a continent and peoples she admires and who have much to offer the world.

She also loves to engage with NPR's audience, especially youth and women, about Africa and how rich and varied the continent is.

Her passions are story-telling, African art, craft, culture, traditions, music, literature, open-air markets, antiques, and learning about the cultures and languages of the world. Quist-Arcton enjoys traveling (though not airports!) and meeting new people and renewing established acquaintances, while making fresh discoveries and delving into adventures. She also enjoys cycling, swimming, and photography.

See stories by Ofeibea Quist-Arcton