Lift sanctions, Zimbabwe has changed enough to "scold ED"- but not to have free election P Guramatunhu

Zimbabwe is in serious economic and political trouble and there many reasons why this is so. One of these many reasons is the country is cursed with having more than its fair share of corrupt and incompetent village idiots with a big mouth. 

“We cannot deny it, the atmosphere has changed. There is now freedom of speech and expression in this country, people can now openly talk and some actually scold the President,” said Rev Andrew Wutawunashe.

“I have realised that this is all because of freedoms in this country. The atmosphere has changed, the playing field has changed, hence there is no need for inhumane methods like sanctions.

“The most direct and devastating effect of these sanctions has thus been catastrophic unemployment levels, poverty, extreme damage to health and other services and a general crippling economic stagnation all of which have burdened and oppressed the poor.”

Sanctions is just a red herring that Zanu PF and its apologists want to come back to again and again just to draw attention away from the real big issues the nation is facing. The Americans made is very clear, hold free, fair and credible elections and they will lift all the sanctions. The question Rev Wutawunashe must therefore answer is: Were the recent elections free, fair and credible? 

Only a first class village idiot would pretend an election in which the regime failed to produce something as basic as a verified voters’ roll can ever be considered free and fair!  

The elephant in the room here is not the sanctions but the pariah state. The root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is the criminal waste of human and material resources through gross mismanagement and rampant corruptions. It is the criminal waste of resources that cripple the national economic and cause abject poverty. 

In 2016 Mugabe admitted that the nation was “swindled $15 billion in diamond revenue”. To this day, not even one of the swindlers has been arrested and not one red cent recovered. No nation on earth can afford this level of economic haemorrhage much less one with a GDP of $10 billion, like Zimbabwe.

It is shocking that people like Wutawunashe are quick to blame the sanctions for causing the country’s economic meltdown but have yet to produce the evidence of how that is so but ignore the more obvious cause of the criminal waste of resources by the country’s ruling elite. 

Like every other Zimbabwean citizen, Wutawunashe has sworn duty to do something to help end the criminal waste of resources by the ruling elite. Sadly, he elects to say nothing to Zanu PF thugs but instead focus his time and energy trying to get foreigners, over whom he has very little influence, to change their policies towards Zimbabwe. 

It is typical of the army of Zimbabweans idiots out there; they spend all their time and energy on what is NOT in their power to change and neglecting those in they can change! No wonder the country is in a mess.  

Ordinarily the country would have dealt with the wasteful ruling elite by holding them to democratic account and the ultimate censure of which is to remove them from office. We have failed to do this in Zimbabwe.

Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies have usurped the people’s power, freedoms and rights to create a de facto one-party state. The nation has been stuck with this corrupt and tyrannical regime for 38 years because Zanu PF rigged the elections. 

When President Mnangagwa got into power last November, after the military coup, he promised to hold free, fair and credible elections. We now know that he has failed to keep that promise, he blatantly rigged the elections to confirm Zimbabwe’s status as pariah state. 

Zimbabwe has failed to attract the much needed foreign direct investment because no investor and lender would want to do business in a politically and economically unstable pariah state. The regime and its apologist pretend it is the sanctions that are holding back economic recovery but that is a lie.

The most important task for us all is to pressure Zanu PF to ensure democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible are implemented. The sanctions are an integral part of pressure regime; those calling for the sanctions to lifted have no idea what they are wittering about.

“The atmosphere has changed!” The only change worth candle is one to guarantee free, fair and credible elections and thus lift the pariah state curse!

ED set timeline for disposing parastatals - sold for a song; rigged elections and has no mandate P Guramatunhu

"FINANCE minister Mthuli Ncube has set timelines for the disposal and partial privatisation of a number of state-owned enterprises, as part of a raft of measures to revitalise Zimbabwe's fragile economy," reported the Zimbabwe Independent.

"A new audit report by Auditor-General (AG) Mildred Chiri has revealed that 23 insolvent parastatals are teetering on the brink of collapse, saddled with massive debts running into hundreds of millions of dollars.

"According to Chiri's audit, the identified parastatals which are on the brink of collapse have been weighed down by corruption and maladministration."

Many of us will remember the dirty arm-twisting Zanu PF employed to force the owners of the forerunner of Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (Zupco) (one of the insolvent parasols on for sell) bus company to sell. As soon as government took over the quality of bus service dropped and never recovered. 

Now this Zanu PF government has finally admitted that it should have never bought Zupco and all these other companies. Ordinarily one would be pleased that the government has finally admitted its failure given we are still dealing with the same corrupt and incompetent regime, there is nothing to suggest the disposal of these companies will be done efficiently and to the best interest of the nation!

Zanu PF landed the nation into this economic mess and it is naive to believe that the same regime, or be it with a new tyrant as leader, will get us out of the mess. Instead of digging us out of the mess, the regime is dragging us even deeper into the hell-hole! 

President Mugabe was just as confident of delivering mass prosperity, “gutsa ruzhinji”, when he nationalised these companies; President Mnangagwa is displaying the same arrogance in being certain to revive the country’s economic fortunes.  

When President Mnangagwa came into power last November, following the military coup, he promised to end corruption, for example, and yet has done nothing. According to Mugabe the nation was swindled out of $15 billion dollars in diamond revenue in the period 2009 to 2016. After a year in office, Mnangagwa has yet to arrested one swindler and to recover one red cent of the looted revenue. Not one red cent! 

Worse still, the looting in Marange is continuing to this day! The diamond mining activities are still taking place, the same players and under the same veil of secrecy. In 2012 the late Edward Takaruza Chindori-Chininga said in a parliamentary report that no one knew the quantity, quality, value, etc. of the diamonds coming out of Marange; such was the level of secrecy in the industry. The same veil of secrecy is still there today. 

There is yet a final chapter to be written in the disposal of Zimbabwe's parastatals. The nation will inherit all their mountain of debt and the companies are then sold for a song to individuals who will stripe the companies of all their assets, selling them for huge profits and walk away. 

Zanu PF has dragged the nation into this economic and political hell-on-earth of serious economic meltdown and the political chaos, murders and paralysis! Yes, dragged the nation because the party has rigged elections to stay in power against the democratic wishes of the people. 

President Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF junta rigged the recent elections and thus continue to impose their tyrannical rule on the nation. Zanu PF does not have the people’s mandate to rule Zimbabwe and to impose its destructive economic policies on this nation now that it had at any time in the last 38 years. Whilst there is nothing we can do to turn back the clock and reverse the corruption and tyranny of the past; we can do something to stop the regime selling the little the nation has left and to end the regime's reign of terror.

It is a well established fact that President Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF junta rigged the 30 July 2018 elections, the regime is therefore illegitimate, and thus has no mandate to govern nor dispose of any of the nation's assets and resources! Zanu PF must be pressured to step down now, that is not negotiable!

Chamisa refuse to testify, wants "to be thanked for preserving peace" - nonsense, preserved Zanu PF, yes N Garikai

The Commission of inquiry chaired by former South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, into the killing of seven unarmed civilians on 1 st August 2018 is now entering its home straight. 

Many people have given their reasons for dismissed the Commission as a waste of time and money but the most valid reason of all is that the Commission will not establish who deployed the soldiers with orders to shoot to kill. The Commission’s terms of reference and the line of questioning of the string witnesses who have appeared before the Commissioners so far would suggests finding who ordered the killing is beyond their remit. 

Nelson Chamisa, the MDC Alliance presidential candidate; whose party leaders and supporters are accusers of instigating the street protests; has dismissed the Commission as a waste of time. He and his party members have, so far, refused to participate in the public hearings. 

“Historically, we have been at pains to explain how Zimbabweans are living under oppression and subjugation from a captured state. It is characterised by the following;-

i.   There is no iota of accountability

ii.  There is total disregard of constitutionalism and the rule of law

iii. There is blatant abuse of State institutions

iv.  Absence of transparency 

v.   Total disregard of people s rights and freedoms”

MDC said in a recent public statement. No one can ever dispute that Zimbabweans have lived these last 38 years under a corrupt, vote rigging and tyrannical de facto one-party dictatorship.

However it is not so much the historic evidence of MDC’s “pains to explain how Zimbabweans are living under oppression” that is of interest here but rather the mountain of evidence of the many wasted golden opportunities MDC had to dismantle the dictatorship. As regards this ongoing Motlanthe led Commission; MDC leaders have three key questions to answer:

1. Why has MDC failed to implement the democratic reforms designed to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship, especially during the 2008 to 2013 GNU when they had the golden opportunity to do so? In all MDC’s 19 years on the political stage, the party has failed to bring about even one democratic change.

1. Why did MDC choose to participate in the elections knowing the process would be flawed and illegal? The party was warned countless times not to take part in the elections without first implementing the democratic reforms designed to stop vote rigging; but has ignored the warnings. The primary cause of the street protest was against yet another rigged election, something we all knew would happen. 

1. MDC knew of Zanu PF’s “state capture and blatant abuse of state institutions” like ZEC and Con-Court and still Nelson Chamisa and company chose to take part in the recent election and the court challenge of the declared result presided over by the two institutions. Of course, the Motlanthe Commission was going to be subjected to the same Zanu PF political shenanigans as all the other state institutions. So having accepted the power and authority of the politically compromised ZEC, Con- Court, etc.; why is MDC now refusing to cooperate with an equally compromised Motlanthe led Commission?

Both Nelson Chamisa and Tendai Biti have since been “invited to share their views” with the Commission of inquiry.

"They must invite Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and Mohadi also. If Mnangagwa does not go why should I go alone? The commission is working from the answer going backwards. It is a script and the script is to decimate the opposition,” Nelson Chamisa told a press conference yesterday.   

This is manna from heaven to The Herald, ZBC and all the Zanu PF controlled public media. They will whip the refusal by MDC leaders to testify as proof of guilty. They will now draw attention away from the real big issue here - Zanu PF has just once again rigged the elections and thrown away the nation’s chance of getting out of the hell-hole the party landed us in. 

Zanu PF and its surrogates in The Herald, etc. will be hoping to achieve their primary objective of drawing attention away from the real two burning issues here i.e. that Zanu PF has once again rigged the elections and that the shooting was a brazen Machiavellian move to silence all political dissent. 

The EU, Commonwealth, the Americans, etc. all condemned the recent elections as flawed and illegal but so what. Chamisa and the other 22 opposition presidential candidates knew that still they were tripping over each other to participate. Even when the regime failed to produce something as basic as a verified voters’ roll, that did not stop Chamisa et al taking part!

"Instead of being thanked for trying to preserve peace in this country, I am being attacked,” Chamisa complained. 

No, Mr. Chamisa by failing to implement even one democratic reforms in 19 years and participating in flawed and illegal elections you and you opposition friends have help Zanu PF keep its dictatorial powers and to rig elections and give the process some modicum of political credibility! You have help preserve the Zanu PF dictatorship and only Mnangagwa and his cronies will thank you for it!

"ED is not presidential material" even seasoned liar, Moyo, speaketh truth - ED rules at our peril N Garikai

Let us just say self-exiled former Higher Education Minister Jonathan Moyo is not exactly what one would call a reliable and dependable witness. The man has a reputation of telling half-truths, lies and damned lies. After a year living in exile, denied of all the spoils of high office and public adulation; twitting from his hiding place, to be heard but not seen; it is sad to note that he is still an unreliable witness!

“Nobody can point to any gathering or meeting or activity that links me with or in which I participated with Mnangagwa prior to the prize giving event at Dinyane High School. A swallow does not make a summer,” explained Zanu PF’s former Chief Spin Doctor, Professor Moyo.

“It does not make sense for people to conclude that I was close to Mnangagwa on the strength of one event that I became associated with by virtue of coming from the district where the event was held.”

He was explaining the now infamous 2004 Tsholotsho debacle where a group of Zanu PF leaders plotted to have Mnangagwa elected party VP and go on to succeed Mugabe. The plot fizzled out to nothing when the chief beneficiary of the plot, Mnangagwa, failed to show up and the rest chickened out.

“Prior to the Dinyane event, there was a similar speech and prize giving event at Ntalale High School in Matabeleland South which I did not know about until after the fact,” Professor Moyo told Alex Magaisa, who interviewed him. 

“There were other Mnangagwa events elsewhere around the country and I attended none of them. So how did I become close to him simply by attending the Tsholotsho event? 

“Add to this the fact that I was not on the panel of speakers at the Tsholotsho event, whose leading lights were Patrick Chinamasa, Jacob Mudenda and Josiah Hungwe. Claims that I have ever been close to Mnangagwa are legion yet fanciful.”

What is fanciful is the damn lie that Minister and MP for Tsholotsho who was the star guest of the school and who, in turn, invited all the other political leaders should want us to belief he did not know of the sinister political plot and that the prize giving was just a cover. 

Still, even a seasoned liar like Professor Jonathan Moyo can say something true, we can collaborate from other sources; truth we will be very foolish to ignore. 

“All said, my considered judgment has always been that Mnangagwa is not presidential material. He is a very cruel person and his threat to separate my neck from my shoulders in the politburo and his boast that they used to separate necks from shoulders of comrades in Maputo is an example of extreme cruelty and barbarism. While he is clearly streetwise, he's not a statesman by any stretch of the imagination,” continued Professor Moyo.

“You can tell whether a person reads books by their speech. People who read books are great speakers and great thinkers. Mnangagwa is not in this category.

“It is not surprising that it took a military coup for Mnangagwa to become president. He had no other path. It is also not a surprise that the same military stole the election for him. Again, he had no other path.”

All the respectable election observer teams who witness our 30 July 2018 elections have all, without exception, condemned the elections as flawed and illegal. There is no denying that Mnangagwa rigged the elections. 

There is also no denying that the country’s failure to hold free, fair and credible elections is the root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic and political mess. 

The economy in total meltdown; unemployment has soared to the dizzying height of 90%, basic services such as supply of clean running water and health care have all but collapse, etc. Zimbabweans are the poorest people in Africa and 75% of the population living of US$1.00 or less a day! This has all happened because Zanu PF use brute force to establish and retain a de facto one-party dictatorship which carte blanche dictatorial powers to rig elections and stay in power regardless of the people’s democratic wish, their suffering and even deaths. 

After 38 years of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule the nation has suffered so much it is inhuman to expect the people to tolerate this for much longer. First it was Mugabe and now it Mnangagwa have dragged this nation right up to the edge of the abyss; we must turn away before it is too late! We must implement the democratic reforms and thus ensure free, fair and credible; our only sure way to stop stole corrupt and incompetent thugs stealing elections. 

Mnangagwa is no statesmen but a vote rigging thug. He is illegitimate and he must be forced to step down.

"I have Thatcher's (Iron Lady) resolve" says ED - rigged election to have iron grip on power, must prise free P Guramatunhu

“WHEN Margaret Thatcher was elected UK prime minister in 1979, she recognised that piecemeal change would not be sufficient to tackle the problems of labour unrest, rampant inflation and economic stagnation. A wholesale transformation and modernisation of the British economy was required. While there would inevitably be downsides to such rapid change, Thatcher was undeterred,” reported Zimeye/Financial Times.

“The challenges that Zimbabwe faces today are no less acute. But my government is committed to tackling them head on. 

“Like Thatcher, we are not afraid of taking tough, and at times painful, decisions. As she used to put it, there is no alternative.”

My heart sunk when I read who wrote this - President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa! My heart sunk because I know that we, my fellow Zimbabweans, ladies and gentlemen, are in serious trouble! 

There is no doubt that Zimbabwe is facing very serious economic challenges. In 1980 the country had the second strongest industrial infrastructure in sub-Sahara Africa; the most productive agricultural sector, we were the breadbasket of the region and earned millions of dollars from the export of tobacco and other cash produce; etc. Our economic decline has been rapid, deep and ruinous.

The country’s industries have all but gone. For the last ten years the country has relied of imported food aid - we are now so poor we cannot even pay for it. We are starving in a land that we know is for all intend and purposes the Garden of Eden - a damning testimonial of the sheer incompetence of the Zanu PF leaders who have president over the country’s demise. 

President Mnangagwa was a senior member of the Zanu PF regime throughout the 38 years of the economic meltdown and political turmoil. He took over from Mugabe last year following the military coup the ousted Mugabe. 

“The process of change is not smooth. Some pain and discomfort along the way is inevitable. The arduousness of the path of reform can sometimes lead governments to stall or backtrack. But as a passionate reformer leading a reformist government, I know there is no other way. We cannot allow anything to slow us down,” wrote Mnangagwa.

Ever since coming into power last November, President Mnangagwa has sold himself as “reformist” but has failed to explain why he has waited for the last 37 years whilst the country went to the dogs before he stepped in? This does not make any sense especially when, of all the other Zanu PF leaders, he is the one who did most of the systematic corruption of the state institutions, the looting of resources to bankroll the party’s vote rigging vote buying activities and carried out the harassment, beating, rapes and mass murders to establish and retain the de facto one-party dictatorship. 

The country has been dragged into this hell-hole because for the last 38 years the country was stuck with this corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical dictatorship that rigged elections to stay in power against the people’s democratic will. It is nonsensical that Mugabe’s Chief enforcer should now call himself a reformer! 

The second obvious question is: Does Mnangagwa KNOW what reforms the country needs to get out of the mess Zanu PF landed us in?

Mnangagwa has been in office for a year now and it is clear he has no clue what he is doing. He has correctly identified corrupt as one serious problem but after a year he has yet to arrest one person and recover one dollar of the $15 billion Mugabe said was swindled from the diamond mining. Everyone knows that the swindlers included many senior Zanu PF leaders from both his own faction and the former Mugabe faction. He cannot tackle corruption head-on without naming some of his own key supporters, like VP Chiwenga.

President Mnangagwa himself was named in a UN report as one the Zimbabwe leaders who looted diamonds and other resources in DRC a few years ago. Mugabe had send Zimbabwe’s army to help prop that country’s tyrant. This was one of the many ill advised decision that contributed to Zimbabwe’s rapid economic decline! 

“The economy is already quietly showing signs of improvement, with growth forecasts revised upwards. Many sectors are thriving. and great economic cost to Zimbabwe,” the President claimed.

Again, that is just nonsense. The country needs a injection of foreign direct investment from investors and lenders like the IMF and WB. By rigging the recent elections, President has confirmed Zimbabwe is still a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs, and scarred away investors. 

Former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, carefully worked out what the problem was and then the solution and once convinced she had the right solution, she had the iron will to implement it. She was rightly called “Iron Lady!” The only thing a corrupt and incompetent tyrant like Mugabe and Mnangagwa will ever have in common with PM Thatcher is their  dogged resolve to hold on to political power at all cost. They have an iron grip on power! 

The toughest challenge Zimbabwe faces today is how to prise Mnangagwa’s iron grip from power! As long as the Zanu PF dictatorship remains in power and the country a pariah state the country will continue to pursue the same failed voodoo economic policies that landed us in the mess in the first place. 

Mnangagwa and his junta rigged the 30 July 2018 elections, the regime is illegitimate, and must step down. If Zanu PF is still in office come the next elections, the party will rig those elections too and reaffirm its iron grip on power and thus perpetuate its rule and our suffering.

DISCUSSING ZIMBABWE POLITICS....weekly round up 11 November 2018

The video is available on the following link: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAQ3NXS0cBU&feature=youtu.be

"Chiwenga deployed soldiers and gave order shoot to kill" says Mangota - then why Commission P Guramatunhu

“There is a good catch to all this. At no time did Mangota aver that the commander of the Defence Forces, Valerio Sibanda, was approached and participated in deploying the soldiers. Nor did the judge mention the commander of the Zimbabwe National Army. It would seem, therefore, that Chiwenga made the decision without involving the two people in charge of the army. It would always be weird for an acting minister to leapfrog the army generals,” wrote Tawanda Majoni, in Zimeye.

“The last time the law spoke, the president was the ultimate authority in the deployment of the army. His signature must accompany military deployments, so to speak. According to Justice Mangota, Mnangagwa did not deploy the soldiers. Since Chiwenga did and Mnangagwa didn’t, the former has a case to answer. It means he violated the constitution and broke subsidiary laws.”

 Another excellent article, thank you Tawanda. 

If Justice Mangota has already established who was responsible for deploying the soldiers and giving out the order of “shoot to kill” then one has to ask why bother with the Commission of Inquiry? 

If the truth be told, many people had already come to the same conclusion that VP Chiwenga had deployed the soldiers without consulting Mnangagwa. This was not the first time the VP had taken a very important decision without consulting the President - we all remember his summarily dismissal of nurses because they had dared to go on strive earlier this year. 

So President Mnangagwa has appointed a Commission of Inquiry to run for months on end at great national expense to establish something that a normal Court was able to establish is a few weeks. What a waste!

Since the Commission of Inquiry had already been establish the Commission should have been given the power to rule on the matter before any other body. 

Even is President Mnangagwa was the one who had issued the order to shoot, he still has authority and power to appoint a commission of inquiry. Justice Mangota should have confined himself to address the question of whether or not it is reasonable to assume the Commission would still be sufficiently independent to establish the truth without overreaching and telling the Commission what that truth is!

It is not as if Zimbabwe’s Courts are themselves the bastions of justice one would expect in a healthy and functional democracy given they have played their part in helping Zanu PF tighten its dictatorial grip on the nation. In a recent Con-Court challenge of the election result the Judges acknowledge there were serious electoral flaws in the process from the evidence submitted before the Court. And yet the Judges ignored all this evidence on the shaky grounds that it was not collaborated by the “primary source evidence” in sealed ballot boxes. 

The Judges conveniently ignored the plaintiff’s assertion that they had requested the sealed boxes to be opened but the request was denied. The Judges could have ordered the sealed boxes to be opened but chose not to exercise their power and authority. 

And so the Judges’ decision to declare Mnangagwa the winner of the elections was based on the assumption that the evidence in the sealed boxes bespoke of a free, fair and credible election contrary to the evidence they have seen but chose to ignore. 

Every respectable Election Observer team’s report has confirmed the evidence the Judges ignore and condemned the elections as flawed and illegal!