Mujuru and PF are a serious threat to Mugabe, the honey badger, cornered it will let rip! By Patrick Guramatunhu.

Joice Mujuru and her People First pose a real serious political threat to President Mugabe and Zanu PF’s no-regime-change mantra; more serious that Tsvangirai and MDC ever posed in 2008 and 2013.

In 2008 President Mugabe was able to brush aside Tsvangirai and his MDC by blatantly cooking the March results to deny Tsvangirai victory and then using brute force to ensure people voted for him in the July run-off. He “declared war”, as Tsvangirai aptly put it, on the nation with his operation “Mavhotera papi!” (Whom did you vote for!)

Zimbabwe has had a checked history of vote rigging and election violence but the 2008 presidential run-off saw the worse wanton violence ever; millions were harassed, beaten and forced to flee their homes, hundreds and thousands were rape and over 500 were murdered by Zanu PF operatives and security services personal recruited from Army, Police and CIO. SADC and the AU had turned a blind eye to Mugabe’s vote rigging and election violence in the past but even they could not pretend the 2008 presidential run-off was free and fair.

SADC would grant President Mugabe legitimacy on condition he signed the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) and share power with Tsvangirai and MDC in a Government of National Unity (GNU). The main task of the GNU was to implement democratic reforms necessary to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship, a pre-requisite for free, fair and credible elections.

The primary purpose of the GPA was to ensure Zimbabwe’s next elections were free, fair and credible and thus end the country’s political culture of vote rigging and violence. SADC was the guarantor of the GPA objective is met.

How President Mugabe managed to bamboozle Tsvangirai and his entire MDC party into doing nothing to implement the GPA reforms is a measure of the tyrant’s as cunning as a fox reputation, the MDC leaders’ notoriety as breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent or both. With not even one reform implemented, President Mugabe was able to blatantly rig the July 2013 elections.

He could not use violence, not with GPA still valid and SADC watching him; he had no choice to complete rely of a very elaborate vote rigging scheme in which he had to bribe lots and lots of people. It must have costed President Mugabe billions; fortunately for him he had a treasure trough from the $2 billion a year he, alone, looted from Marange but even this was not enough. He looted public funds in terms of cash and materials; the country’s public finances have been a mess ever since.

“We in the MDC were wrong in participating in that (2013 general) election,” MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has since sheepishly admitted, “on the assumption and belief that the sheer numbers of Zimbabweans would overwhelm whatever shenanigans Zanu PF had planned to subvert the will of the people”

Have wasted the golden opportunity to implement the GPA reforms during the GNU and lost all political credibility; MDC has since the rigged July 2013 elections been trying to claw back its lost political standing by promising the nation it will force Zanu PF, “kicking and screaming” to implement electoral law reform BEFORE the next elections. MDC said they would do this by “the end of the year”, said MDC Secretary General, Douglas Mwonzora, last year. Zanu PF completely ignore MDC and said so publicly too!

Even if all the electoral law reforms MDC are calling for were implemented, no one worth his salt would suggest this would be enough to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections and deliver free, fair and credible elections. MDC leaders and supporters alike have grudgingly admitted that they would never get Zanu PF to implement the GPA reforms now because it would be “political suicide” of Zanu PF, Vince Musewe said. In other words MDC are demanding of Zanu PF the implementation of electoral reform because MDC wants to be seen to be doing something reforms even if it is total ineffective.

MDC has made heavy weather of its National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) and even collared 15 other opposition parties to back its reforms. By backing MDC-T’s call for totally ineffective reforms one can immediately see these 15 opposition parties have a lot in common with MDC-T; they are just as corrupt and incompetent, for a start. Zanu PF has benefited from MDC-T’s foolish recall of breakaway MDC MPs and Senators and complete ignored the NERA noise from MDC-T with the arrogance of a honey badger that has broken into the hive of stingless honey bees!

So if everything was left to corrupt and incompetent MDC-T and their friends, the Meliponini (Scientific name for the stingless honey bees) of Zimbabwe politics, we will never have free and fair elections. They will issue the usual ultimate and “kicking and scream” threats but will never implement not even one democratic reform. The only real political threat to Zanu PF’s, the mean Mellivora capensis (Scientific name for honey badger) of Zimbabwe politics with a matching insatiable appetite for power and wealth, tyrannical strangle will be Joice Mujuru and her People First.

Mujuru, Mutasa, Gumbo, Sibanda and the rest of People First (PF) members can win the next elections even with not one democratic reform implemented! Unlike Tsvangirai and MDC, Mujuru and PF will have inside information (Mujuru will still have many supporters and sympathisers masquerading as Zanu PF members) on how President Mugabe plans to rig the elections to take counter measures. Even exposing vote rigging details after the elections will be fatally damaging to Zanu PF.

So regardless of Zanu PF’s clear electoral advantage of having a treasure trough from the looting and plundering in Marange and the continued total control of all the country’s institutions to implement it’s vote rigging plans; the party’s electoral victory is still not assured. Rigging the vote is only the half of it; making sure Mujuru and her supporters imbedded in Zanu PF are all kept in the dark of the plans throughout will be a real tough call.

 

No messing around with a honey badger with its tail up!

But President Mugabe, the Mellivora capensis he is, has one more card up his sleeve or up his Mellivora capensis arse! The honey badger not only looks like a skunk but is similarly equipped; cornered, its kneejerk response is to lift its tail and let rip! President Mugabe let rip in 2014 and Mujuru and her friends all stopped dead in their tracks, he will do it again!

President Mugabe has managed to keep top-dog position in Zanu PF by making sure got a share of the spoils of power and wealth even when this meant destroying the nation’s economy as was the case with the seizure of the white owned farms to give his cronies. But by far his cleverest tactic was to push his party members into soiling their hands be it through corruption or worse still political murders; he has carefully documented their criminal activities, he has then use it to blackmail those who dare oppose him.

When it was decided to “baby dump” Joice Mujuru, Grace Mugabe accused her of being corrupt and released details Mai Mujuru's diamond dealing and how she had been demanding a 10% cut from business operators. Mai Mujuru knew President Mugabe’s multi-layered spying networks has volumes of information on her and her late husband’s corrupt dealings and worse; daring it was futile.

 

So if the PF should become a real serious political threat then Mujuru and her fellow PF leaders will find themselves fighting a damaging rear guard offensive as details of their dirty past is made public. Leaders like Didymus Mutasa and Kudakwashe Bhasikiti, for example, have shed innocent blood during their Zanu PF days; Mugabe will released the full details of what happened at the most opportune moment to bury the individuals politically and take PF into their grave with them.

Mujuru and her PF are nothing more than a foolish general whose army fought bravely to occupy the enemy’s castle only to find the man on the throne has a grenade in his hand and the safety pin was pulled out. The whole castle was bubby trapped and grenade would blow the whole castle, the general and his whole army to smatterings! Anyone who thinks that when push comes to shove Mujuru and her followers would risk all to force President Mugabe out of office clearly live in cloud-cuckoo-land.

Look what has happened to Syria; President Assad has systematically bombed any part of that country as soon as it fell into rebel hands. President Mugabe would do the same given half the chance!

The only real chance of forcing President Mugabe to give up power peacefully is by demanding the implementation of the GPA reforms. President Mugabe is feeling the pressure to accept political change from the worsening economic meltdown and the infighting in his own party. He should not be allowed to think he can extend his rule by choosing to implement the ineffective electoral law reforms or worse still, resist reforms and he will have another chance to rig the next elections. He can rig the next elections but that will land him back where he is right now but with the pressure for change even greater than ever.  

Free, fair and credible elections are the basis of good government and the only way out of Zimbabwe’s political and economic mess!