Wednesday 4 July 2018

ZCC launch "I pray! I vote!" programme - to what end and purpose if elections are rigged Nomusa Garikai


“The Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), an association of Christians from mainline denominations, has urged political parties participating in the July 30 elections to uphold the fundamental values of the country’ s Constitution,” reported The Zimbabwean.

“ZCC yesterday launched a programme called I Pray I Vote in Masvingo. The programme seeks to promote peace and sanity before, during and after the July 30 elections.

ZCC has failed to pressure President Mnangagwa and his junta regime to implement the democratic reforms which, if implemented, would have guaranteed peaceful, free, fair and credible elections.

With no reforms in place the best we can hope for now is the peace will hold. The elections are NOT going to be free, fair and credible; not when there is no free public media, when ZEC has failed to produce clean and verified voters’ roll, when Zanu PF has been robbing the nation blind to bankroll its vote rigging schemes, etc., etc.

When the children of Israel left Egypt to go to the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey, they not only faced the challenge of the physical journey itself they also fought many, many battles along the way. They were being led by one of the holiest man to ever walk this earth, Moses.

They must have been tempted to say; “Why are we bothering ourselves with all the physical challenges of tracking across the desert and risking serious injuries and our very lives fighting? We must ask Moses to pray for us; so, God removes all these challenges. After all we are the chosen people!”  

We know the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land was full of trials and tribulations and even after getting they have to this day faced many problems because such is life. The moral of the story of Exodus is “God will not do for mankind what mankind can do for himself!”

“I pray!” Pray for God to demanding of President Mnangagwa, Mugabe before him, to implement the democratic reforms because ZCC will not dare or are too lazy to demand the reforms themselves? Sadly not even one democratic reforms has ever been implemented and so Zanu PF has blatantly rigged elections in the past and is rigging these elections too.

“I vote!” To what end and purpose, if the elections are rigged?

If we are serious about ending the criminal waste of the nation’s human and material resources behind the economic meltdown and tragic human suffering and deaths; then we must take our duties and responsibilities to build a justice and prosperous Zimbabwe with the seriousness the task demands.

Praying to God to do for us what we are too lazy to do for ourselves is what landed us into this hell-on-earth and there we will remain until we learn to do our homework!  

3 comments:

  1. One of the most common theme in the Bible is the prophets and all God's messengers in all disguises speaking the truth to power. It is a great tragedy of our time that most of our Church leaders today have been seduced with power. Our men and women of cloth are spending most of their time fleecing the poor and oppressed and whenever they spend hours hobnobbing with the rich and power!

    It comes as no surprise that many of our politicians have embraced religion and vice versa; pastor and politician may be strange bed-fellows in some countries but in Zimbabwe were corruption and tyranny are the norm the two are buddies.

    Very few, if any at all, ZCC leaders would ever acknowledge that Zanu PF has been rigging elections, acknowledging that there has been violence is the closest they will ever get to admitting that things are not quite right back at the ranch. As for doing something to end the culture of violence, they would like God the Almighty to sort that one out and hence the reason they are praying.

    No doubt ZCC leaders have heard countless times that God does not do for mankind what mankind can do for himself but when it comes to looking their political buddies in the eye and demand justice, their Church leaders, in their infinite wisdom, have decided they want God to do it. They insist!

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  2. Chamisa has lost a lot of political credibility by insisting in taking part in these elections with no reforms in place. He could fool and bamboozle his naive and gullible MDC supporters but not the international election observers. They are not impressed with all these foolish gimmicks! They are used to people who make a demand and stand firm or else shut up and none of this up and down like a yo-yo!

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  3. Speaking during the launch of the Zimcode Trust, an organisation that is championing improved corporate governance, Sibanda, a long time Mugabe bureaucrat, said the new political dispensation led by President Emmerson Mnangagwa had upped its efforts to confront the scourge.

    "It is indeed a sad fact that corruption has become a major problem within Zimbabwe and is stubbornly entrenched within both the private and the public sectors," he said.

    "Government is very much alive to this evil and it is ramping up its efforts to confront the challenges posed by decades of what can only be termed an unhealthy tolerance of highly-questionable practices and lack of consequential sanction for those involved in corrupt practices and even those identified as corrupt."

    Dr Sibanda, it is naïve to think that those who have benefited from corruption all these years will have a sudden Damascene moment, out of the blue with no pressure from outside, to stop corruption and go ahead and stop it. Even if they recognise how damaging corruption has been to the nation the best one can ever expect from the individuals concerned is to reduce corrupt and sanitize the reminder.

    How can Mnangagwa and Chiwenga end corruption when they are themselves two of the fat cats whose amassed wealth was earned from corruption?

    If we are serious about ending corruption then we must have leaders who are democratically accountable to the victims of corruption and know that if they do not uproot corruption as promised then others who will, will be elected to do it.

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