"EU Ambassador apologised for fake human rights violations," said ED - "Ridiculous!" Ambassador shot back. W Mukori

There are those who wanted to believe that the removal of Mugabe from office last November transformed Zanu PF from a party of thugs into a party of democrats. It was none other than President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his fellow coup leaders who led from the front in the drive to rebrand Zanu PF as a democratic party. Many doubted the sincerity of the transformation, since Mnangagwa and the same thugs who had done Mugabe’s dirty bidding all the tyrant’s 37 years is power. Eight months since the coup the doubters have already been proven right!

The real big test of whether President Mnangagwa and his junta’s ‘new democratic dispensation’ was for real was to see if they would deliver free, fair and credible elections. They failed to do so. Even from the early weeks after the coup, it was clear the junta was nothing but a wolf wearing a sheep coat. President Mnangagwa has all along pointedly refused to implement the democratic reforms everyone had agreed at the onset of the 2008 GNU were necessary for free and fair elections. (None of the reforms were implemented during the GNU to this day.)

With not even one reform in place the Zanu PF junta blatantly rigged these elections. How can these elections be judged free, fair and credible when there was no free media, 2 to 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora were denied the vote, ZEC failed to produce a clean and verified voters’ roll, etc., etc.

When it became clear that Zanu PF had blatantly rigged the elections some people went on streets to protest the results. The junta, no doubt, fearful of the street protests spreading, descended on the protestors like a tonne of bricks. The Army was send to quail the protest with instruction to shoot to kill.

Right up to the day of the street protests the elections had passed off as very peaceful compared to the wanton violence of past elections, notably the 2008 elections when Mnangagwa and his junta friends had spearheaded the violence to stop MDC assuming power. “Zanu PF has declared war on the people!” said Morgan Tsvangirai as he announce his withdrawal from the elections.

The street protest had forced President Mnangagwa to cast off his sheep coat disguise and he unleashed his thugs. They not only quashed the street protests but for the next few days the party thugs terrorised the nation punishing opposition supporters. In typical Zanu PF style, President Mnangagwa is now denying the violence ever happened.

"Let me assure you, the best thing to do is get the list of 150 cases and pass it onto us. This is fake news and it's flying left, right and centre. We were told (of these cases) by Philippe van Damme, the EU ambassador here, and we took him to task and said let's go around all the hospitals in Harare and see if there is any record of people in hospitals. He had to later apologise as this was not true," Mnangagwa reportedly said, according to a NewsDay report.

But Van Damme took exception to the remarks and hit back on micro blogging site, Twitter, saying he did not apologise for raising concern over the post-election violence targeted at opposition activists.

"Not sure where you get that from. Ridiculous. Civil society has documented cases of human rights abuses and retribution. We do not apologise, but on the contrary, urge authorities to take these cases seriously. Police has to enquire and protect victims and witnesses," Van Damme.

Just a few weeks before this year’s elections President Mnangagwa denied that Zanu PF had used violence in the 2008 election. “Where is the evidence of violence and vote rigging!” he told the UK Economist reporter.

Most of the western election observers have yet to pronounce their judgement on Zimbabwe’s elections. Whilst there elections had been peaceful right up to voting day 30^th July 2018, still the elections were not free, fair and credible because there were glaring irregularities such as the failure to produce a clean and verified voters’ roll. The peace was shattered in what was a pre-emptive move by the regime to cow the people into accepting the rigged elections.

The EU, USA and other western election observer teams are yet to report on Zimbabwe’s elections. There are some people who would still want to believe in the mythical Zanu PF democratic transformation, they would want to falsify the facts and pretend these elections were free, fair and credible. That would be ridiculous as both the ordinary people in Zimbabwe and President Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF junta already know that these elections were not free, fair and credible.

Zimbabwe is in a serious economic and political mess following 38 years of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule. The only way out for the country is for these elections to be declared null and void and thus open the door for the appointment of an interim administration that will be tasked to implement the democratic reforms and the hold free, fair and credible elections.