Grace said Mnangagwa had told them to "keep their little
money" after they tried to bankroll her mother's funeral.
"We tried to chip in with our money, we were told by Mnangagwa that ‘keep your little money, we shall help you,' " she said.
"We tried to chip in with our money, we were told by Mnangagwa that ‘keep your little money, we shall help you,' " she said.
"I can tell you here that every week Cde Mnangagwa sends
people to our home to ask us what we want and how we are. He does so out of
love, be assured we are taken care of."
This comes hot on the wake of the news that Mnangagwa had
just spend $1.4 million on a chartered plane to fly Grace back from Singapore
for the funeral.
In a country where ¾ of the population are now living in
abject poverty on as little as US$1.00 or less a day and basic services such as
health have all but collapsed. Hospitals up and down the country have no money
to buy even essential live saving drugs for babies. And yet our government
continues to spend money as if there is no tomorrow pampering the filthy rich
ruling elite and their families.
This no-expense spare for the rich carry-on underlines two
important points:
1) President
Mnangagwa, and Mugabe before him, have continued to look after the selfish
interest of the rich and powerful at the expense of the voiceless and
impoverished majority. The poor will suffer and died unnecessarily as long as they
continue to have a meaningless vote, a token but valueless vote which counts
for nothing in the face of the rich and powerful’s veto.
2) After
decades of enjoying absolute power complete with the influence and wealth that
it brought there is no doubt the ruling elite have become addicted to absolute
power and hence the reason they have committed all manner of crimes including
cheating and wanton violence to retain political power at any and all cost. Politics
have become such a lucrative career attracting some of the most ruthless
cutthroats most honest men and women have shied away leaving the field open to
the thugs who are fighting amongst themselves like wild cats for the spoils of
power but will fight just as fiercely to retain the rotten political system.
Whilst the greatest fight of this generation ever since the
country attained her independence in 1980 has been to secure the freedoms and
rights of all Zimbabweans including the right to a meaningful vote and the
right to life itself. People like Grace Mugabe see nothing wrong with rigged
elections as long as their selfish interests, their insatiable greed for power,
influence and wealth are secured and guaranteed.
President Mnangagwa rigged the recent elections just as he
had help Mugabe rig elections in the past. He can afford to ignore the long
suffering povo who are now dying unnecessarily whilst he attends to the
insatiable greed of the country’s filthy rich ruling elite. Povo have the token
but valueless vote which the Chiwengas, Mugabes, Justice Chigumba and her
fellow ZEC officials, Chiefs, rogue war veterans etc. have the veto that has
helped to rig elections and stay in power.
The $1.4 million wasted on chartering the plane for Grace
would have bought the life-saving drugs of 100 000 babies now condemned to an
early grave. Her needs to travel in total luxury, luxury a first class
commercial flight would not provide, was far more important than the babies’
lives! “Be assured we are taken care of!” Of course, you are!
Here we go! Here is the man who has just rigged the elections because he is super confident he alone can govern, just as Mugabe before him did. The reality on the ground has Zimbabwe the poorest nation nation on earth exactly because the country has been stuck with these leaders who are super confident they rig elections to stay in power.
ReplyDeleteMnangagwa was a senior member of Mugabe led Zanu PF regimes for 37 years and if he was so clever then why did he fail to do something to stop the country going to the dogs?
What is at issue here is not that Mnangagwa is cocksure of himself and his leadership ability but rather that he has once again denied the people of Zimbabwe to make their own judgement of him and his regime in a free, fair and credible elections. We are in this hell-hole because we failed to hold free, fair and credible elections and therefore by rigging these elections he has just confirmed we are still stuck with Zanu PF and in the hell-hole.
Rigging elections alone confirm the country is politically unstable with regime change only possible after military coup or widespread street protests. Investors do not do business in such unstable nations!
Tyrants like Mugabe and now Mnangagwa rig elections out of greed, their hunger for absolute power and the influence and wealth that it brings along is simply insatiable. It is not clear at what point their ego kicks in but what is clear is that they more powerful they are the more they believe themselves to be clever, the fountain of all wisdom and knowledge. Reality often force them to accept that they are fallible but instead of making them humble it often turns them into control freaks who will never allow anyone else any meaningful space to do anything for fear they will out shine them.
ReplyDeleteMnangagwa promised to hold free, fair and credible elections but from the word go he clearly had no intention of ever keeping that promise because he never even implement one toke reform. He instead went ahead with equipping the vote rigging juggernaut much as Mugabe would have done.
Greed and the hot air balloon size ego then work together to override reason and reality. Mugabe and Mnangagwa will never admit that Zimbabwe's economic collapse was a measure of their own failed leadership. Mugabe blames the west for all the country's problems and Mnangagwa blame Mugabe and the west. And as long as each was able to rig the elections they got away with it as it did not matter whether the people believed the lie or not as they had no meaningful vote.
Having rigged these elections Zanu PF has a good chance of rigging the next elections too since the party will see to it that no meaningful reforms are implemented.
The fight for free, fair and credible elections is the fight of our generation. Zimbabwe is in this economic and political mess because Zanu PF was able to rig elections and stay in power regardless of the party's performance. We, the people, must have a meaningful say in the governance of the country that is our only guarantee of good and competent government as contrast to the corrupt and incompetent tyrants with their inflated ego and greed.
"For the free and fair Zimbabwe that this election augurs cannot succeed without the opposition holding those in power to account – launching criticism in parliament, not stones in the streets," you say.
ReplyDeleteYou can say the elections were free and fair as often as you wish that will never change the facts on the ground proving the elections were rigged. How can elections in which ZEC failed to produce clean and verified voters' roll opening the door to blatant vote rigging be considered free and fair. Investors and lenders are not so easily fooled and they were not fooled! Not even one of the many election observer teams from the west have released their reports because it is damning.
Zimbabwe is still a pariah state and, as we already know, investors do not like to do business in pariah states. President Mnangagwa is not fooling anyone but himself!
OPPOSITION MDC Alliance Nelson Chamisa has vowed to cause sleepless nights to his political nemesis President Emmerson Mnangagwa's administration after his party nearly made a clean sweep of all urban local authorities, where it now controls 81% of them.
ReplyDeletePoor Chamisa, he had to crow about something and so he crows about nothing! If the opposition can only win 88 seats out of 350 when Zanu PF had imploded, the country's economy is in ruins, etc. then what hope is there of the opposition ever winning!
Chamisa was warned not to go into these elections with no reforms in place but he would not listen. He was cocksure MDC will win the rigged elections! He should not be complaining now.
The real losers here are the people of Zimbabwe who desperately need a competent government but are stuck with Zanu PF all because MDC are helping them get away with rigged elections!
MDC Alliance supporters and sympathisers of independent candidates, who contested in the July 30 polls in Dorset, Shurugwi South's ward 21 have accused Zanu PF activists of politicising farming inputs being doled out under the Presidential Inputs Support Scheme.
ReplyDeleteThe affected villagers alleged that Zanu PF functionaries were denying them access to government inputs.
This year's programme started in June to give farmers ample time to prepare for the summer cropping season to improve yields. Under the programme, each household was entitled to 10kg seed maize, 5kg sorghum seed, 50kg basal fertiliser (compound D) and 50kg top dressing fertiliser.
This is the political reality in Zimbabwe where the rural voters are nothing more than medieval serfs who are beholden to their tough landlord and task master. Zanu PF and its proxies, the local headmen and Chiefs, rogue war veterans, deployed soldiers and overzealous party members wield their power over the rural folk 24/7 all year and year in and year out. The step up their activity during elections but that is only top dressing, the ground work and damage is done long before the elections are held.
There is no hope of Zimbabwe ever holding free, fair and credible elections without first implementing the democratic reforms designed to take away the Zanu PF and its proxies' dictatorial powers over the rural people. The reforms must give every rural villager the right to own the land on which their home is built and all the power of the traditional leaders over the people must be taken away.
The white colonialists used the traditional leaders to impose their autocratic rule and Zanu PF has done the same after independence. Great traditional leaders like Chief Rekai Tangwena who had opposed white colonial rule must be turning in his grave to see how corrupt the Chiefs have become under Zanu PF!
The USA Supreme Court judge Robert H Jackson was right to "the Constitutional Court (Con-Court) is always right because it is final, not final because it is right." in the context of USA where there is some attempt to seek justice. The same cannot be same about our Con-Court.
ReplyDeleteHow can the Con-Court pretend that the election process was conducted in a competent manner when ZEC failed to produce something as basic as a clean and verified voters' roll? All the parties involved, including ZEC, have acknowledged that there was no voters' roll, although this is a legal requirement, and a number of other equally serious irregularities. The Con-Court judges have acknowledged these serious shortcomings but chose to ignore them all under the pretext that they would have only been important if the court had seen the voters' roll and all the other documents contained in the sealed ballot boxes.
All nonsense, of course. How would see the voters' roll in the seal boxes have added anything to the basic fact that ZEC failed to release a verified voters' roll, for example?
It should be remember here that these are the same judges who, eight months ago had ruled that military coups "are constitutional in Zimbabwe". Need I say more!
"United States Congresswoman Karen Bass also called on sobriety of mind: "The courts have ruled and that is the process, and so not to recognise him (Mnangagwa) as president, I don't know what that means," you say.
Congresswoman Karen Bass was a waste of space, if you must know. She said the elections were free and fair and failed to see even the obvious irregularity of ZEC failing to produce a clean and verified voters' roll. Where in the world can one expect to hold free and fair elections when only the one side in total control of the whole electoral process knows who is on the voters' roll, how many times some are allowed to vote, etc.?
Zanu PF blatantly rigged the recent elections and, per se, confirmed that Zimbabwe is still a pariah state ruled by vote rigging thugs. Investors are not coming to Zimbabwe, they do not do business in pariah states. What the Con-Court said on the matter is irrelevant because the investors can see the judges are hiding behind their little finger!
What matters here is that Zimbabwe is still stuck with a corrupt and tyrannical regime and an economic in total meltdown!
What is really disappointing here Mr Jacob Ngarivhume is that we knew, unless we implement the reforms first, Zanu PF would rigged these elections. You MDC Alliance leaders were warned of this but would not listen. "MDC has stringent measures to stop the vote rigging!" Chamisa said.
ReplyDeleteWhat Zanu PF has been doing since getting back into power, the criminal waste of resources, is nothing new. The nightmare is there are going to be five more years of the same coming up! This is one nightmare we could and should have avoided if you MDC Alliance lot had only listened!
"There is a very thin line between witchcraft and hiring a G650 for a grieving, rich former first lady while people are dying of primitive diseases like cholera when an equivalent $200 000 can transform the water system of Glenview and Harare to save lives. Evil is not only the commissioning of that which is wrong but the omission of doing the right thing when it is in your power to do it," you say.
"As leadership we are busy fighting for power, while people are dying and suffering. God have mercy! Our priorities are wrong. Our focus is wrong and the things that matter to us are not the things that matter to the people we are trying to lead or are leading.
"As I am leaving for church this morning, these matters have been eating heavy into my spirit. I will be in Glenview in the afternoon to assess the Cholera situation. Our party will be lobbying and pushing the government to do more to address permanently the water and sewage situation in our country."
Too little too late for that; particularly when it was you who spilt the milk!