“Unsurprisingly, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)'s 2020 monetary policy statement is more of the same — a tired litany of promises waiting to be broken and targets queuing up to be missed. Governor John Mangudya, who just a year ago promised to "preserve value" has since delivered over 500% inflation and 94% devaluation,” wrote Anthony Hawkins in Bulawayo 24.
“Such active value destruction continues, compounded by the issue of Treasury Bills to institutional investors. Just how issuing TBs at 14% or 15% qualifies as preserving value is beyond comprehension. Perhaps Mangudya will explain?”
“A tired litany of promises waiting to be broken and targets queuing to be missed” and, sadly, those who suffer the consequences of the broken promises and missed targets the most are totally helpless as they have no meaningful political and economic power to hold anyone involved to account. None! This encapsulate the economic and political tragedy that has been playing out in Zimbabwe since the country’s independence in 1980.
Those with the political power do as they please. Whilst government’s failed economic policies have caused untold economic hardships to the ordinary people the latter have no effective means to force those in positions of power and authority to change their policies much less remove them from office. None!
“Seek ye first the political kingdom and all things shall be added unto you,” said Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president.
The people of Zimbabwe thought that was exactly what the nation was fighting for in the struggle to end white colonial exploitation and oppression. “One man, one vote!” was the clarion cry.
Whilst there was a determined effort by some black nationalist leaders to honour the promise to given the ordinary people a meaning vote after independence, notably South Africa. In Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies took a dim view of the country’s Lancaster House constitution and its promise to deliver one man, one vote in a multi-party democratic Zimbabwe.
Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies wanted Zimbabwe to be a one-party, Zanu PF, state. They viewed the insistence on free, fair and credible elections as a ploy to deny Zanu PF the right to rule the country which they had earned through the barrel of the gun.
It came as no surprise then was no surprise then Mugabe did not honour his Lancaster House undertaking to withdraw all his freedom fighters to the designated assembly points to stop them intimidating the electorate. Worse still, Zanu PF’s key message to the electorate was that if the party lost the elections, it would not honour the result and instead rekindle the bush war.
So instead of the first elections being about electing who was to rule the country in free, fair and credible election process, as the people had hoped; it was about electing to end the war. And once in power Zanu PF has left no stone unturned to ensure the party won all the elections that followed.
The nearest the country has ever come to holding free, fair and credible elections was in the March 2008 elections. SADC had put Zanu PF under pressure to a meaningful voting system and, with the economy in ruins, the Zimbabwe electorate were desperate for political change and so voted for the opposition party.
When it was clear that Zanu PF was gong to lose the elections, Zanu PF hardliners supported by the top brass in the Police, Army, CIO and Prison Services stop ZEC declaring the results. For the next six week the hardliners “cooked up” the results to give the opposition a marginal lead in parliamentary.
In the presidential race, they reduced Tsvangirai’s 73%, as admitted by Mugabe in Freudian slip years latter, to 47% and thus force a run-off.
“What was accomplished by the bullet cannot be undone by the ballot!” boasted Robert Mugabe. Zanu PF thugs and rogue war veterans supported by the personnel from the country’s uniformed security services unleash the most barbaric election violence the country had ever seen. Over 500 innocent civilians were murdered and millions had their properties destroy, were beaten and/or raped. The electorate were beaten into submission, Mugabe “won” the run-off with 84% of the vote!
Zanu PF has retain’s dictatorial powers to rig the elections to this day. Without first implementing the democratic reforms designed to take away these dictatorial power it clear Zanu PF rig the 2023 elections just as the party has done these last 40 years.
The people of Zimbabwe lost their freedoms and rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections before the 1980 elections, before they even had the chance to taste.
40 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption have all but destroyed the Zimbabwe economy; unemployment has soared to dizzying heights of 90%, basic services like education and health care have all but collapsed, 34% of the population now live in extreme poverty, etc. As Anthony Hawkins rightly pointed the future is grime because any promises by the regime to revive the economy will never be honoured.
Still, the country’s economic meltdown has sunk so low caused so much human suffering and deaths, this cannot go on for much longer. The cup is full to overflow, there must be change.
By refusing to implement the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections Zanu PF has closed the door to peaceful change. What the party has done is delay change and, more significantly, opened the door to violent revolutionary change. No one can stop change, no one; the choice is always between peaceful and orderly change or violent and chaotic change.
Having imposed the choice of violent and chaotic change on the nation, Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies must know they will be held to account for all the destruction, human suffering and deaths that will follow.
After 40 years of enjoying absolute power it is clear that Zanu PF leaders and their proxy like RBZ Governor Mangudya and Finance Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube, are not even bothered they have broken so many of their promises and missed so many of their targets. When you know, no one will ever hold you to account tomorrow or ever you become arrogant, careless and indifferent.
ReplyDeleteDr Kwame Nkrumah was right, there is nothing of substance that can ever be accomplish as long as we remain powerless to hold those in position of power and authority over our lives to account.
We remove a white minority regime that denied us, as blacks, a vote only to replace it with a black nationalist regime that only pretended to give us a vote. Zanu PF has reduce the ordinary Zimbabweans into nothing more than Europe’s medieval serfs beholden to their every lives to the overbearing Zanu PF landlords.
Zanu PF has resisted peaceful change and now the country is facing serious economic meltdown and tragic human suffering and deaths. The country is being torn apart with disastrous consequences that will take generations of sweat, blood and treasure to repair, if at all and all because of the insatiable greed for power and wealth of a selfish few.
“Having imposed the choice of violent and chaotic change on the nation, Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies must know they will be held to account for all the destruction, human suffering and deaths that will follow,” you argue.
I agree 100%! We really need to get away from this foolishness of elevating our leaders to the realms of Gods who can do no wrong. It is little wonder village idiots like Mugabe, Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and even opposition leaders like Tsvangirai and Chamisa have become so big-headed they cannot fathom the notion of being held to account by mere mortals like me and you!
“It is not the survival of the king that is at issue here! It is the survival of England!” argued Oliver Cromwell in his time when his generation faced the challenge of the obstinate King Charles 1 who believed he was accountable to no mortal.
For Zimbabwe to get out of this man-made hell-on-earth that Zanu PF thugs have dragged us into; we need to make it crystal clear to these thugs that they, like every other mortal to hold public office, are accountable to the people who granted them the power and authority and in whose interest they should exercise it.
Robert Mugabe promised the people of Zimbabwe mass prosperity, "Gutsa ruzhinji!" as he never tired of saying in the first decade of our independence. He delivered mass poverty instead and the nation's economic prospects have been in decline ever since. Zanu PF has continued to make empty promises regardless. In the 2013 elections Zanu PF promised the nation 3 million new jobs in the next five years. At the end of the period the nation had a net loss of jobs as more companies had closed than started.
ReplyDeleteZanu PF has never been miffed in any way by the party's failure to keep its promises to improve the lives of the ordinary people, as if doing so would have been a bonus, a favor, which the people had no right to expect. Zanu PF has always believed that it has the right to rule Zimbabwe, especially after the signing of the unity accord with PF Zapu, and anyone questioning that right was being rude, to say the least.
The right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country is, indeed, a right and not a privilege and our failure to asset this from the word go has been one of our greatest failures as a nation. And we have paid dearly for our failure!