“Behold the new has come as cyclone Citizens Coalition for Change hits Zimbabwe by storm,” wrote Leonard Koni
“In the political history of Zimbabwe, the entrance of Citizens Coalition for
Change has rattled the regime to an extent of labelling the new kid on the block
as an extension of an Islamic group ISIS.
“The regime has panicked just by naming the political party and it's colour
yellow.”
I totally agree
with you that both the ordinary Zimbabweans and the ruling party have stirred
up into a frenzy of excitement and panic, respectively, by the launch of Citizens
Coalition for Change, “the new kid on the block” as you called it.
The truth is CCC is
certainly not new in that it is the same corrupt and incompetent MDC leaders of
the last 22 years being recycled. And to prove the point, they are
participating in the by-elections and the coming 2023 elections with no reforms
just as they had done during their MDC days. They have renewed their claims to
having plans to stop Zanu PF rigging elections.
It goes without saying,
Zanu PF is rigging the elections and Chamisa and company will complain the
elections were stolen. Zanu will have got legitimacy and will reward CCC with a
few gravy train seats. And the nation will still be stuck with the corrupt and
tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship.
In short, the
frenzy of excitement by the Zimbabwe public is over nothing, they are an easily
excitable lot as we saw after the November 2017 military coup! The greeted the
coup as the real liberation day as contrast to April 1980 which was a false one.
Mugabe had denied them their freedoms and rights before they had even tasted
them.
As for the Zanu PF
regime, it has good reasons to panic. The over excitement over nothing by the
public bespeaks of a people who are desperate for change. Desperate people do
desperate things. The social media videos of people celebrating the launch of
CCC showed people who were itching for a fight.
Chamisa and company
have been reiterating one of their key pillars in their election strategy is “people
must protect the vote!” They insist these would be peaceful demonstrations, but
we all know there is no such thing as peaceful protest. The crowds celebrating
the birth of CCC were itching for a fight because they too know there will be
no peaceful protests!
The tragedy is
violent protests will be a damning indictment to us all, that we have failed to
deliver peaceful change, we have failed to implement the democratic reforms so
the country could have free, fair and credible elections. Violent street
protests will bring death and destruction, guaranteed; beyond that it is anyone’s
guess.
Look at countries
like Libya and Syria that too failed to bring peaceful democratic change; their
violent protests are now in their second decade and the country is in ruins.
It is ironic that the people of Zimbabwe have risked life and limb to elect MDC aka CCC into power on the mistaken belief they would deliver democratic changes and end the Zanu PF dictatorship. Chamisa and company have wasted many golden opportunities to implement the democratic reforms and have, since the GNU failures, participated in flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy. And now, their betrayal has left the nation so desperate for change, the people are resorting to violence in their desperation.
"When the liberation struggle was fought, it was Zanu-PF that mobilised the masses and one of the key fundamentals was the fight for mineral resources, the fight for independence and that is why Zanu-PF chose yellow as (one of) its colours. The reason was because it was symbolising the national resources in terms of mineral wealth," Chirau said.
ReplyDelete"So these minerals we still have them up to this day and this explains why Zimbabwe has the largest number of artisanal miners and indigenous people who own minerals. Yellow, to us, represents wealth, it's not just the colour that we took on ourselves, but most importantly, you should also take the fact that we have four colours, (that is) green and yellow, red and black. These colours will never change because of someone who wants to take them. They remain our colours, they symbolise the importance of the rich minerals that we have."
When one reads such remarks, it is clear why the nation is in a real mess. The nation is facing some serious challenges; unemployment has soared to 90% plus, more than half of our people are living in abject poverty, education and health care have all but collapsed, etc., etc. The nation is expecting its leaders to be addressing these problems and all they have been talking about is party name and colours.
Nelson Chamisa and company, for their part, took two years to decide on their new party name and colours and still made a dog’s breakfast of it. The acronym CCC belongs to Citizen convergence for Change and the colour yellow to Simba Makoni’s Mavambo.
It was the great Greek philosopher, Socrates, who said "Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people." If he was alive today and witnessed the madness in Zimbabwe he would add a fourth category “and village idiots discuss endlessly the mind numbing trivia such as party names, colours”
Poor, poor Zimbabwe! We are a failed state with no hope of escape for we have village idiots for leaders in the ruling party and opposition alike! There is no hope of meaningful change; Zanu PF is content with the status quo and having failed to bring change the opposition has settled for the scraps from Zanu PF and will fight viciously all newcomers especially if they want to bring change! Of course, we are stuck!
SCHOOL teachers have once again threatened to boycott classes unless government addresses the outstanding issue of their salaries and other education related allowances before the opening of schools next week.
ReplyDeleteThe government last week announced that schools will be opened for the first term on February 7 following weeks of closure due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The corona virus pandemic has caused serious disruption in all facets of human activities be it economic, social, education, health, etc. No nation on earth has been spared. Countries like Zimbabwe have suffered greatly because the corona virus challenges were an added burden on a nation that was already down in the gutter weak and feeble from a multitude of problems resulting from the economic meltdown, itself a result of decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption.
The corona virus challenges are going away, thanks to the vaccines and other solutions. The pandemic will leave deep scars the world over and many nations are, nonetheless, glad they can finally move on. Not Zimbabwe! The challenges of poor wages and lack of funds caused by the decades of bad governance are still there.
As long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state there will be no meaningful economic recovery. And the longer we allow the problems of bad governance to fester the harder it will be to get out of the economic and political hell-hole we are stuck in. The millions of children who are missing out on their education will never recover and national recovery with an ill-educated electorate is near impossible!