Photo credit: The Zimbabwean
This is a sad and tragic indictment to how much we as a
nation have failed our fellow men and failed ourselves.
How is it that anyone would call this home in this day and
age? And yet millions of Zimbabwe call such as this home and many will continue
to do so for many years to come unless we make a conscientious effort to change
things now.
35 years of corrupt and tyrannical Mugabe rule
has left more Zimbabwean poorer now than they were in 1980. In terms of
development Mugabe has dragged us backward instead of moving us forward.
Implementing all the 2008 GPA reforms is our ticket out of this hell!
This is Mugabe's legacy to the nation and we the people let the tyrant do this. We should all hang our heads in shame!
ReplyDeleteMany of the intelligentsia and urban elite thought they had escape rural poverty and so we turned a blind eye to what Zanu PF has doing. Now our sins of omission have now come back to haunt us because the poverty and hopelessness in the rural areas has crept into the urban centres and right into our low density suburbia.
Zimbabwe urban centres’ match from the 20th century back into the dark ages in the last 35 years has been a sprint and not a tortoise stroll seen in other African countries. The once posh Mount Pleasant suburb of Harare, for example, is gone. Its roads are full of potholes; the houses are neglected – many have never had another coat of paint since the white owners moved out. Most houses have a makeshift shaky at the back where all the cooking is done because the extended electricity power cuts – there is no difference between those are paying their bills and those who cannot, they are all sitting in the dark.
How can you have no running water for weeks on end and in some areas it is now for months on end and yet this is now the norm in every town and city in Zimbabwe? Wherever you are, you will not need to ask where the toilet is the stench from the toilet that is flashed infrequently, because there is no water, is overwhelming.
With unemployment now a nauseating 90% plus most urban dwellers have no regular jobs and subsist on selling airtime cards and all manner of trinkets on the streets and everywhere. They thought the escaped poverty and despair of rural life only to be trapped in urban poverty and despair; they are streetwise urban peasants living from hand to mouth like their rural cousins.
We are now living in hell-on-earth and it is one of our own making!
@ Choto
ReplyDeleteMugabe did dig his own grave in 2008 by using the wanton violence because not even SADC and AU would accept the elections were free and fair. The regional body told him they would not accept him as the legitimate president of Zimbabwe unless he signed the GPA in which he was forced to accept a raft of democratic reforms design to dismantle his dictatorship. He did sign the GPA. The only reason not even one reform was implemented was because Mugabe bribed his MDC opposite numbers in the GNU.
The Electoral reforms Tsvangirai has been making a big song and dance about are useless; he was only demanding them so he can be seen to be doing something about ending Zanu PF's culture of rigging elections. With Tsvangirai, it is all about appearance; if people continue to fol-low him and people like him this country will never have free and fair elections as year after year generation after generation the nation will be told they need one set of reforms and then another.
If there one thing SADC got right it is the raft of reform stated in the GPA including media, Police, ZEC, etc. necessary for free and fair elections. MDC failed to get one reform implemented, that is most unfortunate; still we have the list we must implement all the reforms! We must stop wasting time on Tsvangirai's wishy-washy reforms.
@ silungisn
ReplyDeleteRigging the next elections will present Zanu PF with the greatest challenge ever. Yes Mugabe is building up an very impressive war chest from all the billions he and his cronies are looting from Marange and Chiadzwa but it is going to take a lot more than bribes to win the elections.
The in fighting in Zanu PF has left Mugabe with too many enemies from those he booted out of the party to those who are still Zanu PF carrying members but are bitter at being cheated all these years. This poses a serious challenge in that rigging the elections is a complex task involving many people; with so many enemies, how is he going to get the job done without one of his enemies knowing the details of the rigging. It will only take one or two to reveal the details and he will be in serious trouble.
The worsening economic situation will mean Mugabe will never deliver on his 2013 election promise of 2.2 million new jobs and therefore he will be facing an electorate that is even more determined than in 2008 to get him out of power. Rigging an elections in which there is wide spread voter apathy is easy, rigging one with a determined electorate is a hell lot more difficult. He knows he will have to reply on his tried and test tactic of using wanton violence to subdue the electorate but he also knows that a repeat of the wanton violence of 2008 would leave him out at sea without a single friend, not even SADC or the AU would help him this time!
Yes a tyrant like Mugabe would not want to give up but even a seasoned tyrant like him must know that the game is up. Mugabe is finished; Tsvangirai should have implemented the reforms and the 2013 elections would have spelt the end of Mugabe's political career, the MDC idiot failed to implement any reform and Mugabe had a lucky get out of jail card. Is Mugabe going to get another lucky get out jail card, I do not think so.
In my view, Mugabe has two options left:
1) Stick it out to the bitter end; resist implementing the GPA reforms and use his ill gotten fortune from all the looting and plunder in Marange to bribe everyone from the hired rally crowd to the NIKUV Israelis who will tamper with the voters roll and, if necessary, use brute force to subdue the electorate.
This is a false choice in that he is doing nothing to address mismanagement, corruption and lawlessness the root causes behind the economic meltdown. Indeed by rigging the elections yet again he will be reaffirming his regime's reputation of lawlessness. So even if he was to win the next elections he will still be in the economic trap with no money to pay civil servants, with unemployment still 90% plus, etc.
Then there is always the possibility that his attempt to rig the elections fail and the end will be very bitter indeed. Mugabe must know that his cunningness during the GNU left Tsvangirai looking like a first class idiot he is but it also SADC heads with a lot of egg on their faces for having failed to see that Tsvangirai was useless. SADC would not want to making a similar mistake again, so they would rather see Mugabe stew in his own mess than throw him another a lifeline.
If no one accept his election victory, then Mugabe will be is serious trouble. He will lose fresh free and fair elections and then the recrimination of the rig elections will start; he will wish he was never born!
The people’s bottled up anger against Mugabe has reached the point where, given half a chance, they will dispatch him the same way Libyans dispatched Gadaffi!
2) The second option is to accept the implementation of the GPA reforms, lose the free and fair elections, congratulate the winner and handover power as if those who have accused him of rigging elections have been lying and misunderstood him! He will be hoping that the nation will be pre-occupied with the difficult task of rebuilding the lives of the millions of people now living in abject poverty and despair to waste time investigating the demonic past of a half-died relic.