“THE late former army
commander, Solomon Mujuru, reportedly suggested Vice-President Emmerson
Mnangagwa — then State Security minister — should succeed President Robert
Mugabe as the next Zanu PF leader, a former ruling party politburo member has
claimed,” reported Newsday.
“Former Midlands governor
Cephas Msipa yesterday said in 1983 Mujuru had suggested Mnangagwa’s name to
him as a potential successor, although this was no longer relevant, as this was
said before the 1987 Unity Accord.”
“He (Mujuru) told me
something similar to what war veterans are saying today. So you have to
understand what Chris (Mutsvangwa, the war veterans’ chairman) is saying today
is in that context,” Msipa continued.
What is at issue here is
that leaders must be elected by the people in a free, fair and credible
election and Zanu PF’s failure to hold such elections is at the very heart of
the country’s economic meltdown and political chaos. The solution is to slam
down hard all those seeking to perpetuate this failed one-party cum one-man
dictatorship and thus end the system a.s.a.p. in favour of a healthy and
democratic system of government in which every Zimbabwean has a meaningful
free, fair and credible one-man-one-vote.
The Genesis of Zimbabwe’s
present economic and political mess can be traced by to the country’s Black
Nationalist leaders’ failure to appreciate the critical importance of securing
all Zimbabweans’ right to a meaningful free, fair and credible vote not only as
a fundamental human right but also as the foundation of good, just and
accountable government. Zimbabwe’s leaders only paid lip-service to freedom,
liberty, fair distribution of the nation’s wealth, etc.; they had their beady
eyes on securing absolute power for themselves and the unfettered access to the
nation’s wealth to feed their insatiable greed.
South Africa’s Black
Nationalist leaders, in contrast, gave the matter of what kind of post-apartheid
did they want the serious consideration the matter demanded as can be seen from
the 1955 Freedom Charter, the Bible of SA’s fight for independence.
“The People Shall Govern!
Every man
and woman shall have the right to vote for and to stand as a candidate for all
bodies which make laws;
All people
shall be entitled to take part in the administration of the country;
The rights
of the people shall be the same, regardless of race, colour or sex;
All bodies of minority rule, advisory boards, councils and
authorities shall be replaced by democratic organs of self-government.”
Boldly states
the very opening section of the Freedom Charter.
SA has held a number of
elections since its first post-apartheid 1994 elections and no one has ever
complained of any of them was rigged. Every man and woman, regardless of race
or colour, had a meaningful free, fair credible one-vote. No one had more than
one-vote much less a veto. Sadly the same cannot be said of Zimbabwe’s
elections, all of them including the first 1980 elections were rigged.
Zimbabwe wasted nearly
$100 million and God knows how many MPs man-hours writing a new 68 page
constitution which the MDC leaders insisted was a democratic constitution, it
is “an MDC child” Tsvangirai said. They assured the nation it will finally deliver
the free and fair elections the nation had yarned for since independence. It
did no such thing!
The new 2013 constitution
was in fact too weak and feeble to deliver free and fair elections and by noon
of voting day, 31 July 2013, Tsvangirai acknowledged that Mugabe had indeed “rigged
the elections”. The MDC leader had been warned that as long as the elections
are held without implementing the 2008 GPA democratic reforms first, the
elections will never be free and fair.
Whilst Mugabe and his Zanu
PF cronies have enjoyed 36 years of absolute political power, the fruit of
rigging elections; the nation has paid a heavy price as mismanagement,
corruption and lawlessness have thrived under the dictatorship. The country is
facing serious economic meltdown and, with both Zanu PF and the opposition
fighting and subdividing like amoebas, political chaos. The situation is socially
and politically unsustainable; it is causing untold human misery, many lives are
being lost unnecessarily and it now threatens national and regional stability.
With human lives and
national survival at stake, one had hoped that the penny would have finally
dropped and Zanu PF grandees like Cephas Msipa would now finally see the error
of their failure to secure good, just and accountable government by safe
guarding everyone’s freedoms and basic rights including the right to free and
fair elections
Wisdom comes with age! Sadly
this is clearly not the case with these Zanu PF grandees like Cephas Msipa,
worse still Robert Mugabe himself; they are still devoid of common sense and as
myopic as ever! They are no different from the brainwashed Chris Mutsvangwa who
still believe that war veterans are “stockholders of Zimbabwe” and thus have a
veto on who the country’s president should be.
The only way to end
Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown and political chaos is by clearing the political
deck of the failed Zanu PF dictatorship by implementing all the democratic
reforms necessary for free and fair elections.
The nation should have
never allowed Zanu PF nationalists to impose the de facto one-party cum one-man
dictatorship we have lived under since independence, it was a big mistake and
the nation has paid dearly for it. If anyone in Zanu PF thinks they can still
impose the dictatorship on the nation, they are wrong; the system has failed
the nation and it must and will be scrapped without further ado!
After a period of relative calm and stability that obtained in the country during and just after the government of national unity era, desperate Zimbabweans are once again stampeding out of the country, mainly to South Africa, as the country's economic decline escalates.
ReplyDeleteMugabe has bamboozled and cheated his political opponents and rigged elections and even murdered the electorate to stay in power. The one thing he has failed to do was rig economic recovery and it is the country's worsening economic meltdown that is going to force the tyrant to accept regime change!
There are three key points that Zanu PF thugs, hardliners, apologists right up to the tyrant, President Mugabe, himself must understand are:
ReplyDeletea) That the de facto one-party cum one-man dictatorship they have imposed on the nation these last 36 years is the root cause of the economic meltdown and the political chaos. The situation has reached a crisis point, the very survival of this nation is now under serious threat, the tyrannical system must end now.
b) That being the nation’s liberation war heroes and heroines did not give these Zanu PF war veterans the right to ride roughshod over the masses denying them their freedoms and basic human rights including the right to a meaningful vote and the right to life itself. We must go back to one-man-one-vote as the essence of “The people shall govern!”
c) The excuse that Zanu PF spear headed the liberation war and therefore per se are the “stockholders of Zimbabwe” with the veto of who will govern this land is archaic and barbaric because it leaves those, for whatever reason, who did not fight in that war with no choice but to fight those who did. We do not want this vicious circle were yesterday’s liberator become today’s oppressor and so each generation must fight the one before it for its basic freedoms and human dignity. People like Mutsvangwa, Msipa, Mnangagwa right up to the top dog himself, President Mugabe, must know that their selfish greed has pushed this nation into this hell-hole and therefore every dollar in treasure and drop of human blood lost in the fight to end this tyrannical dictatorship will be on their account and the sons and grandsons will pay for the sins of the fathers and grandfather to the seventh generation!
Enough is bloody enough!
Zanu PF and PF Zapu's failure to produce something comparable to the Freedom Charter is at the very heart of Zimbabwe's failure to uphold the people's expectation of freedom, justice and good governance. Both parties suffered from having very autocratic leaders in the form of Mugabe and Nkomo surrounded by the most malleable and unimaginative pool of followers below them. Only a malleable and unimaginative pool of followers would have tolerated the way Mugabe and Nkomo managed the party as if it was their individual property and everyone else was no more than a grade one pupil to be told what to do at every turn.
ReplyDeleteMugabe and Nkomo was the headmaster and all the others below them were school prefects fol-lowed by povo who had no voice whatsoever. It is little wonder Nkomo remain leader of PF Zapu all his life and Mugabe has done the same; it is unthinkable that a grade one pupil can ever aspire to be the Headmaster!
To think all the pungwe (all night) meetings before independence followed by all the rallies after independence and yet nothing substantive was ever discussed. If there was ever the best time to define where we are going as a nation and how we would get there, this was the best time to do so. It is depressing to think how many man-years each and every one of us wasted on slogans and singing!
Trying to define where we are going now with the nation in a real mess and everyone sick and tired and old is not going to be easy and yet it must be done.
We have to get Zanu PF grandees like Msipa, Mutsvangwa and his dzakutsaku war veterans to understand that the right to free, fair and credible elections is not negotiable. It will be a very bitter pill for them to swallow after all these years of believing they had the veto!
We have to get the povo to believe they have a right to meaningful vote; after all the decades of being cheated many of them have given up and resigned to their subservient roll! The next level is to get them to understand the issues because as long as their understanding continues to be superficial they will continue to elect corrupt and incompetent leaders.
There is tonnes and tonnes of work to do to revive the economy on the one hand and to build a healthy and functional democratic system; these will never be done with the corrupt and incompetent politicians we have at present.