“The students should also
find from The Struggle Continues that some of the most negative personal
ascriptions in the English language aptly fit Mugabe: tyrannical; murderous;
mendacious; disingenuous; manipulative; vicious; conspiratorial; reptilian;
greedy; psychopathic; cunning; dissembling; selfish; cowardly; destructive;
shameful and shameless - and all of these to the superlative degree, in recognition
of his considerable but warped intelligence,” wrote Jan Raath in his review of
Senator David Coltart’s book The Struggle Continues: 50 years of Tyranny
in Zimbabwe.
Both Raath and Coltart are absolutely
right, Mugabe is a monster is every sense of the word! My disappointment with
Senator Coltart’s book is that it tells half the story and gloss over the rest.
Senator Coltart was very careful
to avoid any mention in his book that the MDC’s principle task in the GNU was
to implement the democratic reforms and to draft a new DEMOCRATIC constitution
and thus ensure Zimbabwe’s the next elections will be free, fair and credible.
The GNU was set up to save the nation from a repeat of the 2008 elections which
was marred by vote rigging and wanton violence. The Senator’s book is supposed
to be an accurate and historic account of the democratic struggle and yet he shameful
and shameless said little or nothing on the issue.
Whilst he has gone into great
detail about the overflowing toilets in his ministerial office on the 14 th floor,
how he had to walk up there because the lifts were not working, etc.; where are
the details of why MDC failed to implement even one democratic reform in the
five years of the GNU?
David Coltart admitted the new
constitution granted Mugabe, State President, excessive powers without the
usual democratic checks and balance, that it was racist discriminatory, etc.,
and yet he still maintained it is was a good constitution. He and his fellow
MDC members campaigned for a YES vote in the March 2013 referendum insisting it
will deliver the free and fair elections the nation was after.
The test of the pudding is in
the eating. Mugabe went on to blatantly rig the 2013 elections and the Senator Coltart
witnessed the vote rigging from a front-seat as he was a contestant in that election.
He described in his book how many of his supporters were denied the vote
because their names were not in the voters roll although they had lived in the
constituency for twenty years or more. Near one million other voters up and
down the country were denied the vote for the same reason.
It turns out Mugabe had paid NIKUV,
an Israeli outfit, a cool $10 million to tamper with the voters roll,
deliberately posting suspected opposition supporters’ details into other constituent
voters roll rather than the constituency the voters expected. The unsuspecting
voters did not have the chance to have this put right because the voters roll
was never released a month, at the latest, before voting day as the law states.
Indeed Mugabe stubbornly refused to release the 2013 voters roll to this day!
Mugabe blatantly rigged the
2013 elections because MDC leaders failed to implement the democratic reforms.
Why? Well because they are breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent and they
sold-out. They were all “too busy enjoying themselves in the GNU, they forgot
why they were there,” as SADC leaders remarked soon after the rigged elections in
sheer frustration.
Only one or two MDC leaders
have acknowledged that MDC failed the nation by failing to implement the
reforms. Samuel Sipape Nkomo, himself a former MDC minister in the GNU, admitted
that SADC leaders had indeed warned MDC on the need to implement the reforms and
MDC leaders ignored the warnings. The rest of the MDC leaders have continued to
flatly deny it was their responsibility to implement the reforms and get angry
with all who remind them that they sold-out.
Talk of why MDC failed to
implement the democratic reforms during the GNU and MDC leaders will very quickly
change the subject. They will talk until the cows come home of how it was them
who brought the national economy from the brink follow the 500 billion per cent
hyperinflation, empty shop shelves, etc. In the case of Senior Coltart, he has spelt
out all the smallest details, spared the readers of none, of what a big mess
Zimbabwe’s education system was in when he took office. It is all nonsense, of
course, because these MDC leaders know perfectly well they could have done all
this excellent work on the economic, education, etc., and still implement the
reforms! The GNU lasted five years for Pete’s sake instead of the original
eighteen months; there was plenty of time to have implemented all the reforms!
Besides, not even one of these
MDC buffoons would deny the futility of saving the country’s economy from the
brink during the GNU years only to have it fall straight back into abyss again as
happened in July 2013 because Mugabe had just rigged the.
“This book should be
prescribed as essential reading for students at Fort Hare University (SA) who
greeted President Robert Mugabe with wild acclamation when he visited there in
May, as the man who gave the white man a good thrashing,” recommended Jan Raath.
I recommend the book to
everyone, especially to every Zimbabwean for generations to come, as essential
reading for a totally different reason. Book gives details of the human misery
under the corrupt and murderous tyrannical rule of Robert Mugabe, how MDDC leaders
wasted time instead of attending to the important task of implementing the
reforms to end the Mugabe dictatorship and, last by most important of all, how
MDC leaders like Senator Coltart have attempted to falsify history to hide
their breath-taking incompetence during the GNU.
Implementing the reforms is
the key to the nation getting out of this hell-hole Mugabe has dragged us into.
MDC leaders, some of whom are in parliament and senate, have not given the task
of implementing reforms the serious and urgent attention the matter demands. Even
with the benefit of hindsight many still do not appreciate the importance of
the reforms, the few who do prefer to sweep reform under the carpet so as not
to draw attention to their failure to implement the reforms during the GNU.
Indeed Zimbabwe is right now
heading for yet another rigged election in 2018 because we still do not have even
one reform implemented. How many more rigged elections are we going to tolerate
because we will not demand the implementation of the democratic reforms because
all talk of reforms exposes MDC leaders’ historic failure to implement the
reforms during the GNU?
The title of Senator Coltart’s
book is misleading; struggle for democracy and good governance in Zimbabwe is not
just against the tyrant Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs but even more so a
struggle to reject Tsvangirai and his MDC friends for the corrupt, incompetent
useless leaders they are. Yes Mugabe has dragged us into this hell-hole but MDC
have played their role in keeping us into the hole by failing to implementing
the reforms necessary to end the Zanu PF dictatorship!
“Talk of why MDC failed to implement the democratic reforms during the GNU and MDC leaders will very quickly change the subject. They will talk until the cows come home of how it was them who brought the national economy from the brink follow the 500 billion per cent hyperinflation, empty shop shelves, etc. In the case of Senior Coltart, he has spelt out all the smallest details, spared the readers of none, of what a big mess Zimbabwe's education system was in when he took office,” you said.
ReplyDeleteI have followed what you have said about MDC, the GNU, etc., etc. I have agreed with some of what you said and questioned other but you know what. What you have said here is so, so true. MDC leaders were in the GNU to implement the democratic reforms so we will have free, fair and credible elections. I really cannot recall any MDC leader ever explaining why they failed to implement even one reform.
They have all to the woman and man in MDC avoided addressing the issue of reforms, it is as if this was never ever discussed.
Look at MP Eddie Cross, every week or two he has written an article on Zimbabwe; he has talked about the sorry state of the economy, what Zanu PF has done wrong, etc. but has never said any-thing about the reforms and MDC’s failure to implement even one reform. The same with Professor Ncube, Tendai Biti, Vince Musewe, etc. they have all had a lot to say about everything else except reforms.
I have read Senator Coltart’s book, I really do not remember him saying much about reforms if any-thing at all! He wrote a whole book on Zimbabwe’s struggle to end the Zanu PF dictatorship and he forgot to mention democratic reforms; how very disappointing.
These MDC leaders are forever talking about everything else expect what the nation really wants to hear – implementing the democratic reforms. Until we implement the reforms nothing will change. We can have demos every day, hold rallies at every street corner but as long as PF has its billions of dollars looted from Marange to bribe all the officials, etc., it will rig the vote and stay in power.
By pretending the reforms are not important MDC is fooling the nation; reforms are important and MDC must not be allowed to fool the nation again as they did during the GNU.
I will not comment on whether David Coltart's account of events in Zimbabwe throughout the war of independence right up to the formation of the GNU in 2009 is true and accurate but what I can say with certainty is that his account of the GNU period is not worth the paper it is written on. This is like writing about Adolf Hitler and then produce volumes talking about his days in Bavaria, his dog, his mistress, etc., etc., and say nothing about the war and the millions of Jews and other nations and minority members his regime gassed to death!
DeleteThe GNU was set up to implement reforms and to write a new constitution so that the country will never again have the barbarism of the 2008 elections. Coltart does not deny that the 2013 elections were rigged. The fact that his book was written with the benefit of the full knowledge of this key historic fact that the 2013 elections were rigged, one would have expect Coltart be introspective about what went wrong instead of glossing over things and try to baffle the readers with bull!
MDC leaders were warned that they must implement the reforms but ignore the warnings because they were PM, ministers, etc. and so they knew better than anyone else! Zimbabweans risked life and limp to get these MDC village idiots into power so they can deliver democratic change as they had promised and not waste time chasing women of ill repute and gallivanting round the world!
Instead of apologizing to the people for selling them to the tyrant for thirty pieces of silver, you write a book falsifying historic facts – portraying himself as the white-man in shining knight’s armour riding to save the blacks when the truth is he was just as corrupt and incompetent as everyone else in the MDC; what cheek!
Zimra warehouse in Beitbridge has been set alight by people protesting the ban of imports.
ReplyDeleteThis regime has been warned that the economic meltdown is now very serious the economic situation that has left 90% out of work and 76% living in abject poverty is simply unsustainable. If the regime does not accept peaceful change then it has per se accept violent change since that is the only other way change will come. One only hopes that the violence in Beitbridge is the last warning for the regime to embrace change and not the beginning of the violent end.
One thing the regime should know that the violent end will destroy property and take human lives but the one thing the regime can be certain of is that the violence will not stop until the regime itself is burnt to ashes and many of its leaders dead.