Dr Moyo launched in Meikles Hotel to escape Police and CIO "intimidation" - so why contest. N Garikai

Zimbabwe is in a political and economic mess, of that there can be no question.

According to a recent New World Wealth report Zimbabwe is the poorest nation in Africa. This for a nation that was one of the richest in Africa before independence in 1980 and has all the material resources and potential to be rich again if only the country can solve its problem of bad governance.

President Mugabe has corrupted the country’s once upon a time multi-party democratic institutions to create a corrupt, vote rigging and ruthless de facto one party dictatorship.

There have been many opportunities to end the Zanu PF dictatorship with the best chance falling to the MDC during the GNU. All the MDC leaders had to do was implement the democratic reforms designed to dismantle the dictatorship to allow free, fair and credible elections. They had five years to implement the reforms and yet failed to get even one reform implemented.

Zimbabwe’s rapid economic decline cannot be attributed to corruption only our leaders have shown something much worse. They are so breathtakingly incompetent they are incapable of making the right, common sense, decision and, more often than not, shoot themselves in the foot!

President Mugabe and his cronies seized the white owned farms turn the nation overnight from the breadbasket of the region to one now always begging. Talk of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have become the victims of their only folly. They sold-out during the GNU and did not implement the reforms designed to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections thinking “Zanu PF shenanigans would not overwhelm MDC’s mass support”, as Tsvangirai admitted. They were really shocked when Zanu PF blatantly rigged the July 2013 elections resulting in many MDC members losing their gravy train seats.

Zimbabwe is in a political and economic mess alright and to get out the nation desperately need competent leaders who are not corrupt but, most important of all, who have common sense. If anyone, like me, thought the nation’s prayers for a good leader with common sense had been answered by the entry of Dr Nkosana Moyo in the political arena; he did not take long to disappoint.

“Why did you launch your bid to be president in the Meikles Hotel?” Dr Moyo was asked by Ruveneko.

“That is part of the problem in Zimbabwe; if you want to talk to the people, you have to get permission to do so which can be withheld for no good reason,” answered Dr Moyo.

“We had got a place at Jennings Hall in Highfields, but we would have needed Police permission which you and I know would have been denied.

“So, I was going to my rural Primary School and CIO had been all over the place intimidating everyone that I should not be allowed.”

No one can dispute that the Police would have probably denied him permission to hold his launch in Highfields. There have been countless opposition gatherings that have been disrupted by the Police in the past “for no good reason”.

We all know Zimbabwe is a Police State and are only too familiar with Police harassment and CIOs intimidation. Now that Dr Moyo in in the presidential race, he will face a multitude of other political problems such as being denied access to the public media. He will struggle to raise the money have to fund his campaign whereas Zanu PF will have truckloads of cash to bankroll its election campaign.

Next year’s elections will NOT be free, fair and credible; that much is clear.

After the barbarism of blatant vote rigging and wanton violence of 2008, SADC proposed the implementation of a raft of democratic reforms as the only way to stop Zanu PF rigging future elections. Sadly, Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends who were tasked to implement the reforms failed to get even one reform implemented.

“If you go into elections next month, you are going to lose; the elections are done,” SADC leaders warned Tsvangirai and his MDC friends in June 2013, a month before the July 2013 election.

Dr Nkosana Moyo should know that MDC leaders did not heed the warning and contested the flawed elections and lost. So why is he repeating the same mistake MDC made. The common sense position is to demand the implementation of the reforms and refuse to contest flawed elections.

For Zimbabwe to get out of the economic and political hell-hole we are stuck in we need leaders with the common sense not ones blundering from pillar to post and cannot even see the folly of contesting flawed elections!