Zimbabwe is in a real political and
economic mess today because of 37 years of gross mismanagement and rampant
corruption under this tyrannical Mugabe dictatorship. It took the average
Zimbabweans 20 years or so for them to finally acknowledge that Mugabe and his
Zanu PF cronies were corrupt, incompetent and murderous thugs; not the just,
rational and wise liberation heroes and heroines Mugabe and others had portrayed
themselves to be.
After the first decade of
independence the national economy was already in trouble and the Zanu PF regime
had already murdered over 20 000 in the Gukurahundi massacre; proof the regime
was incompetent and had a tyrannical streak. The people ignored all these
reality for another decade. It was not until the late 1990s that the people finally
decided Mugabe and Zanu PF must go.
The people entrusted Morgan
Tsvangirai and his MDC with the task of end Mugabe’s reign of terror. MDC has
had many opportunities to end the Mugabe dictatorship in the last 17 years,
with the best chance coming during the GNU; but sadly, has wasted them all. MDC
leaders had five years to implement the democratic reforms but failed to get
even one reform implemented because they are corrupt and incompetent.
After the disaster of electing
Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs one would have thought the people would be more
careful to elect competent leader with some common sense, at least! It seems
some people still have no clue what kind of leaders the nation should be
looking for even today.
“(Dr Nkosana) Moyo's resume can
easily hypnotise any reader, the way men drool over Candice Swanepoel,” reported
the Daily News, in one breath.
“At the risk of being seen as too
quick to judge, Moyo comes across as a futuristic politician who is saying the
right things that any normal citizen would want to hear but at the wrong time,”
continued the writer in the next breath. “His type of politics will struggle to
gain traction in today's Zimbabwe, which favours aggressive opposition
politicians that can toyi-toyi in ghettos, and in far-flung rural areas to
mobilise the masses.
“Moyo appears to be speaking to the academia, the middle class, and the top class, who constitute a small percentage of the voting population. The real deal, or call it the game changer, is the voter in the rural areas, where over 60 percent of the country's population resides.
“The time for the soft-type politics that thrives on the understanding that elections must be won on the basis of ideas will come at some point, but not before the 2018 polls. If Moyo is to be taken seriously, he must toughen his style, connect with the downtrodden, and join Morgan Tsvangirai and many others in efforts to hammer out a coalition, which presents the only realistic chance of achieving change in governance.”
“Moyo appears to be speaking to the academia, the middle class, and the top class, who constitute a small percentage of the voting population. The real deal, or call it the game changer, is the voter in the rural areas, where over 60 percent of the country's population resides.
“The time for the soft-type politics that thrives on the understanding that elections must be won on the basis of ideas will come at some point, but not before the 2018 polls. If Moyo is to be taken seriously, he must toughen his style, connect with the downtrodden, and join Morgan Tsvangirai and many others in efforts to hammer out a coalition, which presents the only realistic chance of achieving change in governance.”
1)
If the current
political system suits the like of Tsvangirai then why has he failed to deliver
even one democratic change in all his 17 years in politics?
2)
Well if the
solution to Zimbabwe’s political crisis is getting simpletons with no clue what
the country needs who can speak to the rural population then we could not get a
better simpleton than Morgan Tsvangirai. So, again, why has he failed to make
any difference after all his years in politics and five of which as Prime
Minister?
3)
There is no nation
on earth that has suffered because it had clever and visionary leaders just as
much as no nation on earth has prospered by having village idiots running its
affairs. Zimbabwe is in a real political and economic mess if there was ever a
time we needed men and women of ideas it is now!
4)
It is very
patronising to dismiss the rural people as buffoons who will respond to
meaningless slogans and incapable of comprehending “ideas”. The white colonialists
instituted a political system designed to deny the black majority access to
information and to deny them a voice. Sadly, Zanu PF has even extended the
system to consolidate its own tyrannical rule. The rural povo are ignorant but
they are not stupid!
5)
Anyone who is
anyone will tell you that Zanu PF rigged the 2013 elections and, since no even
one reform has been implemented since the last election, it goes without saying
that Zanu PF will rig next year’s elections just as readily. With no reforms
Zanu PF will rig the vote and win all this talk of the coalition and the MDC during
the GNU, have opposition “presents the only realistic chance of achieving
change in governance,” is just wishful thinking.
SADC leaders warned Morgan
Tsvangirai & co. in June 2013 “If you go into elections next month,
you are going to lose; the elections are done”. Of
course, MDC leaders were foolish to ignore the warning and contest the
elections because Zanu PF blatantly rigged the vote.
SADC leaders’ warning against contesting flawed elections is
just as valid today as it was in 2013 since no even one reform has been
implemented. Indeed, the warning carries even greater weight since the rigged
elections proved SADC leaders were right. Who would can a fool a man of “ideas”
with the “resume can easily
hypnotise”!
“It is a bare-knuckled political
fight that Moyo has entered, and the earlier he takes those gloves off the
better,” concluded Daily News.
“This purported donation ($1 m) to the AU is actually a bribe that is meant to soften the response of the AU in the event that next year’s elections are rigged,” said Obert Gutu.
ReplyDeleteIn "the event of the elections being rigged", says Gutu.
Did Mugabe not rig the 2013 elections? Since the rigged 2013 election not even one reform was implemented and so why should Zanu PF not rig the next elections?
SADC leaders warned MDC leaders not to contest the 2013 elections with no reforms. The warning is still valid today but sadly it is still falling on deaf ears!
The trouble is talking to MDC is like talking to a brick wall. No wonder SADC leaders denounce Tsvangirai and company after the rigged 2013 election accusing them of "enjoying themselves during the GNU and what they were there for!"
Even if Dr Moyo had the most sound economic polices and the people understood him; he will still lose the elections because it does not matter how good one is if the elections are rigged. If he is going to win then he must be equally good or better than Mugabe at rigging the elections.
ReplyDeleteIf he does not know that elections in Zimbabwe are rigged then he has no business being in politics!
@ Paradza
ReplyDelete"The people have asked for unity and we are striving to give it to them," you said.
Who exactly constitute "the people" here? And whom exactly did they ask "for unity", where and when?
The one thing every thinking Zimbabwean has been asking for is for them to enjoy their freedoms and basic human rights including the right to free and fair elections and the right to life itself. By agreeing to contest in next year's elections with not even one reform in place was ZUNDE not compromising on the free and fair elections?
The call for a united opposition has come from those within the opposition camp and have presented coalition as the panacea to Zanu PF's voting rigging because you had not asked the problem of vote rigging.
The cure to vote rigging is implementing the reforms and no opposition party should contest the election until the reforms are implemented. SADC leaders have said this over and over again and anyone with half a brain would agree.
If there is something Dr Nkosana Moyo got right it is dismissing the myth of the opposition coalition; it is a waste of time.
Soon after independence when Mugabe’s “scientific socialism” began to show signs it was not going to deliver “Gutsa ruzhinji!” (Mass prosperity!) as he claimed; he did not defend any of his policies as there was no sound economic basis for them. Instead he dismissed his critics for being academic, elitist, petty bourgeois, etc. anyone with sound ideas was considered an enemy of the State.
ReplyDeleteZimbabwe was now an egalitarian nation where simplicity (read chaos and confusion) was the new fashion; debate was stifled and competition was ruthlessly supressed. The public media was used to misinform and brainwash the people and all public institution were corrupt every facet of human activity undermine to create the de facto one-party state. All public discourse was reduced to endless sloganeering.
The only person along to make any pronouncement on anything is Mugabe and no one else. All those around him were reduced to “yes-man”. Mugabe is a control freak and, natural, he surrounded himself with those known to be brain-dead. It is little wonder Margaret Dongo call Zanu PF cabinet members, MPs, etc. “vakadzi vaMugabe!” (Mugabe’s subservient concubines!)
Tsvangirai has copied Mugabe in turning MDC into his own person property and surrounding himself with deadwood. There was as much quality debate in Tsvangirai’s “kitchen” cabinet as one would get in roosting crows!
If Zimbabwe is ever going to get out of the hell-hole it is in then we must embrace ideas, open the media for freedom of expression and free press, have free debate and honest democratic competition. All public policy must be subjected to close and critical scrutiny every step of the way. Everyone holding public office must be democratically accountable to the public they purport to serve.
The true measure of a quality leader is that he or she must be able to think for themselves and great ideas come from those with the ability to think deep, see beyond the here and now. Zimbabwe is in a real mess and needs visionary leadership and not the run-of-the-mill individuals who cannot see beyond the tip of their nose!
Heal Zimbabwe Trust has condemned the destruction of Insangu Village head Enerst Nxumalo's home in Insiza by Zanu PF thugs following the land dispute in Matebeleland South.
ReplyDeleteZanu PF supporters under the leadership of Zanu PF District Chairman Sam Mathe, teacher at a local primary school and Edith Gumbo the councillor for ward 22 on the 11th of June 2017 destroyed Nxumalo's home.
The vote rigging has already started and it is madness for any opposition politician to contest such a flawed process and dragged the whole nation through this hell once again. This has been happened for the last 37 years already how much longer must the ordinary people, who are the sitting ducks in all this madness, endure this before these selfish opposition opportunists finally accept the need to implement the reforms before elections!
@ David Barber
ReplyDelete“Benjamin Paradza is right. Split oppositions have never defeated tyrants, and if any candidate for presidency does not know that then he is not fit for power,” you said.
Well that is not true. In the presidential election the winning candidate in the first round must get 50% plus one of the cast votes. So, if all the opposition candidates’ total votes are more than 50% plus one then they will stop the Zanu PF candidate claiming victory. In the run-off the opposition candidate will get the 50% plus one and win. This is exactly what happened in the recent French presidential elections, for example.
Splitting the opposition vote is a problem where the candidate getting the most votes is the winner which is the case for the parliamentary and senatorial elections. But even here field one coalition candidate is not absolutely necessary since they are some seats to be allocated according to total vote a party received in each province.
Besides democratic competition, even amongst the opposition themselves, is a very healthy thing especially considering so many opposition politicians are hanging on to power although they have already proven to be corrupt and incompetent. The coalition is being used to justify stifling competition. We need competition to weed out the deadwood in Zanu PF and in the opposition!
Indeed, opposition politicians like Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, etc. did not implement any democratic reforms, even when they had the golden opportunity to do so during the GNU, because they do not want democratic competition. These guys will never implement any of the reforms even if they were to win next year’s election!
“We have failed, youth should take over they (youth) can create a far much better government where people will prosper not the current one where people are struggling,” said Mahofa.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that Zanu PF has failed but you have clearly learned nothing from the past because you are still trying to mould the Zanu PF youth after your own dictatorial image and argue them to impose themselves on the rest of the populous. We want a democratic Zimbabwe in which every citizen’s right to free, fair and credible elections is guaranteed.
We are demanding the full implementation of all the democratic reforms BEFORE the next elections. Zanu PF does not have the right to deny the people their freedoms and basic rights no more than Ian Smith had the right to deny blacks the vote!
It is a great tragedy that 37 years after independence the same freedoms and human rights the nation went to war to wrestle for the whites are still on the national agenda. We are not going to accept another dummy election this time – take that as read!
A Mutare Rural District Council's Chief Executive officer and director for Destiny for Africa Nework Obadiah Msindo is alleged to have forced the villagers to contribute $1 for the stone sculpture handed over to President Robert Mugabe on June 16.
ReplyDeleteAs the election fever grips the nation there will be more and more such stories and the day the election results are declared we will all, once again, agree the elections were stolen. The great tragedy here is that all this barbarism is still happening after 38 years after our independence. In this day and age, 2500 years after the Greeks showed the world what a democracy is all about, we cannot define what constitute a free and fair election.
SADC leaders have told us do not contest elections without first implementing the democratic reforms design to stop vote rigging. That is simple and logical enough but nothing is common sense to a nation that is brain dead!
We do not need all these idiots criss-crossing the nation conducting vote education and voter mobilisation; they will do nothing to stop Zanu PF’s vote rigging juggernaut. We do not need new kids on the block with their state of the art gadgets with Ziso/ Ilihlo applications to document even more human rights abuses complete with the GPS details as if that matters. What we need is to stop the madness.
Zimbabwe Citizen Initiative (ZCI) did not think through what they are doing and worse still they are not listen to what other people are saying – do not contest the elections without implementing the democratic reforms first. ZCI’s Ziso/ Ilihlo project will, at best, document even more human right violations, adding to what other organisations like Zimbabwe Peace Project are doing.
The down side of ZCI’s work is that all this bee-hive activity will create the impression that the close monitoring will stop vote rigging and so the elections can go ahead even with not even one reform in place. The truth is the vote rigging will still take place because it is not volume of documented cases of vote rigging that will stop it but rather the implementing of the reforms.
We can stand our ground and demand the implementation of the reforms before the elections and finally put a stop to all this culture of political violence and vote rigging. Or allow the madness to continue in return for a flood of human rights abuse reports from high tech kitted ZCI monitors with their laptops and mobile phones.
To forfeit the chance to implement reforms and hold the first free, fair and credible elections for volumes of reports, complete with GPS location of each incident, detailing how Zanu PF rigged the election will be just another manifestation of our collective madness. We know Zanu PF has been rigging elections, we do not need to go through yet another elections to confirm this; what we need to do is demand the implementation of the reforms to stop the vote rigging!
We have the golden opportunity to implement the reforms and transform the nation it will be foolish to waste it for the sake of trying out some gizmo. ZCI can use their Ziso/ Ilihlo to monitor and document fighting chicken, baboons or some such thing since they are so determined to see the system tested in the field.
“Zimbabwe has been ruled by a man for 37 years. We can see that a male leader has destroyed the country,” said Samuel Sipepa Nkomo.
ReplyDelete“In Liberia, Taylor ruled the country and messed it up, when he was removed a woman took over and look at how good the country has become.”
Yes Zimbabwe is in a mess but to attribute the destruction to one individual is naïve and to narrow this further to the individual’s gender is downright stupid. To use this warped logic to promote Joice Mujuru, who was herself at the heart of the failed Zanu PF dictatorship for 34 years is just the height of insanity. And the individual say all this nonsense is himself aspiring to be the country’s Vice President! It is no surprise Zimbabwe is in a mess.
Unless we implement the democratic reforms and dismantle this totally discredited Zanu PF dictatorship that has allowed corrupt and incompetent leaders like Sipepa Nkomo, Joice Mujuru, Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe to get into positions of power and authority; we will never get rid of these useless idiots. Elections with no reform will mean only one thing – we are recycling the same deadwood!
The above picture has hit networks by storm. It shows school kids who were removed from class and taken to Robert Mugabe’s Youth Conference.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great national tragedy! And someone tells me a coalition of the opposition will stop this! Only by implementing democratic reforms will we be able to put an end to this abuse of power and authority.
@mombe
ReplyDeleteZimbabwe is in a political and economic mess right now and if you were one of the millions unemployed and living in abject poverty you would be more interested in why we are in this mess and, more significantly, how we are going to get out a.s.a.p.
We are in the mess because first of all President Mugabe and his corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF thugs dragged us into the mess. We have had many golden opportunities to end the Zanu PF dictatorship the best of which was during the GNU when all Tsvangirai and company had to do implement the reforms. They sold-out and failed to implement even one reform in five years.
We are still stuck in the hell-hole and the only way out is to stop contesting in flawed elections until the reforms are implemented.
If you have a better solution, less tiring and boring as the above GNU, then please tell the millions of Zimbabweans out there desperate to hear and to escape out of the hell-on-earth in which they find themselves. Indeed, why have you not applied your solution all these years instead of wasting time making all these stupid comments.
The trouble with smart-Alex people like you is you think you are clever when you are stupid so stupid you make the same mistake over and over again with out ever realising it. You are refusing to accept that the only way to end a dictatorship is to implement the reforms designed to dismantle it because you have heard it said before. If it is the only solution - and in this case it is - then saying millions of times will not devalue it in any way. It is not the number of time something is say that matters.
Zimbabwe will never get out of the hell-hole the nation is in until it implements the democratic reforms and finally have its first free, fair and credible elections. That is a fundamental truth that people can ignore if they wish but only to suffer the consequences of being stuck in the hell-hole. As for you being sick and tired of hearing this; who cares, the truth cannot be compromised to suit some idiot!
I thought the forum was called to map out the way out of this mess and yet all we have even heard come out is excuses why we are in the mess. What a wasted opportunity!
ReplyDelete"In the last few months we have answered the call by the people of Zimbabwe for opposition unity," said Tsvangirai.
ReplyDeletePeople have been calling for democratic change and they risked life and limp to elect MDC for this. In 17 years there is not even one democratic change MDC can say the brought. Even when the party had the golden opportunity to deliver change during the GNU the party sold-out and failed to get even one reform implemented.
All this talk of the "big tent" coalition was MDC's own making to justify contesting the coming elections although the party had failed to get any reforms implemented. The people want democratic change and your coalition is a poor substitute that will do nothing to help the nation.