"The
big tent is real serious business. United we stand and divided we fall. Dr
Morgan Richard Tsvangirai is our best foot forward. He can galvanize all
Zimbabweans and win again. He is a magnanimous who always keeps his eyes on the
ball," said MDC-T deputy secretary general Tapiwa Mashakada.
"During my door to door campaign in my Hatfield Constituency all the 100 households i visited today said they loved Dr Tsvangirai and wished him well. I was really touched to see that the people are solidly behind MT and indeed Zimbabweans still believe in this iconic figure."
"During my door to door campaign in my Hatfield Constituency all the 100 households i visited today said they loved Dr Tsvangirai and wished him well. I was really touched to see that the people are solidly behind MT and indeed Zimbabweans still believe in this iconic figure."
This
is just wishful thinking that will not fool anyone.
MDC-T’s
support peaked before the July 2013 elections, who could ignore the spectacle
of the party’s “cross-over” rally in Harare just days before the 31st
July 2013 voting day. The nation believed that the new constitution would stop
Zanu PF rigging the vote as MDC leaders had repeatedly assured everyone.
The
people were shocked when Zanu PF went on to blatantly rig the vote. The people
lost confidence in MDC there and then. The people know that MDC has failed to
get even one reform implemented and therefore Zanu PF will rig next year’s
elections just as easily as it rigged the 2013 elections.
Indeed,
Zanu PF has already started rigging the 2018 elections. The regime is deliberately
delaying the voter registration, for example, so it can rush through the
process allowing no time for anyone to check what is happening. After failing
to produce the voters’ roll for 2013 one would expect the regime to make sure
it does not happen again. And yet that is exactly what is going to happen
again.
The
people of Zimbabwe have lost confidence in MDC-T; they know the party is not
going to bring about any democratic change or free and fair elections.
The
smaller opposition parties are in the MDC Alliance for the sake of getting
MDC-T candidates stand aside, they will have no chance of winning any seat
otherwise. Tsvangirai is welcoming them because he needs a leg-up to boast his
sagging popularity. However, he is loathed to promise Biti, Ncube, etc. any
seats because he is fearful of an internal revolt in his own party. He is
stringing Biti and the rest along but for how long!
Even
if the MDC Alliance was to become a reality, with the spoils of the winnable
seats shared out amicably; so, what! The people know the MDC Alliance is just
an excuse for contesting in flawed elections because the coalition is not going
to do anything to stop Zanu PF rigging the vote.
MDC-T
had the golden opportunity, the best since independence, to implement the
democratic reforms during the GNU which would have stopped Zanu PF rigging
elections. They failed to get even one reform implemented in five years. If Tsvangirai
and company had refused to contest the 2013 flawed elections this would have
forced Zanu PF to revisit the reforms; once again, MDC sold-out.
MDC
Alliance will never dislodge Zanu PF from power, not as long as the latter has the
licence to rig the vote. The best Tsvangirai, Mashakada and the rest in opposition
camp can do for Zimbabwe now is for them to boycott next year’s elections,
which Zanu PF has as good as bagged already.
“The
big tent is real serious business,” Mashakada tells us. Yeah, right! There is
less than a year to go to the elections and the Alliance partners have not
agreed on the most important issue of all – how the winnable parliamentary and
senatorial seats are to be shared out. This is just MDC-T desperately trying to
give a positive spin in a hopeless situation.
@ Ken
ReplyDeleteThe thesis is that Mukuru’s modus operandi is that in order to maintain a “strong man presidency” every officer of state must owe his position to that presidency. Whenever a person is comfortable in any one position, he must be removed. Sometimes the removal can cost life and limb.
Despite the repetition, and the fact that the plot never changes, the victims are like flies before a chameleon. They watch the coloration of the predator until the chameleon’s tongue binds them in a deathly vice.
Beside Mukuru’s modus operandi costing life and limb, it has resulted in gross mismanagement and rampant corruption. Zimbabwe’s economy, once upon a time, one of the most vibrant economies in Africa, is in ruins. Unemployment has soared to nauseating heights of 90% plus and Zimbabweans are today the poorest in the world’s poorest continent! Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown has not only hit the ordinary people; it has hit hard the educated and professionals too.
Things are so bad, even the regime’s ruling elite have not been spared the rigours of grinding poverty. The late Nathan Shamuyarira, a Zanu PF minister for 25 years and party grandee, died a pauper. The family was so poor his wife could not afford the bus fare to be with him on his death bed. The one thing fuelling the dog-eat-dog fight in Zanu PF today is the fear of poverty because anyone who lose their position in the ruling elite knows that poverty awaits them.
Mukuru is a greed, corrupt and murderous tyrant who has been killing the goose that lays the golden egg and has been killing his own people to gratify his insatiable hunger for power and wealth. This criminal waste of human and material resources is unsustainable, the regime was doomed to collapse.
“Yes, we have those (white farmers) who were killed when they resisted. We will never prosecute those who killed them. I ask: Why we should arrest them?,” Mugabe was quoted as saying.
ReplyDeleteThe report said that at least 12 white commercial farmers were killed by suspected Zanu-PF activists during the fast-tracked agrarian reforms that were masterminded by Mugabe’s administration in 2000.
Thousands of white commercial farmers and their employees were also displaced and left without sources of income
President Mugabe has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans, the 12 white farms and 100s of their black workers are included here, to establish are retain his de facto one party dictatorship. Mugabe has never arrested or punished any of the henchmen who carried out the murders.
Someday, when there is regime change and the rule of law has been restored, there must be a thorough judiciary investigation into all these political murders. We owe it to the victims, history and posterity to make sure the truth of what happen is uncovered, victims are compensated and the criminals face justice.
“Why should we arrest them (the murderers)?” Mugabe may well ask, given the murders were committed to further his selfish goal of imposing a one-party dictatorship. We will arrest and punish the murderers and those who send them because no one is above the law, especially those the nation had entrusted with the power to uphold the law and protect the murdered victims!
"Kugarika kwedu kunobva kwavari….pamwechete nemapurisa. The ZDF and the police have partnered in "Operation Hakudzokwe" at Chiadzwa," said President Mugabe.
ReplyDeleteTrue enough, the Army and Police worked together to stop small-time diamond mining in Chiadzwa so that they and their political masters could take over all the diamond mining. President Mugabe himself admitted the $15 billion in diamond revenue was “swindled”. That was over a year and half ago and to date no one has been arrested and not one dollar recovered. The swindling is still going one because Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, has admitted that he is still receiving 1/6 th of the expected revenue from the sector.
The nation knows that President Mugabe is one of the chief beneficiaries of the swindling going on in Chiadzwa and he is using some of the vast looted wealth to bankroll Zanu PF’s vote buying and rigging schemes.
The bounty of the diamond wealth, properly use for the good of all Zimbabweans, would have secured economic prosperity for us all. Instead the wealth is now being used help the corrupt and tyrannical regime in power against the people’s democratic wishes. How ironic that instead of the diamonds being a blessing, they are now our worst curse!
Mugabe ordered the reinstatement of thousands of youth officers officially laid off last year by the Civil Service Commission (CSC) from the employ of the Ministry of Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment.
ReplyDeleteWe say officially laid off because the ministry kept them on its payroll, drawing close to $10 million in salaries last year alone, despite the directive from the CSC that they be terminated.
At the time of the CSC’s July 2016 directive, the youth ministry employed 6 271 workers — most of them youth officers — which the commission wanted reduced to 2 585.
The ministry only terminated 137 posts.
Ever since the country attained her independence its once promising economy has suffered the ill effects of Zanu PF’s voodoo-economics of spending one’s way to prosperity. After decades of this hammering it is little wonder that the country’s economy is in total meltdown. Unemployment has soared to nauseating heights of 90% plus and Zimbabweans are now the poorest people in the poorest continent on earth.
It is will help Zanu PF’s vote rigging schemes to keep these Zanu PF youths in their positions but such decision are not going to help the nation get out of the political and economic hell-hole the regime has dragged us into.
@Zuze
ReplyDeleteAchebe, drawing from his native Nigerian language, quotes a proverb that aptly describes an unusual state of affairs in the context. The shrewd saying states that: “The frog never hops during daytime, when you see a frog hopping during daytime then something is after its life.”
Well argued. The “something” after our war veterans the frog’s life was abject poverty. They had done President Mugabe’s dirty work of imposing Zanu PF dictatorship on the understanding that they too would enjoy the political power and the looted economic wealth. That did not happen and many of these rogue war veterans are wallowing in abject poverty. But what really got the war veterans hopping mad is the prospect of Grace Mugabe and her G40 faction taking over control of the party, it is no secret that she was going to terminate whatever little economic help the war veterans were still getting from government.
“You are not special!” Grace Mugabe told the war veterans, rubbing hot chilli into their eyes!
President Mugabe has already cleared the path for him or his wife to start firing the security chiefs by lowing their retirement age to 55 years. He is 93 years old and is refusing to retire but wants 55 year olds to retire!
War veterans and security service chiefs have joined forces in boldly asking for President Mugabe to retire and hand over power to VP Mnangagwa because they know if power is transferred to Grace they will all join us the masses and know what it means to be the poorest people in Africa!
Opposition candidates are having a real tough time justifying why they are contesting next year’s elections knowing the process is flawed and illegal. More so MDC candidates like Tsvangirai, Biti and Ncube who contested the flawed July 2013 elections ignored the warning the elections would be rigged. The only logical explanation why these opposition candidates are contesting regardless of the certainty Zanu PF will once again blatantly rig the vote to claim a landslide victory is that they are not contesting with any hope to win the elections; they accept that Zanu PF will not lose an election that it is free to rig. They are contesting to win the few gravy train seats they know Zanu PF will be giving away to all those who participate in the party’s elaborate vote rigging scheme.
ReplyDeleteThe opposition know they cannot admit to the electorate that they have abandoned the common struggle to bring about meaningful democratic changes including reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections for the selfish price of a few gravy train seats from Zanu PF. And so the opposition are fighting a losing battle of having to convince a very sceptical public that there can ever be an public benefit from continued participation in flawed elections. The public were fooled into believing the July 2013 elections would be free, fair and credible; they are not going to swallow that nonsense again. They can see the same dirty tricks applied in the last elections are being repeated.
The public are not buying the argument that even if the elections are not free and fair; Zanu PF can still be defeated because they can see this is just wishful thinking.
What the opposition are failing to explain is why they are refusing to accept the SADC recommendation and MDC’s own party resolution not to contest the elections until the reforms are implemented.
After 37 years of rigged elections it is the ordinary voters who must now accept the futility of participating in an election in which the result is pre-determined and the electorate’s participation is just a ruse to give the process credibility. The very least the electorate can do here is refuse to play no part in the meaningless voter education workshops, meaningless voter registration exercises and the flawed and illegal voting process.
Zanu PF’s vote rigging machinery is now so elaborate that it has blatantly denied the people their right to a free, fair and credible elections to keep the regime in power regardless of the people’s democratic wishes. This is a political reality the nation must now openly acknowledge and, once acknowledged, openly admit that it must be dealt with as a matter of urgency. We cannot afford to sweep Zanu PF’s vote rigging exploits under the carpet much less entertain MDC’s foolish pretence that anything good can ever come out of contesting flawed elections.