“Again,
Honourable Misihairabwi-Mushonga, I agree with you that we have to reduce the
wage bill, but it is not an easy walk in the park. If I came to Parliament and
said, for instance what we agreed in the new Constitution is not sustainable,
let me be very frank with you; it is not sustainable.
“The size of this Parliament is not
sustainable, but if I came and say let us amend, there will be populists’
sentiments,” he said. Minister Chinamasa said the country’s population did
not require many legislators.
SA
population 55 million, GDP US$294.8 billion has 400 parliament seats. Canada
has 35 million GPD US$ 1 530 billion and 338 seats. Zimbabwe has population of
15 million GDP US$ 16.29 billion and a staggering 350 seats. Of all these countries,
no doubt that Zimbabwe’s parliamentarians are the most expensive to maintain; Zimbabwe’s
first family alone gobble up in looted wealth more in one year than what the
Canadian taxpayers pay their Prime Minister and his entire cabinet in a decade!
For
once Minister Chinamasa has been able to shut up the Right Honourable, motor-mouth,
Misihairabwi-Mushonga. Of all our politicians, she is certainly one of those excess
to requirement; she is a back-door MP with no real constituency. She was one of
the beneficiary of the bloated GNU cabinet! In all her years in politics, she
has done nothing of substance other than use foul language!
President
Mugabe has been obsessed about quantity at the expense of quality; one area he
has put his obsession into practice with disastrous consequences is education.
The country boast of having 20 Universities chaining out thousands of first
degree and hundreds of PhD (some after 3 months) graduates every year most of
who cannot write two sentences without making a spelling or grammar mistake.
Decades of poor funding has seen the quality of education in Zimbabwe drop
through the floor. Those who can afford it, spend their children outside
Zimbabwe for their education.
President
Mugabe has created a bloated civil service, Army, local government, parliament,
cabinet, etc. to create a vast patronage system of people all loyal to him and
doing his bidding. The irony is for all Zimbabwe bloated parliament and cabinet
they are all utterly useless. The country is in a real economic and political
mess because President Mugabe, himself an incompetent, corrupt, vote rigging
and murderous tyrant but a control freak megalomania, has done as he pleased.
Margaret Dongo once described Zimbabwe’s MPs and Ministers as “vakadzi vaMugabe”
(Mugabe’s subservient concubines). Of course, she was right!
“It
is like we are using Parliament as a source of employment and not a platform to
represent the interests of the people,” said Minister Chinamasa.
@ Ronald Moyo
ReplyDeleteZanu PF has been winning past elections not because anyone liked its policies. If you can rig the vote you do not need to bother with coming up with policies. We will only have a chance to interrogate politicians if we do something to stop the vote rigging, first.
Zanu PF already rigging next year's election by seeing to it that there is no verifiable voters' roll in next year's election. ZEC has delay the BVR exercise deliberately, there is no way the regime will produce a verifiable voters' roll now.
All this talk of winning rigged elections is the stupidity of the insane justifying their madness of 37 years doing the same thing, contesting flawed elections, and hoping for a different result.
There is political unrest in Kenya as the country prepares for the rerun of the presidential elections. A re-run of the presidential vote is scheduled for Oct. 26 and the conduct of the police will be closely watched.
ReplyDeleteOn Sept. 28, University of Nairobi students protested against the arrest of an opposition lawmaker. Police responded by entering dormitories and classrooms, dragging out students, beating them with clubs and firing tear gas, according to a Reuters witness. The university said 27 students were injured.
Dismantling an entrenched dictatorship is not easy, I salute Raila Odinga for implementing the democratic reforms during the GNU and giving Kenya a fair crack of the whip.
Zimbabwe will have no chance of dismantling the Zanu PF dictatorship without undertaking the important task of implementing the reforms first. All this nonsense of winning rigged elections coming from the opposition and the CIO agents, pretending to be opposition supporters, is meant to fool the naive and gullible. Winning rigged elections is as foolish as the Ingutshen mental patient who thought carrying a leaking bucket on her head will stop the leak; anything to justify carrying on with her insane activity of watering the garden with a leaking bucket.
There two things that stick out like an island green in the middle of the desert from this story the corrupt role of the donors and Zanu PF in Zimbabwe politics.
ReplyDelete“The reason I am speaking out on this is because of the allegations raised by Mkwananzi and his propensity to steal money from donors in the name of civic society activism in Zimbabwe,” said Alice Munemo.
“Mkwananzi left the MDC-T under the guise of seeking leadership renewal, but in fact he was running away from a looting storm that had brewed beyond his containing capacity.
“He worked with senior ZANU PF officials selling critical party information in exchange of US$500,000 which he used to buy gold claims and a black Mercedes Benz which he is currently driving.”
It is clear to see that many of our dodgy NGOs are not helping to promote democracy in Zimbabwe but rather the opposite. It is a nonsense that any truly democratic institution would be spending millions of dollars making sure next year’s elections go ahead regardless of all the evidence the elections will not be free and fair.
What is making some of these NGOs angry is that some of their human rights activists are double agents working for them as well as Zanu PF. But since the NGO are promoting the Zanu PF agenda anyway, this is just crocodile tears to fool the politically naïve. The dodgy NGOs have been losing political credibility and exposing one of their own as a mole, they hope, will help boost the NGO’s overall political standing.
If the truth be told, #Tajamuka has not accomplished anything of note and having a paid CIO as one of its leaders would go a long way to explain the group’s pathetic performance record. It is ironic the group called itself Tajamuka meaning we are enlightened, who would have thought being in Zanu PF’s pocket constitute enlightenment!
@ Fadziso Jena
ReplyDeleteThis is a truly inspiring piece. Thank you.
“Instead Promise and his Tajamuka crew had a private meeting with the RBZ which I fought against and at that point I resigned because I realized nothing was ever completely done right and finished and it didn’t make sense. So, when Promise started asking for money to DEMO against bond note NOW I didn’t understand. First, he misused funds meant for other people. Now you were asking to DEMO against the Bond Notes when you failed to complete the first DEMO against bond notes it just didn’t add up so I spoke up. Secondly, I saw Promise have a Press conference against a NERA youth rally which was to take place and nothing made sense about his behavior, especially how he handled donor funds,” you said.
“I realized nothing was ever completely done right and finished and it didn’t make sense.” You have said all that need to be said about Zimbabwe and why the country is in this mess. We fought the war of liberation on the understanding we wanted a Zimbabwe in which we would all enjoy freedom, liberty, justice and a fair share of the country’s riches. Before that could be a reality President Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs hijack the revolution, denied the people their freedoms and rights and imposed themselves on the nation’s new oppressors.
People risked life and limp to elect Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends on the promise they will implement the democratic reforms designed to end the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship. As soon as they got into power they throw reforms out of the window which is why we are still in this mess stuck with the Zanu PF dictatorship.
I am so pleased you have decide not to give up the fight regardless all the disappointments and betrayals you have been subjected to. If you had given up then, in a way, you too would have fallen into the same trap that Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai and all our other pretentious politicians have fallen into – quitting before the job is done!
Keep your eyes on the bigger picture, saving Zimbabwe from the current failed political system; these corrupt and incompetent individuals are nothing more than flies on an elephant!
With unemployment now standing at a nauseating 90% plus it is not surprising the Right Honourable members were stunned when they head of MPs numbers being reduced. Whilst they have done nothing all the years they have been in power to revive the country's failing economy; indeed it was their incompetence that has caused the economic meltdown; still the prospect of losing their MP post has every one of these politician worried sick. Many of them know they will never get another job and poverty awaits them.
ReplyDeleteAfter years of the ease gravy train lifestyle it is a serious shock to adjust to a life on zero income! They all know it is going to be tough but will only know just how tough it is when they are unemployed.
What the ordinary Zimbabweans must understand now is that the national economy will never recover properly as long as the nothing is done to reset our rotten to the core political system. Mugabe has amassed unto himself so much political power and influence through this patronage system that everyone in the bloated parliament, cabinet, parastatals, civil service and private sector since most of them depend on public sector for contracts are all indebted to Mugabe and will not dare say anything critical of the corrupt and tyrannical regime.
I agree Mugabe is a control freak megalomania and the only way to dismantle this economically ruinous and tyrannical dictatorship from top to bottom and burn the lot to ashes is for the nation to implement all the democratic reforms fully and only then hold fresh elections. MDC’s argument of contesting next year’s flawed elections is a dangerous proposition. The most likely outcome is Zanu PF rigging the vote and winning the election with another landslide; which means the chaotic status quo.
The outcome the opposition is hoping for is that Zanu PF implodes and fail to implement its vote rigging schemes and thus allow the opposition to win the presidency and majority in parliament. It is unthinkable that Zanu PF will be completely wiped out and whatever of the party that remains will become the focus for the rest to regroup and reclaim power.
If Zimbabweans failed to force the opposition to boycott the elections in enough numbers to force Zanu PF to do the same, all is not lost – not yet. Zimbabweans must leave no single stone unturned to show the whole world the elections are a sham so that the international community is forced to dismiss the outcome as illegitimate. Denied of legitimacy Zanu PF will be forced to accept the need to implement democratic reforms just as it was forced to in 2008; only this time we must make sure ALL the reforms are implemented.