I
would like to congratulate the Daily News in taking the lead in breaking the
tradition of the vague and ambivalent coverage of last year’s elections and in
stating why the west is right in retaining the targeted sanctions against Zanu
PF leaders.
“Since
coming to power in November 2017 through a "soft coup" that overthrew
long-time ruler Robert Mugabe, Mnangagwa has made it his number one priority to
see the end of Zimbabwe's isolation from the Western block,” stated the Daily
News its Editorial.
“Mnangagwa was asked to implement a number of reforms by these world super powers in order for his government to be fully-recognised and earn lines of credit. However, nothing much happened on the reforms front as evidenced by what occurred during last year's harmonised elections.
“Electoral, media, and human rights reforms were never fulfilled resulting in the disputed outcome which effectively ended any hopes of Zimbabwe's smooth return to the global political arena.
“The US extended their targeted sanctions on Mnangagwa and other selected government officials while Zimbabwe readmission to the Commonwealth is still on ice.”
“Mnangagwa was asked to implement a number of reforms by these world super powers in order for his government to be fully-recognised and earn lines of credit. However, nothing much happened on the reforms front as evidenced by what occurred during last year's harmonised elections.
“Electoral, media, and human rights reforms were never fulfilled resulting in the disputed outcome which effectively ended any hopes of Zimbabwe's smooth return to the global political arena.
“The US extended their targeted sanctions on Mnangagwa and other selected government officials while Zimbabwe readmission to the Commonwealth is still on ice.”
For
the EU, the Americans, the Commonwealth and many other foreign nations and
organisation to dismiss the elections as flawed and illegal is one thing but to
get a leading independent paper like Daily News to come out and same the same
thing is another. Gone are the wishy-washy phrases like “disputed elections” as
if the journalist has no clue what constitutes free and fair elections and
therefore has no opinion of his/her own on the matter.
The
Editorial was firm and decisive; “the electoral, media and human rights reforms
were never fulfilled.” The editorial title said it all; “Mnangagwa shooting
himself in foot over sanctions”.
The
Daily News has put to shame those opposition candidates who had foolishly
participated in these flawed and illegal elections knowing fully well Zanu PF
was stubbornly refusing to implement the reforms. Everyone knew that Zanu PF
had refused to allow the 3 million or so Zimbabweans in the diaspora to
register to vote, for example. It beggars belief why any opposition candidate
would still participate in an election in which ZEC failed to produce a
verified voters’ roll.
Now
that the Daily News has confirmed the international community’s condemnation of
last year’s elections as a farce; Zimbabwe’s opposition who had given the
elections a thumbs-up and accepted the result as legitimate will now have to
explain why they had ignored all the glaring flaws and irregularity!
Deputy
Minister Victor Matemadanda and his war veterans are going to stage a
demonstration at the USA Embassy calling for the lifting of the sanctions. The
demonstrators will look very foolish indeed when they see newspaper headlines
making it clear it was Mnangagwa who shot himself in the foot on the matter by
failing to implement reforms.
Now
that the Daily News has admitted that last year’s elections were indeed not
free, fair and credible and therefore Zanu PF and its leader, Emmerson
Mnangagwa, are illegitimate. The gene is out of the bottle and it will not be
put back in. The question the nation must now answer is; what are we going to
do with the illegitimate Zanu PF regime.
Some
people would argue that we should just let Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF junta
friends serve the rest of their five year term to 2023. This is a very foolish
idea for five main reasons:
1) Zimbabwe’s economy is in
total meltdown because by rigging the elections Mnangagwa confirm the country
is still a pariah state ruled by corrupt and lawless thugs. As long as the
country remains a pariah state there will be no meaningful economic recovery. Unemployment
has soared to 90%, basic services such as water supply, working sewage, health
care, etc. have all but collapsed. The prospect of four and half more years of
this economic nightmare is simply unthinkable.
2) If Zanu PF is allowed to
remain in office until 2023 then we can be certain that the regime will never
implement any meaningful reforms and it will rig that year’s elections as
readily as it rigged last year’s elections. Allowing Zanu PF to rig elections
again will be madness.
3) In rigging the elections,
Zanu PF was committed high treason; we have pretended not to notice and even
rewarded the party with absolute power. We have paid dearly in the economic chaos
and political oppression and paralysis that have ensued. We must now put an end
to this madness. Zanu PF must be forced to step down, at the very least, as
punishment for rigging last year’s elections.
4) We need Zanu PF to step
down a.s.a.p. to allow the political space and time for the appointment of an
interim administration that will be tasked to implement the reforms to ensure
the next elections are free, fair and credible.
5)
The international community will work with an interim
administration to rebuild the democratic institutions and to restore basic
services.
This is a very serious and significant development, most of our media have confined themselves to the language "disputed elections", it was nauseating. Even after the detailed reports from the such bodies as the EU Election Observer Mission which clearly stated that the process was not transparent, traceable and verifiable and made the damning judgement the elections were not to accepted international standard our cowardly journalist still maintain their "disputed election" line.
ReplyDeleteThe Daily News has certainly raised the bar. Mnangagwa did not only rig the elections but in doing so shot himself in the foot!
The Zanu PF apologist in Herald, Chronicle and ZBC must be cursing and swearing at the Daily News for raising the bar and making them look decidedly foolish. How can they continue their propaganda stance of "Mnangagwa and Zanu PF won the hotly contested elections!"
Mnangagwa and Zanu PF are not legitimate because they rigged the elections; that is the gene that is out of the bottle and cannot be put back. What to do with this illegitimate Zanu PF regime is the next question.
@ Sarah
ReplyDeleteYou are certainly not one of the smart one on the block. If you think that the admission that Mnangagwa rigged last year's elections is of no consequence then you are worse than I thought!
There are many in Zanu PF HQ who know the significance of the admission and have good reason to be worried. They know this is the beginning of something big. "Bviro bviro dzemhanza mapfeka!" as one would say in Shona.
"The message I am carrying is that Zimbabwe is making excellent progress in its reform agenda under the TSP (Transitional Stabilisation Programme)," said Prof Ncube. "The discussions on the SMP (Staff Monitored Programme) and debt arrears clearance are (also) gathering pace.
ReplyDelete"However, in the interim, Zimbabwe needs international support, financially, to rebuild people's lives after the devastating effects of Cyclone Idai.”
The trouble with Professor Ncube is that he is too clever by half, always talking about how clever he is and how his policies are “making excellent progress”. This is all very impressive stuff to these who are naive, gullible and have no clue what he is talking about like Mnangagwa. IMF and WB people know the mess Zimbabwe’s economy is in and what caused it; they are not going to be fooled by Ncube’s foam no beer talk!
When Professor Ncube was appointed Minister of Finance back in September last year he hit the ground running, promising to bring investors and get IMF and WB to renew their financial assistance of Zimbabwe. Eight months later, he has failed to deliver on both fronts.
Zanu PF has fallen flat on its face on the two most important reforms - reform to ensure free, fair and credible elections and reform to end corruption. Mnangagwa blatantly rigged last year’s elections and as for ending corruption he has failed to arrest even one of the swindlers looting US$15 billion every 2 to 3 years from Marange and Chiadzwa. We know the looting is still taking place because government collected revenue has remained low.
Minister Ncube is being naive in thinking investors and lenders would ever want to invest their money in a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs.
I agree that the Daily News is the first major Zimbabwean newspaper to admit that last year's elections were NOT free, fair and credible, Mnangagwa and Zanu PF rigged the elections, and therefore have no democratic mandate to govern the country. I believe the rest of the media houses will be forced to follow suit and admit the elections were rigged.
ReplyDeleteEven the Herald, Chronicle and ZBC who had ignored the facts on the ground of accepting the judgement of ZEC and the Constitutional Court. "ZEC declared President Mnangagwa the winner of the July 2018 elections and the Con Court confirmed the result after due process" The apologists used to argue, as if ZEC and the Con Court's are staffed by demigods whose virtue is impeccable and judgements are sacrosanct.
The truth is ZEC and Con Court are staffed with mere corrupt and incompetent mortals whose track record is there for all to see. ZEC has failed to produce something as basic as a verified voters' roll, failed to release all the V11 forms giving summaries of the votes each candidate received, etc. although these are all legal requirements. It should be remember that the same judiciary had ruled the 15 November 2017 military coup "legal, justified and constitutional!"
Now that the Daily News has broken rank and openly admitted that Zanu PF rigged last year's elections; declared the naked Emperor was indeed naked complete with the detailed description of his shrivelled manhood and sagging buttocks to the amusement of the public. We will not hear Mnangagwa claim the elections were free, fair and credible just as the Emperor never again paraded naked after the folly of his vanity was exposed.
@ Maphosa
ReplyDeleteIf the reforms are implemented fully then the nation can stamp out corruption and the mismanagement and we will have a competent government for the first time in 38 years. With these three in place I cannot see why the economy should fail to improve!
Former President Robert Mugabe then convinced the leaders of all the states in the SADC region to dissolve the Tribunal. He was actively supported in this regard by former President Jacob Zuma and Minister Jeff Radebe.
ReplyDeleteAfriForum has been supporting the Zimbabwean farmers since 2009 in their struggle to enforce the findings of the SADC Tribunal. With the Constitutional Court’s finding that the South African government had acted unlawfully and unconstitutionally, the causa petendi for the damages claim against the South African government was completed. Luke Tembani and 19 other farmers, together with the companies through which they operated their farming activities, now claim damages that they had suffered at the hands of the South African government.
“We are delighted to be part of the ongoing struggle for justice in Zimbabwe after everyone has suffered so much. We thank God that we have got this far and encourage others to take heart and not give up. We also thank AfriForum for all their help and our amazing legal team for sticking with us and believing in seeking justice when so often all seemed lost,” says Ben Freeth, spokesperson of the Mike Campbell Foundation.
I can fellow the argument and there is no doubt in my own mind that Robert Mugabe “convinced” the other SADC leaders to unlawfully scrap the SADC Tribunal as he would have done if it had been a Zimbabwean institution.
What I find unpalatable is the the R2 billion damages will be paid by the SA taxpayer and not Zuma. The same taxpayer who, no doubt, have been short changed by Zuma on countless occasions but will never be compensated by the state or whoever is the guilty party because the common person is not so conversant with the law and does not know his/her entitlement. So the common person is short changed by Zuma and when the law savvy are short changed by the State the common person will end up paying them the compensation.
The white farmers who had their farms seized by Zanu PF are going to be compensated and it is the common person who will pay the bill. In this case, those who benefited from the seized farms and never paid even one cent to the state are not being asked to pay the compensation. This is not just!
I have nothing against the white farmers who had their farms seized by Zanu PF being compensated what I am against is that the common person should be the one paying the bill. We all know the ordinary Zimbabwean did not benefit anything from these chaotic land seizure. Those who benefited, never paid even one cent to the state for all the infrastructure and assets and yet they are not being asked to pay the compensation. How can this ever be called justice!
ReplyDeleteWorkers from China and Zimbabwe work on the construction site of Zimbabwe’s new Parliament building in Mount Hampden, Zimbabwe, on April 8, 2019. Infrastructural development has become the cornerstone of China-Zimbabwe cooperation with the Asian giant investing billions of U.S. dollars in infrastructural projects in various sectors of the Zimbabwean economy.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing wrong with investing in new and grand projects the only problem in Zimbabwe is such grand projects are for prestige and for the ruling elite. And, worse still, the projects are being undertaken regardless of the appalling state of the infrastructure used by the common people.
Not only is the state not building new project for the benefit of povo but has failed to maintain what is there. The state of such hospitals as Mpilo and Parerenyatwa were the ordinary people who cannot afford the fees of the private hospitals is a crying shame.
How can anyone ever justify the building of this grand new parliament when the country’s four biggest referral hospitals are in very advanced stages to rot and decay. If the referral hospitals do not have pain killers, no bandages, etc. how much worse off are the provincial and district hospitals!
Millions of our people live in mud huts with no clean water and no sewage in this day and age and 2500 years after the Roman invented cement!
Zimbabwe does not need this grand parliament no more than the nation can afford all these palatial mansions the ruling elite are building for themselves when the majority still live in mud huts!
Mnangagwa's world is falling apart, big time. A few days ago, the Daily News broke rank to openly admit that last year's elections were not free, fair and credible, that Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF party had rigged the elections. And now another leading independent paper has too broken rank to openly admit that Mnangagwa has failed to end corruption but worst of all that corruption was the one problem stopping economic recovery.
ReplyDeleteThe accepted position in Zimbabwe is to blame the country's economic meltdown on sanctions; the Independent did not even mention the sanctions as a contributing factor. The paper has rightly blamed corruption as the main cause of the country's economic woes and has rightly blamed Mnangagwa for failing to stamp it out.
With unemployment at 90%, the nation facing critical shortage of fuel, foreign currency, medicine, wheat, etc. the situation has certainly reach crisis point. This is not the time to be blamed for making the crisis situation worse. Being blamed for the worsening economic situation is bad for a government with the people’s mandate to govern it is intolerable for a vote rigging and illegitimate regime.
“Did you rig the elections so you can continue with the looting and make our lives hell?” the electorate will ask. And rightly so too!