Dear Tajamuka/Sesjikile
“After the 2018 disputed
elections, we stated categorically clear that the electoral process and its
outcome fell abysmally short of a truly free and fair election. As a result,
the outcome of the election would be disputed and thus undermine the efficacy
of Mnangagwa’s claim to
legitimacy. Since the disputed elections we made several appeals to Mnangagwa’s
ill-fated government to find an amicable way to resolve the election dispute,
ensure and guarantee that the credibility of future elections would not be
disputed. Although another election would be the most ideal, it seemed
impractical given the economic conditions in the country and the toxicity that
elections in Zimbabwe come with,” you said.
“It was therefore our considered
view and our clarion call after the January 2019 national protests that
Mnangagwa needed to immediately convene a genuine, participatory and
all-inclusive national dialogue facilitated by a neutral international mediator
and underwritten by SADC and the AU.”
There are a number of key points to note:
1)
Agree with you 100% that the July 2018 elections were NOT free,
fair and credible elections. There is no disputing the blatant flaws and
illegalities were deliberate and calculated to deny the people of Zimbabwe
their democratic right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country.
There was no excuse for denying 3 million Zimbabwean in the diaspora the vote,
for failing to produce a verified voters’ roll, etc., etc. None.
2)
There is no denying Mnangagwa and Zanu PF blatantly rigged last
July’s elections and, what is more, this is not the first time the regime has
rigged elections. Zanu PF has rigged elections starting with the first all
races elections in 1980; it is a historic fact that Zanu PF did not withdraw
all its freedom fighters to assembly points as agree. The operatives were then
deployed to remind the electorate that the civil war would restart if Zanu PF
lost the elections. Zanu PF has continued for the last 39 years to cheat,
intimidate and use wanton violence to make sure the party retained its iron
grip on power.
3)
Each time Zanu PF has rigged the elections we, the people have
allowed the regime to stay in power to appease the party leaders. This was a
foolish thing to do because Zanu PF has taken full advantage of our folly to erode
the people’s freedoms and rights even more to consolidate its undemocratic stay
in power. When we say we demand free, fair and credible elections we must mean
it and stand solid as a rock and refuse to be moved until our demand is met.
The consequences of blatantly rigging elections must surely be that the guilty
party is illegitimate and must never be allowed to rule, period.
4)
The tragic mess is Zimbabwe today is proof that 39 years of appeasing
Zanu PF did not work and it is madness to continue to do so for even one more
day! Enough is enough!
5)
We have no legitimate government as a consequence of the country
failing to hold free, fair and credible elections on 30 July 2018. The solution
is to appoint an interim administration to implement the democratic reforms to
guarantee free, fair and credible elections. There is no point holding new
elections without first dismantling the de facto one party dictatorship and its
dictatorial powers.
6)
Yes the country is facing some serious economic hardship brought
on by the worsening economic meltdown. However, it is naïve to believe that
allowing Zanu PF to remain in power even in a GNU with MDC A will help end the
economic hardship. As long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state ruled by corrupt
and vote rigging thugs, adding corrupt and incompetent MDC leaders to the mix
will not change the character of the regime; there will be no meaningful
economic recovery!
7)
Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF friends know that they have messed up
big time and they will never win free, fair and credible elections. If the
party is entrusted with implementing the democratic reform then no meaningful
reforms will be implemented. Zanu PF will reform itself out of office. If Zanu
PF is in power come 2023 then we can be 100% certain the party will rig those
elections to extend its stay in power.
Tajamuka, Sesjikile means “We are enlightened!” Well, I hope you
are enlightened! As we all know, some people have been foaming round the mouth
shouting “Zimbabwe is open for business!” when, by rigging the elections, they are
the ones who slammed the door shut and locked it!
Best regards
Nomusa Garikai.
I agree with you 100% that the July 2018 elections were NOT free, fair and credible elections. There is no disputing the blatant flaws and illegalities were deliberate and calculated to deny the people of Zimbabwe their democratic right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country. There was no excuse for denying 3 million Zimbabwean in the diaspora the vote, for failing to produce a verified voters’ roll, etc., etc. None.
ReplyDeleteSo Mnangagwa blatantly rigged last year's elections and now you want to reward him by letting him convene the national dialogue and remain in power till 2023. If you think he will implement any meaningful reforms then think again.
If we are serious about curing ourselves of this curse of rigged elections then we must demand that Zanu PF steps down so we can appoint an interim administration that will implement the reforms and get us out of this mess!
After 39 years of appeasing Zanu PF it is madness to keep on trying hoping to get a different result.
Zimbabwe’s GDP, however, rose 4 percent last year, but the nation’s inflation rate accelerated from 20.85 percent in October 2018 to 75.86 percent last month, according to official reports.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, according to Zimbabwe’s Treasury, the economy is set to actually contract by 20 percent in dollar terms this year — as out-of-control inflation is threatening to erase the gains made by remaining functioning sectors.
Ncube also said Zimbabwe’s budget deficit would hit its 5 percent target this year, adding that the recent introduction of a 2 percent transfer tax would help achieve the goal of improving Zimbabwe’s public finances.
But higher taxes might exacerbate the issue of low disposable incomes, a recent UN report found, while hardly helping Zimbabwe attract business investment and create new jobs.
“The government is pushing people further into poverty. We are not aware of any government measures to provide even minimal safety nets for those who are already living on an economic cliff-edge and who will suffer the most from these regressive policies”, the UN report read.
The Zimbabwean government’s plans to tackle corruption and poor investment climate remain unclear, while recent reforms appear to have proven insufficient to get the nation’s economy back on track.
Of course it is very tragic for in Zimbabwe than Mnangagwa’s clarion call of “Zimbabwe is open for business!” has failed to attract anyone and the country has continued to sink deeper and deeper into the abyss. But what makes our situation heart-breaking is that the Zanu PF regime has stubbornly refused to acknowledge its failure and thus continues to drag the nation full steam ahead even deeper into this hell and we, the people, are totally helpless to stop the madness.
The sheer hypocrisy of some of the foreigners including the UN is unforgivable. Whilst the UN is critical here, the organization has quietly endorse Zanu PF’s rigged 2018 elections and a few days ago showered the regime with praise at the launch of the Political Actors Dialogue, a forum clearly designed to endorse the rigged elections and help Zanu PF keep its tyrannical iron grip on power.
The people of Zimbabwe are desperate for real change and, unless something is done quickly, the nation is heading for economic collapse and political instability that may well drag the rest of the region down the abyss.
Zimbabwe’s economic and political mess could have been easily avoided and can still be avoided if only there can be a few people with the political focus and resolve!
Zimbabwe’s state power company spokesperson Fullard Gwasira said Zimbabwe needed to come up with a payment plan to clear its debts.
ReplyDeleteHe told independent news website, newZWire, that 450 megawatts would be available for import, but only if Zesa clears $80 million worth of debts.
Until Zimbabwe paid what it owed, Zesa could only import 50 megawatts of power from Eskom, and 100 megawatts from Mozambique’s HCB.
Zimbabwe’s main hydro-power station at Lake Kariba has had to reduce its power output to 358 megawatts, from 542, because of low water levels.
So Zimbabwe’s power cuts are all an accumulation of many things; poor maintenance of existing plant, failure to invest in new generation capacity and being a bad debtor. The nation has paid dearly for each one of these shortcomings over the years and is feeling the ill effects even more cutely at times like this when the country has a multitude of other problems and could do with some slack; there is none to be had.
What is the point of coming up with the rules if there are no consequences for breaking them.
ReplyDelete“Men shall be ruled by Law, not by the will of other men,” said Moses in the epic movie The Ten Commandments. “Those who do not live by the law... shall die by the law!”
We, in Zimbabwe, have allowed tyrants like Mugabe and Mnangagwa disregard the law with no consequences. Mugabe and Mnangagwa have rigged elections and have even murdered over 30 000 innocent people to impose their tyrannical will.
They have denied us our freedoms and human rights including the right to a meaningful vote and even the right to life so many times and got away with it, they now believe these freedoms and rights are privilege to be given to some and denied to others as they, the tyrants alone, see fit. Their whim has become the new law of the land and the nation has paid dearly for our collective folly of letting this happen.
Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF thugs would never dared to rig the elections in any country in which the rule of law is held in the highest regard. They would have KNOWN they would never get away with it. The corollary is equally true; Mnangagwa and his cronies blatantly rigged last year’s elections confident they would get away with it.
By rigging the elections Mnangagwa and company committed high treason; instead holding the thugs to account these woolly minded appeasers want to reward them with high office. The demand for the regime to hold national dialogue on its terms is just whitewashing the tomb! Everyone knows the national dialogue is but the watered down version of the 2008 to 2013 GNU in which no dares talk about reforms because they know that is a no-go area as far as Zanu PF thugs are concerned!
A national dialogue headed by Zanu PF will be a complete waste of time. To what end, exactly! I would not even waste my time talking about it!
Blessing Kasiyamhuru, Zimbabwe Partnership for Prosperity (ZIPP) president has distanced his party from the current political dialogue being spearheaded by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
ReplyDeleteKasiyamhuru feels that the dialogue is not honestly addressing the major issues.
Zimbabweans should stop burying their heads in the sand and for once in our 39 years of independence admit and talk about the elephant in the room - the country's failure to hold free, fair and credible elections which has meant 39 years of illegitimate government with the disasterous consequences we can all see.
Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF regime blatantly rigged last year's elections; that is high treason. The least we can do is demand that the regime steps down. The suggestion that the regime should be given legitimacy and form yet another GNU, much less this national dialogue, talk-shop, is pathetic.
In November 2017 Mnangagwa and his junta stage a military coup to ouster the dictator they had imposed on the nation all the last 37 years. Of course, this was high treason and yet they bullied the nation into accepting it as a "military assisted transition". Some transition it has turned out to be from a corrupt, vote rigging and tyrannical dictatorship into the same dictatorship led by the same thugs except for a few musical-chairs changes. Same s***t with new dictator!
I do not see how anyone who cannot see that this Political Actors Dialogue forum as nothing more than a watered down version of the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Whilst the the members in the former GNU were MPs and cabinet members and the GNU was given a set task - implement the raft of democratic reforms and write a new democratic constitution - and had SADC to supervise them. Still the GNU failed to get even one reform implemented.
ReplyDeleteThe members of this watered down GNU are not MPs and Mnangagwa has made it very clear that political reforms are taboo and he and he alone will decide what they will talk about and see to it that nothing of substance is ever done. The 2008 GNU failed to implement even one reforms and produced a compromised constitution it has failed to deliver any of our freedoms and human rights including free, fair and credible elections. This political abomination will accomplish nothing and certainly not the free, fair and credible elections in 2023.
If Zanu PF is still in power in 2023 the party will rig those elections. Mnangagwa is using this Political Actors Dialogue as a smokescreen to remain in office until then. We must not allow that to happen.
ZIMBABWE MUST HAVE FREE< FAIR AND CREDIBLE ELECTIONS IN 2023! That is our Holy Grail and it is within our reach if we focus and not allow ourselves to be side tracked by foolish gimmicks!
@ Sarah
ReplyDeleteChamisa accepted the rigged parliamentary elections as having been free, fair and credible - which as anyone with half a brain would tell you were rigged. What Chamisa has disputed is the presidential results. He has accept the process as having been free, fair and credible and singled out the ZEC results giving Mnangagwa more votes than himself.
Everyone else has condemned the whole process including the ZEC results of all the parliamentary and presidential races because they contained "numerous errors, not traceable, not verifiable and counting and addition was not transparent". Chamisa says he got 2.6 million votes and yet has too failed to produce all the V11 forms, the summary of the vote counts from each Polling Station, because ZEC did not release all the V11. No one can verify Chamisa's claim no more than they can verified ZEC's Mnangagwa vote count.
Chamisa knows the elections were rigged and he is taking advantage of that to push Mnangagwa to give him a gravy train seat. He has never denied that he will not join the dialogue train as soon as the legitimacy problem is resolved. "I have the key to granting Mnangagwa legitimacy!" Chamisa has boasted.
Give him a gravy train seat and he will declare the 2018 elections free, fair and credible including the presidential race just as all the other opposition parties have done!
Chamisa can join the Political Actors Dialogue with his five point plan but the forum will accomplish nothing because it is a talk-shop. Mnangagwa would want Chamisa to join the other opposition parties in the forum just to shut him up!
If we, the people of Zimbabwe, are serious about wanting free, fair and credible elections in 2023 then we must see the Political Actors Dialogue for what it is - a time wasting gimmick!
The quality of our parliamentary debates is terrible! Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube did not answer any of the questions raised and yet got away with it!
ReplyDeleteMP Mliswa asked whether the Minister was talking of US$ or RTGS$.
"The US$ apply prior to the Monetary Policy Statement and RTGS$ apply post the Monetary Policy Statement. What we have to do if you want to compare like with like is to convert the past GDPs back up to 2009 into RTGS$ as well, then we can compare like with like going forward," answered the Minister.
So why did the Minister convert to whatever and so allow everyone to compare like with like?
The issue of how parastatals are going to be sold is a big issue and the Minister did not even answer that question. There is a real danger of parastatals being sold to Zanu PF cronies for a song and then wasted just as we have seen happen with the seized white farms.
Parliament should insist that no parastatal will be sold until there is an agreed process to make sure everything is transparent and open to meaningful competition. But given the sorry quality of our illegitimate MPs - we must not forget last July's elections were rigged - that is asking for too much!