The opportunity to bring about meaningful democratic change during the 2009 to 2013 GNU was lost because Zanu PF bribed Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC with the trappings of high office; the ministerial limos, very generous salaries and allowance, a US$4 million mansion for Tsvangirai, etc. With their snouts in the feeding trough, MDC leaders forgot about implementing the reforms. There is no doubt that Jonathan Moyo played a major role in keeping making sure MDC leaders where distracted throughout the five years!
The only change Jonathan Moyo wanted to see following the 2017 military coup was for the people, SADC and the world at large to reject the coup and reinstating Mugabe and yours truly, Jonathan Moyo himself.
Jonathan Moyo and his fellow G40 members who were booted out of Zanu PF in the November 2017 coup are still entertaining hopes of staging a comeback. Hence the reason Moyo and company are very careful to blame everything that has gone wrong in Zimbabwe on Mnangagwa and his fellow November 2017 coup gang. Moyo and his Excelgate book is laser focusing on Mnangagwa as the only one who is illegitimate and not the whole Zanu PF regime!
“While there are many wrongs surrounding Zimbabweans today, a particularly insidious wrong that's crying out for righting is the stolen 30 July 2018 presidential election, preceded by the 15 Nov 2017 military coup & followed by brutal massacres on 1 Aug 2018 & 14-28 Jan 2019!” Jonathan Moyo argues.
Jonathan Moyo’s book is about the dodgy compilation, on Microsoft Excel Sheet format and hence the name of the book with the gate borrowed from Richard Nixon’s infamous Watergate scandal, of the presidential election results from the 11 000 plus Polling stations.
Moyo has failed to mention 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora were denied the vote, that ZEC failed to produce a verifies voters’ roll, that there was no free public media, that the usual partisan behaviour of the Chiefs reduced rural voters into medieval serfs beholden to Zanu PF abused, etc. All these things render the whole election process flawed, illegal and meaningless. It is nonsense to expect that such a flawed electoral process could therefore produce a legitimate result even if the compilation of the result had been above board.
It was no accident that Moyo has ignored the denying of Zimbabweans in the diaspora the vote, the failure to produce a verified voters’ roll, etc. Most of these flaws and illegalities are the norm in Zimbabwean elections and the glaring hypocrisy of flagging then now would have been too much even for seasoned sell-out and hypocrite like him.
The root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown and political paralysis is the country’s failure to hold free, fair and credible elections. And the way forward has to look at implementing the democratic reforms to stop all the flaws and illegalities and not just the Excelgate ones only. It is only by implementing all the democratic reforms that we can expect to dismantle the dictatorship and not just remove one dictator.
“Compatriots, much as I would like to, sadly I'm unable to wish you a happy & prosperous new year not because of anything personal but because happiness & prosperity are no longer possible in Zimbabwe due to the live coup against the will of the people!” professed Professor Jonathan Moyo.
Happiness and prosperity have not been possible ever since this corrupt, vote rigging and tyrannical Zanu PF regime got into power in 1980. Of course, Professor Moyo must accept personal responsibility for the sorry state the nation is in because it was his work, as the party’s self proclaimed chief strategist and propagandist, that enable Zanu PF to have an iron grip on power and for it to last 40 years and counting.
The EU Election Mission staff confirmed that they witness ZEC officials completing V11 forms with no one else to check and verify the figures. Whilst many would agree that this process was more widespread and affected the presidential result more than it did the parliamentary and local election results.
ReplyDeleteWhat EU and everyone else has focused on is the whole electoral process including such things as the failure to produce a verified voters’ roll, failure to have a free public media, denying voters in the diaspora the vote, etc. This flawed and illegal process affected all the three races and hence the reason they condemned all three race results.
Jonathan Moyo is claiming that Chamisa won 66% of the vote and yet even he cannot produce copies of the V11 forms from which these figures are based. Chamisa has admitted that he did not have all the V11 forms so where did Moyo get the missing forms from, assuming he has them?
The United Nations has called for increased international support for Zimbabwe as eight million people - or roughly half the population - face hunger.
ReplyDeleteThe World Food Programme is planning to double the number of Zimbabweans that it assists to 4.1 million, but says it will require over $200m to meet its needs in the first half of 2020 alone.
"As things stand, we will run out of food by end of February, coinciding with the peak of the hunger season – when needs are at their highest," said Niels Balzer, WFP's Deputy Country Director in Zimbabwe, in a statement.
"Firm pledges are urgently needed as it can take up to three months for funding commitments to become food on people's tables.”
This does not make any sense! Zimbabwe is failing to find money to feed its own people, hospitals have closed because there is no money to pay doctors and nurses, etc. and yet this Zanu PF regime has money to buy twincab trucks and build homesteads for the country’s partisan chiefs and Mnangagwa has just promised bankroll POLAD’s activities including buying its members vehicles. It is no secret that corruption is still rampant and the country is losing as much as US$2 billion a month.
If there is no donor fatigue, there will soon be!
Zimbabweans must take up the challenge of good governance with the seriousness that matter demands. Outsiders will want to help but only when they can see there is a concerted effort on our part to do something to end the madness gripping the country.
As severe drought conditions continue in Zimbabwe, close to 7 million people are facing food shortages, a Catholic aid agency warned this week.
ReplyDelete“Families have run out of options to put food on their tables,” said Dorrett Byrd, Catholic Relief Services’ (CRS) regional director for Southern Africa.
This is at odds with what Mnangagwa is saying. "Going forward, 2020 will be the year of higher productivity, economic growth, job creation and satisfying the needs of the people," he said in his New Year address!
Come to think of Zimbabwe has been in economic decline for the last 40 years and I do not remember Zanu PF ever admitting they failed. Each time they admitted there were problems it would be only to name a scapegoat and to assure the nation they have the solution to guarantee economic prosperity!
Millions of our people are facing starvation and our government is glossing over the truth.
Zimbabwe needs a government that is accountable to the people and until we get one this nation is going to sink deeper and deeper into the abyss!
As much as Jonathan Mnangagwa would do anything to see Mnangagwa and his coup gangsters removed from office and better still thrown in jail. Still the one thing he would not do is say or do anything that will expose him as a hypocrite much less incriminate himself so that he too is thrown in jail. Revealing how Zanu PF has been rigging elections is a bridge too far.
ReplyDeleteIt is worth noting that Jonathan Moyo has, for the first time ever, admitted that the 2008 to 2013 GNU did present a golden opportunity to change Zimbabwe's rotten political system and the chance was wasted. He did not give any details how the opportunity was wasted and by whom. Since Zanu PF was not going to reform itself out of office that leaves only Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends are the ones who wasted the golden opportunity.
Moyo was coy about criticising MDC leaders for their breath taking incompetence in participating in the flawed elections in 2013 and again in 2018 because he is smart enough to know that as long as Zanu PF has these useless MDC politicians on the political stage sell-out Zanu PF politicians like him, Jonathan Moyo, have an excellent chance of staging another political comeback.
Mnangagwa should not lose any sleep over the revelation in EXCELGATE because if the book had gone into detail of how the vote rigging Zanu PF juggernaut works he would have found it impossible to deny the elections were not rigged and that he and his Zanu PF cronies are indeed illegitimate. And most important of all Zanu PF would have been forced to finally implement the democratic reforms taking away the party's carte blanche vote rigging powers. If the party still refused to implement the refuses it would be contesting the elections with no opponents because even its POLAD organised opposition would not dare stand!
The people of Zimbabwe must focus on getting Zanu PF to step down so that an interim administration can implement the comprehensive reforms; that has to be the Holy Grail for the nation!
t is a crying shame that 40 years after independence we are still talking about holding free, fair and credible elections.
ReplyDeleteThe British were stuck on Brexit for three years, everyone was running around like headless chickens not sure what was going to happen next. The nation made a decisive vote last December and the country is back on track. In 40 years, we have made no progess on resolving the vote rigging problem, corruption, abuse of power, lawlessness and a myriad of other problems that have popped up over the decades because Zanu PF rigged the ections leaving us stuck in the rut!
Zimbabwe is not getting out of the man-made hell-on-earth the nation has been stuck in ever since our independence in 1980 until we implement the reforms to end the curse of rigged elections!
"Looking back over the last 20 years, the people have squandered three opportunities for real change in 2000; then 2009 to 2013; and in 2017 when ZanuPF & the Army dug their own grave only for the people to fail to bury the two. Now there's yet another opportunity: 2020!" confessed Professor Jonathan Moyo is his New Year message to the world.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first time Professor Moyo or anyone else in Zanu PF have ever openly admitted that the Zimbabwe wasted a golden opportunity to bring about meaningful democratic change in Zimbabwe. If he had to say why this was so, he will admit that throughout the GNU and beyond MDC had become as useless as the opposition parties in POLAD. Mugabe paid MDC leaders to shut their traps just as Mnangagwa is doing the same now with the opposition member who have joined POLAD so far.
Zanu PF has stifled public debate and democratic competition by corrupting state institutions into party departments, organising non governmental organisations and institutions so they towed the party line or they were shut down. After 40 years without a voice it is little wonder many Zimbabweans are finding it hard to find a voice and say something.
It is no wonder too that there is no real political party to challenge Zanu PF for power, the oppressive political environment has forced quality leaders to shun politics. Zanu PF has turned Zimbabwe into a political sewage pond, where crocodiles and frogs thrive; no fish. If we want quality leaders then we must first implement the reforms and open up the country to public debate and democratic competition, the clean oxygenated water the fish require to thrive.