Mutsvangwa and Mugabe kiss and make up - a rogue is a rogue count on him to betray. P Guramatunhu

A rogue is a rogue and when push comes to shove the rogue will betray the cause, you, me and everyone quicker than the blink of an eye!

When trouble started brewing up between the war veteran leaders like Jabulani Sibanda and President Mugabe in 2014 leading to the former boldly denouncing Grace Mugabe’s meteoric political rise from a nobody in the party to president of the party’s women’s league and shameless bid for Vice Presidency all in the space of a few weeks. Grace’s vitriolic “baby dumping” attack of the VP Joice Mujuru, who was certain to win the vote to be VP in the party’s forthcoming December 2014 elective congress and therefore posed a serious threat to Grace’s ambitions, was ruthless. Grace was going for the jugular vein!

“There has been a bedroom coup!” came the jibe from Jabulani Sibanda. “I will not allow political power to be sexually transmitted from Mugabe to his wife!”

Sibanda was booted out of Zanu PF and by extension out of his powerful war veteran chairman position, to be replace by Chris Mutsvangwa. And for good measure Sibanda was slapped with an “Insulting the President” charge, and to this day the charge hangs over his head!

The peace between President Mugabe and the war veterans under the leadership of Chris Mutsvangwa did not last for long over the same issue, Grace Mugabe’s vaulting presidential ambitions. Whilst the Mutsvangwa war veteran executive had supported Grace’s baby dumping antics to stop Joice Mujuru’s VP ascendancy as contrast to Sibanda & co. who supported Mujuru; Mutsvangwa & co. panic when Mujuru was booted out of the party and Grace’s attack turned full blast on their candidate, VP Emerson Mnangagwa.

The rogues amongst the country’s liberation war veterans first showed their true colours when the late Chenjarai (Hitler) Hunzvi was chairman of the war veterans. He was instrumental in demanding the $50 000 gratuity, a pension and other goodies for war veterans in the late 1990s. There was no denying, even back then, that President Mugabe agreed to these demands but only as a bribe for the war veterans’ blind loyalty of his one-party dictatorship.

The rogue elements among the war veterans agreed and for years to come war veterans under the leadership of such people as Jabulani Sibanda have done Zanu PF’s dirty bidding of denying the people’s freedoms and human rights to impose the dictatorship. This was contrary to the values and principles of free, justice, one-man-one-vote, human dignity, everything the nation had fought for.

Although the rogue war veterans had done the dirty work to keep President Mugabe and his thugs in power the later had not honoured his promise of paying them the pension much less making them rich. Many of the war veterans have languished in abject poverty. What made the Mutsvangwa group of rogue war veterans panic was the growing possibility of Grace Mugabe taking over the presidency from her husband. It was an open secret that she was not going to honour any promises Mugabe had made to the war veterans.

The war veterans knew they had to fight to stop Grace Mugabe’s ascendancy. They accused President Mugabe of “dictatorial tendencies” and demanded that he must resign and pass on the baton to VP Mnangagwa. Whilst some people, notably the political opportunist MDC-T leaders, saw this as a transformative Damascene moment turning rogue war veterans doing Zanu PF’s dirty bidding into democrats. This was both premature and naïve particularly when the rogues still claimed to have a veto on who was to rule the country.  

Media reports that the war veterans have since kissed and made up with President Mugabe will only serve to confirm the transformative Damascene moment was indeed a fake.

"As chairman, I want to assure the public and the national body politic that there are no contentious issues between ZNLWA and the patron President Robert Mugabe," said Mutsvangwa.

"By the same token, war veterans are delighted with the ever-warming relations with the First Family as a whole. We also take this opportunity to reassure all and sundry that we have excellent relations with the entire defence and security establishment. General (Constantino) Chiwenga enjoys our utmost trust and confidence.

"We are of shared military progeny as young men sacrificing only life for freedom and independence in the 1970s. The bonds of blood are too strong to be torn asunder by mahumbwe (child's play) type trickery of G40."

Those who had placed so much hope in the fallout between President Mugabe and the rogue war veterans as the positive sign the country will have free and fair elections have just had their hopes dashed!

So Mutsvangwa does not want to break the bonds with those in the state security services whose blind loyalty to Mugabe’s no regime change mantra is one of the main reason the Zanu PF dictatorship has survived all these last 37 years. Both rogue war veterans and those in the security services had no qualms cutting the bonds that had teared the freedom fighters to the Zimbabwe populous, povo. In their quest for a share of the spoils of absolute dictatorial power and the influence and material wealth it promised; they have readily betrayed povo and the liberation war values and principles for which many, both war veterans and povo, lost their very lives.

What Chiwenga, Mutsvangwa and their respective followers have failed to understand, even now with the benefit of hindsight, is that the Zanu PF dictatorship was doomed to fail and has done just that. The corrupt and tyrannical political system is unjust and wasteful of human and material resources; the country’s economic meltdown is proof of its failure.

Whilst President Mugabe will make another generous gratuitous payment to all war veterans, as a token of his renewed promise to make them rich in return for them to do his dirty bidding once again. Soon after the elections the war veterans will once again be forgotten and poverty will return to their doors once again.

Zimbabwe’s sustained economic recovery is not possible until we end the criminal waste of resources through mismanagement and corruption and for that we need political transformation born out of free, fair and credible elections. once we it will take months not years for poverty to return to their doors.

The Zanu PF dictatorship is the root cause of the country’s economic meltdown and human suffering. Mutsvangwa and his war veterans and Chiwenga and his fellow security chefs had no right to impose the dictatorship on the nation these last 37 years much less to do so for one more day!

The people of Zimbabwe will demand the implementation of all the democratic reforms design to end the Zanu PF dictatorship; to restore their basic freedoms and human rights and to end the corruption and tyranny of the last 37 years. If people like Mutsvangwa think they can cut deals with Mugabe to frustrate the people and stop the democratic changes afoot, he could not be more wrong. Democratic change is coming whether Mutsvangwa and his rogue war veterans will the change or not!

"The inescapable reality is that the G40 is facing its waterloo. It has already been a torrid season with the (Jacob) Mudenda inquiry, the vote of no confidence by 10 party provinces and the thorough drubbing of the G40 pretender (Mutero Masanganise) by chairman (Ezra) Chadzamira in Masvingo party provincial elections. The end is nigh for the G40 cabal and its diabolic power grab pretences," predicted Mutsvangwa.

The only waterloo that the nation is interested in is the one to end the Zanu PF corrupt and tyrannical rule!

"Zanu PF will not reform itself out of power," boasted Moyo - echo "No majority rule in 1000 years" W Mukori

“The issue is we all talk but don’t understand governance,” commented Punch in Zimeye. “Who has the mandate to implement the so called “reforms” and are the responsible authorities willing to implement those reforms? Lets understand this first then we can move forward.”

I agree with you, Punch,100%; most people did not understand who was supposed to do what during the GNU and after which is why not even one reform was implemented. With not even one reform in place, the question of whether or not next year’s elections should go ahead is back on the national agenda. How we answer this will determine the nation’s destiny for a generation.  

After the fiasco of Zimbabwe's 2008 elections SADC forced President Mugabe to sign the GPA in which he agreed to the implementation of a raft of democratic reforms designed to stop Zanu PF rigging future elections and a repeat of the 2008. SADC were the guarantor of the GPA and it fell on Tsvangirai and his MDC friends as the other partners in the GNU to implement the reforms. It would be illogical to expect Mugabe and Zanu PF to want to reform a system that served them well.

Tsvangirai & co. did not implement even one reform in five years because Mugabe bribed them with the trapping of high office and they kicked the reforms into the tall grass. SADC leaders tried their best to get MDC to implement the reforms but they were ignored.

With nothing to stop Zanu PF to revert to its old and trusted way of rigging the vote, the party blatantly rigged the 2013 elections!

SADC leaders complained of MDC leaders "enjoying themselves during the GNU and forgetting why they were there!" after the rigged July 2013 elections in sheer frustration.

With more than two thirds majority in parliament and senate plus the presidency after the 2013 elections, there can be no doubt the political dynamic had swung firmly in President Mugabe and his Zanu PF's favour; if they were going to be any political reforms from there on, they called all the shots.

"You can’t expect us to reform ourselves out of power,” boasted Zanu PF thugs like Professor Jonathan Moyo and VP Emerson Mnangagwa.

So with Zanu PF back and firmly in the driving seat and openly boasting that they will not implement any of the democratic reforms need to stop the regime rigging elections and deliver the all-important free, fair and credible elections – the pre-requisite for meaningful political transformation and economic recover; what next for Zimbabwe? There are two options here:

1)    We accept Zanu PF’s position that there will never be any democratic reforms that will be implemented before 2018 elections and beyond and thus search for a way(s) forward that accepts Zanu PF will retain all its tools to rig elections.

Building an opposition coalition, voter education and mobilisation, exerting as much influence as they can on what BVR kit is bought, etc. These are some of the many solutions being pursued to wrestle political power from Zanu PF without touching any of the sacred cow hard hitting democratic reforms the party does not want touched.

If the truth be told, many of the leaders in the opposition camp know that the above solutions will never deliver any meaningful political change but continue to pursue them regardless for the selfish reason of greed, as David Coltart readily admitted in his recent book.

“The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn’t now do the obvious – withdraw from the elections,” explained Senator Coltart.

“The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility.”

After the fiasco of the 2008 elections in which Zanu PF was forced to go into the GNU, the regime has learned that if it is to continue to rig elections it must throw away a few gravy train seats to the opposition to entice them to participate and give the flawed the modicum of legitimacy and credibility. It is for the sake of winning these few give-way gravy train seats that the opposition will contesting Zimbabwe’s elections regardless how flawed and illegal the process becomes.

As for Zanu PF, it will retain its omnipotent power to rig the vote and to resist reforms. The logic to do so is inescapable: they greed for absolute power and the riches and influence it brings is insatiable, their continued hold on absolute power is guaranteed as long as they resist reforms design to dismantle the dictatorship and, most important of all, those whose interest are ill-served by the dictatorship have accepted it as fait accompli!

Those who are accepting contesting next year’s election with no reforms are insane. They accept that Zanu PF will rig the vote and hope against hope that, somehow, the party will lose the election! This has been going on for the last 37 years and still they hope the thorn tree will bear mangoes!

2)    We totally reject the nonsense that Zanu PF has the right to deny the people their basic freedoms and human rights including the right to free and fair elections and stand firm in our demand for the full implementation of all the democratic reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections BEFORE any new election is held in Zimbabwe.  

Of course, President Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs have no right to deny even the lowest of the low in Zimbabwe his/her freedoms and human rights enshrined in the UN The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Being inalienable does not meaning they cannot be denied, as this Zanu PF regime has shown. Whenever that happens it is for the people themselves to reclaim their freedoms and rights and to defend them even with their very lives if need be!

The demand for the implementation of all the democratic reforms to restore all the people’s freedoms and rights is per se not negotiable. It is sheer political arrogance on Zanu PF’s part to abrogate unto itself the right to deny others their basic freedoms and human rights. It is sheer stupidity on the part of such leaders as Tsvangirai, Biti, David Coltart and all the other MDC leaders to accept such arrogance!

Zanu PF has corrupted our State Institutions such as ZEC, the Police, the Judiciary, Public Media, etc. for its selfish political gain of establishing the de facto one-party cum one-man dictatorship, this is a fact. It is also a fact that there cannot be free, fair and credible elections until democratic reforms, design to severe the totalitarian tentacles holding these institution hostage, are implemented. Holding elections which are then blatantly rigged for 37 years is a futile exercise for a foolish nation.

So, what can the nation do to make sure the democratic reforms are implemented a.s.a.p.?

The simple answer to that is we must do whatever it takes to end this vicious cycle of pure madness. One of the things we must do is stop the double-faced opposition opportunists who keep contesting these flawed elections for their own selfish gain and yet pretend they are serving the nation’s interest. How does helping to keep a corrupt and tyrannical regime in office by contesting flawed elections benefit the nation?

Conclusion

We would not need to implement any democratic reforms, in the first place, if Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs had not corrupted our State Institutions to create this de facto one party state. If we, the people had stood up and demand free and fair elections even as early as the 1980s we would have nipped the corrupting tendencies in the bud.

The best opportunity to implement the democratic reforms to end Zanu PF’s de facto one-party state fell to Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC during the GNU. The barbarism of the 2008 elections had one positive outcome in that Mugabe was forced to accept the implementation of the democratic reforms designed to dismantle his one-party dictatorship. It is a great pity that not even one reform was implemented during the GNU because MDC leaders are corrupt and incompetent.

Since Zanu PF rigged the 2013 elections and restoring it’s iron grip on power, getting the regime to accept an situation in which the reforms can be implemented is not going to be ease, there is no doubt about that. However, to give up demands for reforms is not an option because the present system has failed and delaying implementing the reforms will make the task harder, as history shows.

"I don't believe in majority rule ever in Rhodesia... not in 1,000 years!" said Ian Douglas Smith in 1976. His white racist regime did not last another four years!

Each tyrannical regime, without exception, always considers itself invincible but in the end they all collapse. Zanu PF is already imploding as the party member fight each other like starving hyenas; the growing poverty, fuelled by the country’s economic meltdown, has not spared no one including the ruling elite. Even party grandees like the late Nathan Shamuyarima died a pauper; his wife could not even afford the bus fare to be with him on his death bed!

"You can’t expect us to reform ourselves out of power,” boasted Professor Moyo! Let me assure you Professor Moyo, that one way or the other this Zanu PF dictatorship will be reformed, dismantled and destroyed or simply implode!