Zanu PF is loaded: party have new cars, judges US$400 000 bribe @, etc., etc. - vote rigging juggernaut is in overdrive W Mukori

 Emmerson Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF colleagues and their cronies are loaded and they are using some of their ill-got loot to bankroll the regime’s many vote rigging schemes!

“The judiciary plays a crucial role in elections in Zimbabwe starting from presiding over the nomination court, managing the whole process through the Electoral Act to resolving post election disputes,” reported Nehanda Radio.

“Against this background, the government has decided to pamper judges with US$400 000 housing loans.

“It’s US$400 000 per judge. Started off as something for the CJ (Chief Justice Luke Malaba) and the DCJ (Deputy Chief Justice Elizabeth Gwaunza). Now going to other judges,” a source told Nehanda Radio.

This is not something new, last year the regime made similar generous payouts. The Central Intelligence Organisation directors received US$350 000, MPs and senators US$40 000 each and cabinet ministers and their deputies received US$500 000 and US$350 000 respectively. 

It is now the norm that all Zanu PF parliamentary candidates receive new cars and this year was no exception. All Zanu PF candidate have received brand new off-road Toyota Hilux GD6s, Ford Rangers, Nissan Navaras or a comparable model. The party will pay their US$1 000 nomination fee plus all their campaign expenses. 

No one knows for certain, Zanu PF will never ever an audited account of its election spending, but many believe the regime is spending a staggering US$ 4 billion plus on its many multifaceted vote rigging schemes. The huge government spending on elections takes on its true significance when viewed in the context of Zimbabwe IS a failed state that is failing to provide even the most basic needs to millions of its own people. 

In 1980, the country had the potential to become the South Korea of Africa, a democratic and prosperous nation. Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies rigged the first elections; the people were told if the party lost the vote the bush war would continue, and imposed a de facto one-party dictatorship and the rest is history! 

The nation had many opportunities to end the Zanu PF dictatorship with the best chances coming during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends were entrusted the task of implementing the democratic reforms. Mugabe intervened, he bribed the MDC leaders with the trapping of high office and they forgot about the reforms. 

“Mazivanhu eMDC adzidza kudya anyerere!” (MDC leaders have learned to enjoy the gravy train good-life, they will not rock the boat!) boasted Zanu PF leaders during the GNU when asked why MDC leaders were not implementing the reforms. 

Of course, the Zanu PF leaders knew exactly what they were talking about because Mugabe had bribed them with the same trappings of high office to buy their silence. They did not rock the boat whilst Mugabe rod roughshod over the people denying them the freedoms and rights to create the Zanu PF dictatorship. Even at the peak of the Gukurahundi Massacre in 1983 to 1987, Zanu PF leaders said nothing to stop the madness. 

Zanu PF has used the same dirty tactic of bribing people in positions of power and authority to neglect their set task to do the party’s bidding - undermining the rule of law to keep the regime in power at all costs. The judges, MPs, etc. are being bribed to stop regime change.

It is ironic that Zimbabwe’s vast mineral wealth which, per se, is a blessing to the nation is now the source of the wealth use to bribe and bankroll the Zanu PF dictatorship. The blessing, in the wrong hands, is now a curse! 

It is very sad that 43 years after independence, 2 500 years after the Greeks proposed democracy in which everyone is compelled by law to treat others as they would like to be treated and no one is above the law; we are still failing to do the most basic thing like holding free elections. We are still stuck with autocracy in which the only law that matters is the primeval survival of the fittest, dominate or be dominated.

Zanu PF is rigging these 2023 elections. It is exasperating that Zanu PF is not only robbing the nation blind but is using the looted wealth to bankroll is corrupt the nation's institutions and vote rigging juggernaut. After 43 years of rigged elections and tyrannical rule the need to end this madness has never been more urgent than it is now. Zanu PF must be denied political legitimacy. 

Just one-week of voters' roll inspection uncover "thousands of missing names, etc." - proof Zanu PF is rigging 2023 too W Mukori

 One of the distinguishing features of democracy as contrast to autocracy, totalitarian or fascism is the strict adherence to the law and rule of law. Democratic elections must be free, fair and credible or they are a mockery. 

As much as President Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies would like to claim that Zimbabwe is a healthy and functioning democracy in which elections are free, fair and credible; this is just a lie. Zimbabwe has failed to produce a verified voters’ roll one of the most basic requirements for free and fair elections. 

“Thousands of people found their names missing from the voters' roll upon verifying via mobile phone platforms,” reported News24.

“Others noticed their names were moved from the polling stations in which they registered in.

“For a country with a history of suspicion of electoral fraud, some saw the glitches as part of structural vote rigging.”

Of course, the glitches ARE part of the structural vote rigging! 

It should be noted that the thousands of these voters’ roll anomalies were picked up after only a six or so days of the voters’ roll being made available for each individual to check his/her details. So even more people would have found their names missing, etc. if more time had been allocated. 

There is no doubt that a full blooded audit of the voters’ roll would have found even more worrisome flaws and illegalities such as multiple entries. The social media has been awash with videos of Zanu PF supporters bused in from rural areas like Domboshava and Goromonzi into Harare urban to register to vote. Come voting day the individuals will vote in their rural areas and bused in to vote again in the urban area. 

“Nothing must be spared to ensure the environment is right and conducive for free, fair and peaceful elections in which the right to vote is available to all those eligible, in terms of our laws and laid-down procedures,” wrote President Mnangagwa is his regular Sunday Mail column.

“Secondly, we must ensure that the ballot is secure; that every vote is counted and respected; and that the overall outcome expresses the will and choice of the sovereign people of Zimbabwe. This requires that the whole plebiscite attains levels of integrity which the people of Zimbabwe can vouch and attest to. 

“Above all, this requires that our whole electoral process is fool-proof and insulated against undue influence and manipulation by outsiders and foreigners. No foreign power is a stakeholder in Zimbabwe’s electoral processes; this is why foreigners come in by invitation, and participate as observers, and not as monitors.” 

How cynical! It is not outsiders who have consistently denied the ordinary Zimbabweans their fundamental right to a meaningful say in the governance these last 43 years. It is you Mr President Mnangagwa and your Zanu PF cronies who have done that by failing to produce something as basic as a verified voters’ roll. 

43 years and counting, and we cannot hold free, fair and credible elections. The very thing the nation fought and thousands died for, we are now denying our own people. It is most ironic that even here the ruling elite are blaming foreigners for their own failures! 

What makes Zimbabwe’s political mess a hopeless cause is that the nation wasted many opportunities to implement the democratic reforms and thus end the Zanu PF dictatorships, with the golden chances coming during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. MDC/CCC leaders, who were entrusted the task of implemented the reforms during the GNU sold out. Worse still, ever since the GNU debacle they have participated in these flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy for the same reasons they failed to implement reforms - greed and breath-taking incompetence. 

Nelson Chamisa and his CCC friends hell bent on participating in these 2023 elections even with no verified voters’ roll, wanton violence, etc. They are after the few gravy train seats and the POLAD freebies Zanu PF is offering as bait and they do not care the price to the nation is perpetuating the dictatorship and with it the economic meltdown. 

Zimbabwe is a failed state, a pariah state, ruled by corrupt, incompetent and murderous Zanu PF thugs who are still in power because they rig elections. MDC/CCC have played their part in allowing Zanu PF get away with rigged elections. 

Everyone, especially SADC leaders, must be reminded these 2023 elections are flawed and illegal and election process. CCC leaders must be denounced for insisting on participating in these flawed elections out of greed. The regional body has used the opposition’s participation in these flawed elections as an excuse for granting Zanu PF legitimacy. SADC cannot keep punishing the whole nation just because CCC leaders are corrupt and utterly useless! 

We, the long suffering ordinary Zimbabwe cannot stop Zanu PF or CCC holding these flawed 2023 elections, even without some thing as basic as a verified voters’ roll. What we can and must do is make sure Zanu PF does not get political legitimacy. Not this time! 

"Voters' roll must be audited before elections". CCC folly is no excuse for granting Zanu PF legitimacy again. W Mukori

 A year or so ago, Team Pachedu warned that the voters’ roll was in shambles. ZEC denied the accusation by denying ownership of the voters’ roll Team Pachedu have used for their analysis. Team Pachedu requested an official copy of the voters’ roll from ZEC and the Commission refused to issue one. 

Team Pachedu has called for the voters’ roll to be properly audited to iron out some of the glaring errors they had uncovered. The law and common sense demands a verified voters’ roll. ZEC has never ever produced a verified voters’ roll. Never ever!

Last week ZEC announced that individuals who expect their names to be on the 2023 voters’ roll must visit the 11 000 or so centres to check that they are indeed on the voters’ roll. They must check their names and ID details are correct and take note of find the name of the designated Polling Station where they will vote. 

It should be noted that the centres above will be open for a week. There are about 5 million registered voters and it is unrealistic to expect everyone of the 5 million to inspect the voters’ roll in a week particularly since the voters’ roll is Polling Station specific. But most important of all, this inspection is no substitute for a proper voters’ roll audit. ZEC has not given away any copies of the voters’ roll for the purpose of a voters’ roll audit.  

After the three days of inspecting the voters’ roll many have found their names missing from the voters’ roll or the designated Polling Station was some other than the one they expected, a challenge for the IT savvy.

“The ZEC inspection process is ludicrously chaotic. Having finally thought I had located where I was registered – at Hillside Bowling Club – I took the precaution of going there to check – and I am not on the roll there,” complained David Coltart, CCC Treasurer General.

“After a day of perseverance I have finally now found that I am registered to vote after all but at a polling stations which is about 8 kms from my house – Bulawayo Bowling Club, not at Burnside Garage which I have always been registered at and which is only 2 kilometres from my house.

“This has been done without my knowledge and makes no sense whatsoever because I am still registered in Ward 4 and both polling stations are in Ward 4. ZEC is required by law to notify me of changes in terms of section 35(2) of the Electoral Act which it has never done.” 

He was lucky to be IT literate, many of the voters are not, and to be moving to a Polling Station 8 kms from his home, some have been moved 60 kms!

“Why does ZEC take the voters’ roll to the people? It is because we want the voters themselves who are the owners of the voters’ roll to audit the roll by checking their names and their details,” ZEC Chief Elections Officer Utloile Silaigwana told State media.

“In the event there are anomalies detected by the voters, ZEC will ensure they are corrected.”

How exactly would these anomalies be put right, ZEC did not explain. 

It is common knowledge that Zanu PF has carried out a mass voter registration exercise in the last few months and the names of the new registrants would not appear on the voters’ roll - supposedly because it was too late to include their names. There are video of people being bused from Domboshava and Goromonzi, rural areas, to register in Harare urban areas. On voting day the individuals will vote in their rural area and then busing into the urban area to vote again even though they are not on the voters’ roll. They will use their voter registration slip as proof of their right to vote. 

So, in the pretext of correcting anomalies in the voters’ roll even new complexities in the electoral system are being introduced, the more chaotic the system become the greater the opportunities rig the process. It is condescending, to say the least, for ZEC to even suggest this one week-long inspection is an “audit”! An individual will not know a Zanu PF supporter who casted multiple votes, for example. 

“Many of my followers are saying that their names are simultaneously appearing at different polling stations,” commented Hopewell Chin’ono.

“Why is this dangerous?

“The person who is doing this knows exactly the number of people this has been done to.

“If their candidate loses the election, they will then take those duplicates and put them under their candidate as his votes.

“The numbers will tally and that is it, another rigged election.

“The Voters Roll MUST be released and audited ASAP.

“The opposition will be lying if it says it has a plan for this, it DOESN’T!”

Hopewell Chin’ono is spot on all the above points except for that last bit. Yes Nelson Chamisa and his CCC friends are lying that they have a plan to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. They do not have a plan. They not only know that Zanu PF is rigging the election but, most significantly, they KNOW that by participating in these flawed elections they are giving Zanu PF legitimacy and thus perpetuating the dictatorship and the suffering of the masses. And yet they still participate regardless because they also know that Zanu PF is offering a few gravy train seats to entice the opposition to participate. They have found this bribe irresistible. 

“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 (2013) elections,” confessed Coltart in his Book, The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe.

“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.”

Many people have found it very hard swallow the political reality that MDC/CCC leaders would participate in a flawed elections process to give Zanu PF legitimacy and forfeit the nation’s chance to implement the reforms and hold free elections for the sake of 30 pieces of silver. When after hearing it from the horse’s mouth, Coltart’s confession in black and white! 

Coltart’s confession makes sense when read in the context of what happened the 2008 to 2013 GNU. The primary purpose of the GNU was to implement the democratic reforms to stop Zanu PF rigging future elections. The task of implementing the reforms was entrusted to Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends. They failed to implement even one token reform for the same reasons they have participated in these flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy - greed and breathtakingly incompetent. 

The ongoing voters’ roll inspection has uncovered so many anomalies in the voters’ roll it is clear Zanu PF is rigging these elections. The “voters roll MUST be released and audited before the election. The process is “so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step is to withdraw”.  The opposition will participate regardless but only because they have lost political credibility, they participation must not be given as an excuse for granting Zanu PF political legitimacy.

On inflation, Mthuli Ncube must listen to Chinamasa and Gono, "in the know", advised Moyo. What a sick joke! W Mukori

 Professor Jonathan Moyo would be fountain of wisdom if only his contributions are not more often than not laced with propaganda, lies and damned lies whose sole purpose is to poison the mind. 

”Professor Ncube, there is no need for a rocket scientist to tell you that the business community now being blamed for the current pricing and currency mayhem across the economy really has no horse in the forthcoming harmonised general election,” Professor Moyo argued in a recent article in New Zimbabwe.

Did the white farmers have a horse in any of the general elections since Zanu PF lost the new constitution referendum of February 2000? And yet they were blamed for it and used as the excuse for the wave after wave of white farm invasions with the accompanying gratuitous violence. 

The farms were ostensibly seized to be redistributed to the landless peasants. Only a few peasants were resettled out of the crowded communal areas and most of the seized farms were dished out to the ruling elite, their families and cronies. 

The nation learned recently that Bona Mugabe-Chikore, the daughter of the late dictator Robert Mugabe whom Professor Moyo served well for decades, has 21 farms with total land area bigger than Belgium! How many farms did you and your family and friends  get Professor Moyo? 

The Zanu PF regime has since agree to pay the white farmers US$3.5 billion compensation for the movable assets like cattle and farming equipment they were forced to leave behind. So one masquerading as the fountain of wisdom, it is surprising that you were lost for words. Does it make any sense to you that the nation should be asked to pay the compensation when those who benefited from the seized movable and immovable assets pay nothing?

The primary purpose of the violence seizure of the white own farms was to create a smoke screen behind which to hide the use of violence against the opposition and their supporters. The farm seizures always flared up during the elections and spread into rural areas and urban centres where there were no farms.

Zanu PF is worried about the soaring inflation and commodity prices and, true to form, the party has to find a scapegoat. The business community are the scapegoats.

"Second, and as former finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa and some captains of industry in the know will tell you, in times like this shouting matches and open brawls between government voices with discordant messages and the business community benefit neither party, but only serve to make the bad situation worse for everyone, and particularly for ordinary people who have no means of navigating the economic turbulence that's threatening their livelihoods,” continued Professor Moyo.

Patrick Chinamasa and Gideon Gono in the know! If the two knew what they were doing then why did inflation soar to the dizzying height of 500 000 000%. There I was thinking Professor Moyo had no sense of humour, or be it very dry befitting the sick, cynical and sinister mind housed in that cup-cake! This is no laughing matter, people lost their life saves in 2008 hyperinflation and now the nightmare is back. 

"Give us a chance to fix economic mess!" cried Chamisa. Failed critical first task of stopping Zanu PF rigging election W Mukori

 Nelson Chamisa is like Unoka, in Chinua Achebe’s book Things Fall Apart. Unoka wanted a good harvest but would not put in the hard work to earn it. Chamisa wants to be president of Zimbabwe but will not lift a finger to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. 

“Many years ago when Okonkwo was still a boy his father Unoka, had gone to consult Agbala. The priestess in those days was a woman called Chika. She was full of power of her god, and she was greatly feared. Unoka stood before her and began his story,” wrote Achebe, in his book Things Fall Apart.

’Every year,’ he said sadly, ‘before I put any crop in the earth, I sacrifice a cock to Ani, the owner of all land. It is the law of our fathers. I also kill a cock at the shrine of Ifejioku, the god of yams. I clear the bush and set fire to it when it is dry. I sow the yams when the first rains has fallen, and stake them when the young tendrils appear. I weed –‘

‘Hold your peace!’ screamed the priestess, her voice terrible as it echoed through the dark void. ‘You have offended neither the gods nor your fathers. And when a man is at peace with his gods and his ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm. 

‘You Unoka, are known in all the clan for the weakness of your machete and your hoe. When your neighbours go out with their axe to cut down virgin forests, you sow your yams on exhausted farms that take no labour to clear. They cross seven rivers to make their farms, you stay home and offer sacrifice to a reluctant soil.

‘Go home and work like a man!’”

After 43 years of rigged, why, oh why, are we being dragged into yet another flawed and illegal election, “so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step is to withdraw,” as David Coltart once confessed?

"Bad politics cannot deliver good economics. The state of the economy is the state of leadership,” wrote Nelson Chamisa is his usual noncommittal and meaningless tweets.

"Prices in the shops are wild. Salaries are completely washed away.

"Just pay workers a decent wage in $US. Zimbabwe, this time try us, give us a chance to fix this mess once and for all.” 

Well to fix the economy you must first fix the politics. 

Mr Chamisa, how many times have you been told that Zanu PF will NEVER EVER  reform itself out of office and as long as the party retains the carte blanche powers to rig elections and remain in office Zanu PF alone will have the say in how the country’s economy is run.

The people of Zimbabwe have risked life and limb, over 500 were murdered during the wanton violence of 2008 alone, to Nelson Chamisa and his MDC/CCC friends into power on the promise the party would bring about the democratic changes necessary to end the Zanu PF dictatorship. After 23 years, 5 of which in the 2008 to 2013 GNU, MDC/CCC have failed to implement even one reform. No even one!

Worst of all, MDC/CCC have given up on implementing reforms and is participating in the flawed elections confident the party has winning in rigged election strategies! This is the equivalent of Unoka stubbornly planting his “yams on exhausted farms that take no labour to clear”, which he and needless to say got what he deserved - another poor harvest.

After 43 years of rigged elections, gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and tyrannical oppression the country is in economic ruins and millions of our people are now living in abject poverty. The prospect of yet another rig election and another five more years of this Zanu PF dictatorship is simply unthinkable. And yet that is exactly what is happening. 

Chamisa and his CCC friends are dragging the whole nation into yet another meaningless election process all because they will not implement the reforms and stop the curse of rigged elections. 

Okonkwo despised his father Unoka for being lazy and vowed never to be like his father. In like manner, the people of Zimbabwe we must open our eyes and minds and admit to ourselves that CCC will never implement the democratic reforms and deliver free and fair elections. And as long as Zanu PF continue to enjoy the carte blanche powers to rig elections we will never have a meaningful say in the governance of the country. Never ever! 

Chamisa et al have been hunting with the hounds and running with the hare. They are participating in these flawed elections for the asme reasons they failed to implement any reforms during the GNU - greed and breath-taking incompetence. We, like Okonkwo, should disown CCC and stop following the party blindly like sheep to the slaughter. 

By participating in these flawed elections we, the people, are giving SADC the excuse to grant Zanu PF legitimacy and thus perpetuating the dictatorship. We are shooting ourselves in the foot. Of course, it is insane!

"Re-engagement will depend of holding credible 2023 election!" AfDB warns. At long last, some home-truths! W Mukori

 “The African Development Bank has moved to fast-track Zimbabwe’s $3.5 billion compensation to white farmers whose land was seized under former president Robert Mugabe’s reforms. The bank is leading efforts to clear Zimbabwe’s crippling debts,” reported the French publication RFI.

“A revived Zimbabwe is good for Africa. A revived Zimbabwe is good for the world,” said Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB) at a debt resolution forum held this week in the capital Harare.

The AfDB is co-chairing a process aimed at clearing the country’s $6 billion of external debt arrears that also includes reforms to the exchange rate and central bank.

“Zimbabwe cannot run up the hill of economic recovery carrying a backpack of debt on its back,” added Adesina.

This is just nonsense! Zimbabwe has the wealth to clear these debts without the need for outside help and everyone at AfDB knows that!

Zimbabwe has been losing US$1.6 billion per year to gold smugglers alone. We know looting has been going on in other areas too such as diamonds, lithium, platinum, in the procurement of fuel and medicine, etc. In 2016 the late dictator, Robert Mugabe, said Zimbabwe was swindled out of US$15 billion in diamond revenue!

In 2019 the Governor of Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Dr John Mangudya said Zimbabwe could pay off all her debts and pay for the country’s development needs without borrowing a penny from anyone if - a big IF - the country stamped out the rampant corruption and gross mismanagement. For once, the Governor was being honest!

Besides, the whole concept of the US$3.5 billion compensation for the white farmers, for the movable assets they were forced to leave behind during the farm invasions, being born by the ordinary Zimbabweans is an outrage. 

Why should the ordinary taxpayer who have paid dearly because of the agricultural and economic collapse caused by farm seizures? The individuals who profited from the farm seizures, some of them to the tune of 21 commercial farms as Bona Mugabe, should pay the compensation!

The forum noted the importance of Zimbabwe’s coming elections being free, fair and credible in advancing dialogue with the West and financial institutions.

“The people of Zimbabwe and the international community will be watching very closely. The full weight of re-engagement with the international community will not just depend on the election, but on the entire electoral process that guarantees a credible election,” said AfDB president, Adesina.

After - what - 43 years of talking in riddle, it is refreshing to hear the AfDB and other busy bodies telling the Zanu PF some home-truths for a change! 

Sadly, the AfDB is bolting the door long after the horse has bolted. The Zimbabwe elections are three months away and the regime has stubbornly refused to implement even one token democratic reform, refused to produce even something as basic as a verified voters’ roll, etc. Zanu PF is rigging the 2023 elections just as readily as it has rigged past elections.

Even if there was time to implement reforms, Dr Adesina would be wasting his breathe asking CCC to boycott the 2023 elections to pile the pressure on Zanu PF to implement reforms. Others like SADC and the EU have tried and their advice fell on deaf ears. CCC leaders are hell bent on participating in these flawed elections, knowing the process is flawed and that doing so would only give SADC the excuse to grant Zanu PF political legitimacy. They are participating regardless out of greed - the same reason they failed to implement even one reform during the GNU.

"The crisis in the country is having terrible consequences for the region as Zimbabwe lies at the heart of southern Africa,” argued former President of Mozambique Joaquim Chissano. He is the facilitator of this high-level dialogues to help Zimbabwe re-engage with the West. 

Former President Chissano would do Zimbabwe and the whole region a great favour telling SADC leaders they must judge the Zimbabwe elections on merit. In the past, the regional body has endorsed rigged elections and granted Zanu PF legitimacy and thus perpetuating the dictatorship. This must stop! 

Stopping MDC implementing even one reform in 5 GNU years was one of the greatest Tom Sawyer tricks ever pulled off W Mukori

 Zimbabweans love to boast, at least until a few years ago, that they are one of the most literate nations in Africa. In this case, the definition of literate as some one who can read and write needed to be revised, as far I am concerned, to include “and understand what read and written”. 

If Zimbabweans understood what they read then they would not be so naive and gullible and the country would not be in such an economic and political mess! How is it possible that we have fallen prey Tom Sawyer’s tricks, not once, not twice but multiple times; for a literate nation. 

“Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.” wrote Mark Twain in  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 

“ . . . . . At this dark and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a great, magnificent inspiration.

“He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in sight presently – the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. . . . .

“Tom went on whitewashing – paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared a moment and then said: “Hi- yi ! You’re up a stump, ain’t you!”

“No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom’s mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:

“Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?”

“Tom wheeled suddenly and said:

“Why, it’s you, Ben! I warn’t noticing.”

“Say – I’m going in a-swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d druther work – wouldn’t you? Course you would!”

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:

“What do you call work?”

“Why, ain’t that work?”

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer.”

“Oh come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?”

The brush continued to move.

“Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth – stepped back to note the effect – added a touch here and there – criticised the effect again – Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:

“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”

Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:

“No – no – I reckon it wouldn’t hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly’s awful particular about this fence – right here on the street, you know – but if it was the back fence I wouldn’t mind and she wouldn’t. Yes, she’s awful particular about this fence; it’s got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it’s got to be done.”

“No – is that so? Oh come, now – lemme, just try. Only just a little – I’d let you, if you was me, Tom.”

“Ben, I’d like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly – well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn’t let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn’t let Sid. Now don’t you see how I’m fixed? If you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it – ”

“Oh, shucks, I’ll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say – I’ll give you the core of my apple.”

“Well, here – No, Ben, now don’t. I’m afeard – ”

“I’ll give you all of it!”

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart.”

Beautiful! Genius!

Robert Mugabe pull-off the same dirty Tom Sawyer trick with Morgan and his MDC friends. The primary task of the GNU was to implement the democratic reforms and stop Zanu PF rigging elections. Mugabe’s challenge was to distract Tsvangirai and his 2 Deputy Prime Ministers 30 or so MDC Ministers and over 150 MPs and Senators so they forget implementing the reforms. Distract then not just for a day or a month but for five years. He pulled it off! 

MDC leaders failed to implement even one token reform in five years of the GNU. 

Implementing the reforms was Zimbabwe’s get-out-of-jail card and MDC failed to play it. 

“Mazivanhu eMDC adzidza kudya anyerere!” (MDC leaders have learned to enjoy the gravy train good-life, they will not rock the boat!) boasted Zanu PF cronies during the GNU why MDC was not implementing the reforms. 

Tsvangirai and company were convinced they were now fully paid up members of Zimbabwe’s ruling elite with a life-time seat on the gravy train. They had a very rude awakening the morning after the July 2013 elections when Zanu PF had a landslide victory and it was back the ghetto for most of the MDC leaders. 

Ever since the lost golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms MDC/CCC leaders have given up on getting even token reforms implemented and focus their attention on participating in the flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy and win the few gravy train seats Zanu PF offers as bait. 

Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC/CCC friends have got away, so far at least, with the blatant betrayal of the people on reforms and the participation on flawed elections because the people themselves as just as ignorant and gullible as the MDC leaders. It is no secret that even to this day the likes of Nelson Chamisa has no clue what the democratic reforms are much less how they are to be implemented. This is why he still talks on reforms even now with just a few months before voting day. 

The Zimbabwean voters are so gullible many of them believe in the oxymoronic nonsense of CCC has strategies to win rigged elections. Not just an elections but elections “so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw”, David Coltart, one of very few MDC/CCC with some, not much, grey stuff between his ears. 

After 43 years of rigged elections and with the nation in deep, deep trouble because of the decades of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule, one has to be insane to forfeit one’s right to a meaningful vote in pursuit of winning rigged elections. 

So, now Zanu PF has the right to rig elections!!!!