"No re-engagement without all-stakeholders meeting" Mnangagwa told - it's the beginning of the end W Mukori

“A report by the Khupe-led committee presented by Kwanele Hlabangana and gleaned by NewsDay Weekender revealed that the team met British ambassador to Zimbabwe Melanie Robinson, US ambassador to Zimbabwe Brian Nichols, European Union ambassador Timo Olkkonen among others, and the issue of Chamisa not being part of the process kept coming up,” reported Bulawayo 24.

"In key issues raised by the diplomatic community in our recent engagements, although they applaud and appreciate the great initiative taken by His Excellency ED Mnangagwa and the political leaders that participated as presidential candidates in the 2018 harmonised elections, that of coming together to establish POLAD, they are all of the view that the on-going dialogue process should rather be broad-based, with key stakeholders that include the MDC Alliance, civic society, religious groups, white commercial farmers and business," the report read in part.

"Both the US and EU ambassadors emphasised their desire to have South Africa play a leading role in the dialogue process with former President Thabo Mbeki as the mediator.”

The root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic and political mess is the country’s failure to hold free, fair and credible elections resulting in the country being stuck with a corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF regime for 40 years. 

The 2008 to 2013 GNU was supposed to implement the democratic reforms and thus stop Zanu PF rigging elections. Sadly it failure to do so because Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friend took their eyes off the ball and failed to get even one reform implemented. 

Mnangagwa blatantly rigged the July 2018 elections, the regime is illegitimate and has no democratic mandate to govern.

By participating in the flawed and illegal elections MDC A and all the other opposition parties and candidates gave the process and hence the result some modicum of credibility and legitimacy. They were warned of the folly of participating but they continued regardless out of selfish greed, as one opposition leader, David Coltart, Senator and Treasurer General of the MDC A admitted. 

“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,” confessed Senator 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.”

Here are the principle objectives of the proposed all stakeholders’ meeting:

1. To give Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies the opportunity to accept the present political system has failed and accept the need for the regime to step down and have an orderly transfer of power to the new administration to emerge out of the deliberations. The meeting is not to come up with any power sharing arrangement designed to give legitimacy to this illegitimate Zanu PF regime. It is a historic fact that Zanu PF has dragged the nation into this political and economic mess and it is inconceivable that the party will play a meaningful role in the reconstruction phase. Any insistence by the party on playing a further role will only be seen for what it is - Zanu PF holding the nation to ransom. That is the one thing that got us into this mess in the first place and it must not be permitted for even one more day!

2. By participating in a flawed and illegitimate electoral process the MDC A and all those who participated in the July 2018 or other past elections have disqualified themselves for playing a role in the interim administration.

3. An interim administration composed of carefully selected Zimbabweans helped by outsiders from the UN and other international bodies will be appointed and tasked to implemented the democratic reforms designed to end the country’s curse of rigged elections and bad governance. The interim administration will also be tasked to revive economic activities and restore basic services such as supply of clean doing water, education and health care. The interim administration will be responsible for ensure the next elections are free, fair and credible and handover power to the democratically elected government.

"POLAD is doing sterling work" Mnangagwa insists - hamstrung MPs as nation sinks into abyss N Garikai

The Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD), composed of most of the 23 party leaders who contested the July 2018 presidential elections expect Nelson Chamisa and a few others, committees presented their reports to President Mnangagwa.

"I am extremely happy. It was very nice especially the one that dealt with engagement and the economy, it was very detailed and I think it's very useful,” President Mnangagwa told the journalists.

"The first one was the economic committee which hosted the economic forum last time which in my view did sterling work. It brought together the major stakeholders in our economy –industry, commerce, mining, agriculture, Consumer Council and labour were all represented. They submitted their report. There was the governance and the constitutional legislative committee chaired by Professor Lovemore Madhuku also presented their report which was broken into major two components – the process of the constitutional amendments and the content of the amendments," said Mnangagwa.

There is a parliamentary committee on the economy which would or should, if they were as competent as the POLAD committee, bring together the same stakeholders and ask the same searching questions. The parliamentary committee has the legal power to force the stakeholders to answer the questions, if necessary, but most important of all they will go on and formulate and pass the necessary laws to address whatever problems they pick up. POLAD committee has no such power and authority. 

As much as Professor Madhuku would want to flatter himself that he and his POLAD friends are playing a useful role in stopping Mnangagwa corrupting the constitution and abrogating to himself more dictatorial powers. They are bolting the stable door long after the horse has bolted. 

By blatantly rigging the July 2018 elections to garner a 2/3 Zanu PF parliamentary majority, Mnangagwa secured the power and authority to corrupt and amend the constitution as he pleased. By participating in the flawed and illegal elections, Madhuku and his fellow opposition candidates gave the process and the result some modicum of democratic credibility and legitimacy respectively.

If President Mnangagwa is saying that he finds the POLAD members more competent than the MPs and senators, then one has to look at why our electoral system has been such a total failure; instead of electing the cream in society it has ended up with scum! 

Zimbabwe is in this political and economic mess because Zanu PF has created a de facto one-party dictatorship that stifled public debate and democratic competition. By rigging the elections the party has filled parliament and senate with individuals more attuned to follow the party’s diktat then act in the national interest. 

There is better debate in a high school hall than in our parliament and it is no surprise that for the last four decades the nation has sunk deeper and deeper into this man-made economic mess and political paralysis.

The solution to our political and economic crisis is to restore the individual freedoms and rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections and thus end the dictatorship. 

President Mnangagwa’s solution is to acknowledge there lack of quality MPs and so by-pass parliament by creating such super numeral bodies as the 24 member President Advisory Council (PAC) and POLAD. This will kill-off debate and democracy and thus make a bad situation even worse. 

Given only Mnangagwa elects these PAC and POLAD members, they are accountable to no one else other than him makes them even more toothless poodles than the MPs they are replacing! Stop Zanu PF rigging the elections and we will have robust public debate, vibrant democratic competition and competent MPs guaranteed.

It is now nearly two and half years since Mnangagwa launched his Second Republic and its new dispensation and proclaimed to the world that "Zimbabwe was open for business!" On the ground nothing has changed, indeed, the economic meltdown is worse and so is the political repression. In short, there is little to show for the "sterling work" POLAD members are doing. 

Those promoting such bodies as PAC and POLAD; i.e. President Mnangagwa, Professor Madhuku and his fellow POLAD opportunists, Zanu PF apologists etc.; are enemies of democratic accountability and good governance. They are, per se, enemies of the people!

"Waiting for Mbeki, we ready for genuine reforms" - for genuine reforms, must think outside the box P Guramatunhu

Nelson Chamisa and his MDC friends have moved from being the opposition party championing the ordinary citizen’s cause of free, fair and credible elections to the party betraying the cause during the 2008 to 2013 GNU and to the one undermining the cause thereafter.

"We are waiting for communication from Mbeki who had informed us that he wants to contact Mnangagwa and we can know when the dialogue can start as he informed us that Mnangagwa did not want dialogue with Chamisa but we are ready for dialogue," said MDC presidential spokesperson, Dr Nkululeko Sibanda.

"There is need to move forward but we need genuine reforms going towards 2023 elections so that we know that we have finished the unresolved legitimacy dispute of 2018.”

It is a historic fact that MDC have failed to bring about even one democratic change in the party’s 20 years on the political because its leaders are corrupt and incompetent. 

MDC has the golden opportunity to implement “genuine reforms” during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. The party failed to get even one reform implemented. There is nothing in the new power sharing arrangement the party is calling for to make one believe meaningful reforms will be implemented this time. Nothing!

MDC’s wittering about “disputed 2018 elections” is disingenuous, to say the least, because the party agreed to participate in elections knowing fully well that whole process was flawed and illegal and that Zanu PF was rigging the elections.

“MDC has stringent measures to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections,“ boasted Nelson Chamisa a few months before the 2018 elections.

Of course, Chamisa was lying, MDC did not have any measures to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. The real reason MDC participated in the flawed and illegal elections is to win the few gravy train seats they knew Zanu PF was giving away to entice the opposition participate in the rigged elections. 

Worse still, MDC leaders knew that by participating in these flawed and illegal elections, they would give the process “credibility” and thus give the result legitimacy, as David Coltart readily admitted. 

“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,” confessed Senator 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.”

MDC did win most of the bait parliamentary and senatorial gravy train seats on offer in the 2018 elections. Chamisa got decidedly greedier and has since been trying to squeeze more of the spoils of power from Mnangagwa. Chamisa wants cabinet posts for himself and a few MDC friends and to push his demands has refused to accept the presidential election result.

The dialogue with Mnangagwa is about securing more gravy train seats and not about implementing “genuine reforms”. Nelson Chamisa himself let the cat out of bag on this when he launched the party’s Principles for Reliable Inclusive and Credible Elections in Zimbabwe (PRICE) document on 27 February 2020. When he was asked if MDC would participate in the 2023 elections if none of the reforms were implemented; he confirmed that MDC would indeed contest the elections regardless. 

Why would Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies implement even one token reform and reduce their chance of another electoral victory when they know the opposition will participate regardless giving the flawed and illegal process credibility and the result legitimacy - or be it at the price of concede some more gravy train seats to MDC. 

The one reform Zanu PF will be introducing before the 2023 elections is creating the positions Official Opposition Leader and Shadow Cabinet - the equivalent posts Chamisa et al are angling for right now. Amend the constitution and created the above posts and Mnangagwa will have yet another hotly contested 2023 elections guaranteed; even if he still blatant denies 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora the vote, fails to produce a verified voters’ roll, etc., etc.

Zimbabwe is in this economic and political mess, “rumana dzombe” as one would say in Shona, because the country has failed to hold free, fair and credible elections for 40 years. For 40 years the country has been stuck with a corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF regime that has rigged elections to stay in power. 

To get out of the mess, Zimbabwe needs to implement the reforms to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. 

Zanu PF will never implement the reforms. The Zanu PF and MDC power sharing arrangement Chamisa  is clamouring for will never get any reforms implemented because there is no real pressure on Zanu PF to implement the reforms. If we are ever going to get the reforms finally implemented we will need to think outside the box, look to some other body not Zanu PF or MDC to implement the reforms.

So, if former SA President Thabo Mbeki is coming to Zimbabwe to facilitate the Zanu PF and MDC power sharing arrangement, he will be wasting his time and our time too. The 2008 GNU failed to implement the democratic reforms and this new one will do no better. 

"Tsvangirai, doyen of democracy" - mortified by nauseating idolisation of "albatross" weighing down us all P Guramatunhu

There is nothing some Zimbabweans love more than idolise their leaders!

”On this day 68 years back a hero was born, Morgan Tsvangirai, the doyen of democracy, the father of democracy in post independent Zimbabwe. A man who lived a humble life of service and sacrifice epitomising the struggle for a new Zimbabwe which would be anchored on rule of law and an end to misrule by ZANU-PF," reads a statement from the MDC Youth Assembly.

"Morgan Tsvangirai was a dedicated leader and a selfless cadre who initiated the journey for the national democratisation agenda in the late 90s having led a life which was dedicated towards uplifting and ensuring collective bargaining for the workers in Zimbabwe through his relentless efforts at ZCTU.” 

Compare and contrast this with a leaked cable to Washington from the then US Ambassador to Zimbabwe 2004 to 2007, Chris Dell. 

“Morgan Tsvangirai is a flawed figure, not readily open to advice, indecisive and with questionable judgment.

"He is an indispensable element for opposition success … but possibly an albatross around their necks once in power. In short … Zimbabwe needs him, but should not rely on his executive abilities to lead the country's recovery."

Well Morgan Tsvangirai did indeed get into power, he was Prime Minister in the 2008 to 2013 GNU. The primary task of the GNU was to implement the raft of democratic reforms designed to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship and thus stop the repeat of the blatant cheating in the March 2008 vote count and the wanton violence in the presidential run-off that followed. 

Mugabe entrapped Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends with the generous salaries, ministerial limos, a US$4 million mansion for Tsvangirai, etc., etc. and, with their snouts in the feeding trough the MDC leaders forgot about implementing the reforms. SADC leaders did their best to advise Tsvangirai et al to implement the reforms but, as Ambassador Dell had rightly noticed, Tsvangirai was not the man “readily to advice”. 

The failure to implement even one democratic reform during the GNU has been the second worst disaster to befall Zimbabwe since independence. The number one disaster to befall the country has to be the decision by Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies to impose the de facto one-party, Zanu PF, dictatorship. 

The failure by Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends to implement even one reform when they had the golden opportunity to do so during the GNU has been compounded by the party’s fanatical supporters. Even with the benefit of hindsight, they still refuse to see Morgan Tsvangirai for the corrupt, incompetent and down right sell-out he and all those MDC leaders around him were. 

It is one thing idolise a genius like the great Physicist Albert Einstein, he is smart enough to keep his feet on the ground. Idolise a village idiot like Robert Mugabe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Constantino Chiwenga, Morgan Tsvangirai, Nelson Chamisa, etc. and they become so big headed they start to believe they are infallible and are not democratically accountable to mere mortals like you and me. 

Ambassador Dell was right, even in death, Morgan Tsvangirai is still the “albatross round the nation’s neck”; it will take another generation at least force Zimbabweans to open their eyes to see Tsvangirai and the other MDC leaders for what they really are - corrupt, incompetent and sell-outs whose failure to implement reforms has helped to keep Zanu PF in power. 

“Morgan Tsvangirai, a doyen of democracy!” I am mortified with such nauseating idolisation of not only a mere mortal but a flawed and corrupt one with a mountain of evidence to prove it!

Minister Ncube launch "task force to lower inflation" - rubbish, just stamp out corruption N Garikai

Many Zimbabweans will remember Finance Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube’s repeated promise to rein in inflation. He assured the nation that inflation would “fall to 10% or less by the end of the year (2019)”.  We are now in March 2020 and inflation has soared to 500% plus! 

The IMF said Zimbabwe’s Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP), a brain child of Minister Ncube, is “off-track”. 

Even ordinary citizens had said from the onset that the programme was doomed to fail because there was nothing in the programme to  stamp out corruption, the country’s biggest economic scourge. Indeed, the IMF reported singled out the country’s failure to end corruption as one of the reasons TSP was off-track.

The other reason IMF gave for Zimbabwe’s economic reform failure was that government was surreptitiously printing more and more money to bankroll its ballooning finance public expenditure. The need to print its own money was the real reason why, this time last year, government had hurriedly scrapped the multi-currency system introduced in 2008. 

The increase in the volume of money without a corresponding increase in the volume of good and service is one of the sure ways to fuel inflation! Elementary stuff, my dear Professor! One does not need a secondary education to see that, much less a University of Cambridge, no less, professorship!

IMF, WB, AfDB, Paris Club and all the other major financial institutions have all announced that they will not give Zimbabwe any financial assistance until the country implement the necessary reforms to get its economy back on track. 

Zimbabwe is a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous thugs. The IMF, WB, etc. are not going to bankroll a pariah state whose economy is doomed to fail. It would be like throwing money in a blackhole; rest assured, you will never catch a shrewd institution like IMF doing such a foolish thing!

“In order to stabilise the exchange rate and hence, to lower inflation, the Government has decided to implement a holistic package of key policy measures. In this regard, a Currency Stabilisation Task Force has been set up,” Finance Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube has just announced.

Here we go again! 

We need to stamp out corruption, to stop printing money, etc. Get the economic fundamentals right! No task force will rein in the country’s runaway inflation and foster economic stability when all the fundamentals for economic stability are all wrong!

"RBZ policies are litany of promised to be broken." Sadly, povo who suffer the consequences are powerless - change is overdue W Mukori

“Unsurprisingly, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)'s 2020 monetary policy statement is more of the same — a tired litany of promises waiting to be broken and targets queuing up to be missed. Governor John Mangudya, who just a year ago promised to "preserve value" has since delivered over 500% inflation and 94% devaluation,” wrote Anthony Hawkins in Bulawayo 24.

“Such active value destruction continues, compounded by the issue of Treasury Bills to institutional investors. Just how issuing TBs at 14% or 15% qualifies as preserving value is beyond comprehension. Perhaps Mangudya will explain?”

“A tired litany of promises waiting to be broken and targets queuing to be missed” and, sadly, those who suffer the consequences of the broken promises and missed targets the most are totally helpless as they have no meaningful political and economic power to hold anyone involved to account. None! This encapsulate the economic and political tragedy that has been playing out in Zimbabwe since the country’s independence in 1980.

Those with the political power do as they please. Whilst government’s failed economic policies have caused untold economic hardships to the ordinary people the latter have no effective means to force those in positions of power and authority to change their policies much less remove them from office. None!

“Seek ye first the political kingdom and all things shall be added unto you,” said Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president. 

The people of Zimbabwe thought that was exactly what the nation was fighting for in the struggle to end white colonial exploitation and oppression. “One man, one vote!” was the clarion cry. 

Whilst there was a determined effort by some black nationalist leaders to honour the promise to given the ordinary people a meaning vote after independence, notably South Africa. In Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies took a dim view of the country’s Lancaster House constitution and its promise to deliver one man, one vote in a multi-party democratic Zimbabwe. 

Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies wanted Zimbabwe to be a one-party, Zanu PF, state. They viewed the insistence on free, fair and credible elections as a ploy to deny Zanu PF the right to rule the country which they had earned through the barrel of the gun. 

It came as no surprise then was no surprise then Mugabe did not honour his Lancaster House undertaking to withdraw all his freedom fighters to the designated assembly points to stop them intimidating the electorate. Worse still, Zanu PF’s key message to the electorate was that if the party lost the elections, it would not honour the result and instead rekindle the bush war. 

So instead of the first elections being about electing who was to rule the country in free, fair and credible election process, as the people had hoped; it was about electing to end the war. And once in power Zanu PF has left no stone unturned to ensure the party won all the elections that followed. 

The nearest the country has ever come to holding free, fair and credible elections was in the March 2008 elections. SADC had put Zanu PF under pressure to a meaningful voting system and, with the economy in ruins, the Zimbabwe electorate were desperate for political change and so voted for the opposition party. 

When it was clear that Zanu PF was gong to lose the elections, Zanu PF hardliners supported by the top brass in the Police, Army, CIO and Prison Services stop ZEC declaring the results. For the next six week the hardliners “cooked up” the results to give the opposition a marginal lead in parliamentary. 

In the presidential race, they reduced Tsvangirai’s 73%, as admitted by Mugabe in Freudian slip years latter, to 47% and thus force a run-off. 

“What was accomplished by the bullet cannot be undone by the ballot!” boasted Robert Mugabe. Zanu PF thugs and rogue war veterans supported by the personnel from the country’s uniformed security services unleash the most barbaric election violence the country had ever seen. Over 500 innocent civilians were murdered and millions had their properties destroy, were beaten and/or raped. The electorate were beaten into submission, Mugabe “won” the run-off with 84% of the vote! 

Zanu PF has retain’s dictatorial powers to rig the elections to this day. Without first implementing the democratic reforms designed to take away these dictatorial power it clear Zanu PF rig the 2023 elections just as the party has done these last 40 years. 

The people of Zimbabwe lost their freedoms and rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections before the 1980 elections, before they even had the chance to taste. 

40 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption have all but destroyed the Zimbabwe economy; unemployment has soared to dizzying heights of 90%, basic services like education and health care have all but collapsed, 34% of the population now live in extreme poverty, etc. As Anthony Hawkins rightly pointed the future is grime because any promises by the regime to revive the economy will never be honoured. 

Still, the country’s economic meltdown has sunk so low caused so much human suffering and deaths, this cannot go on for much longer. The cup is full to overflow, there must be change. 

By refusing to implement the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections Zanu PF has closed the door to peaceful change. What the party has done is delay change and, more significantly, opened the door to violent revolutionary change. No one can stop change, no one; the choice is always between peaceful and orderly change or violent and chaotic change. 

Having imposed the choice of violent and chaotic change on the nation, Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies must know they will be held to account for all the destruction, human suffering and deaths that will follow.

"Have passion to repair stadia" insists Coventry - butterfly metamorphosed into caterpillar c/w ED regalia and scarf N Garikai

Power corrupts and absolute power - it does not get any more absolute than in Zimbabwe where those in power are accountable to no one and so have done as they pleased for 40 years and counting - corrupts absolutely. 

Before her appointment as Minister of Youth, Sport and Culture in September 2018, Kirsty Coventry was a decent person, one of us ordinary Zimbabweans. Asked, she would have castigated the Zanu PF as a party of corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous thugs; without a moment’s hesitation. She has since changed.

The day she receive her invitation to join the Zanu PF cabinet, received the keys of the ministerial limo, she metamorphosed from the graceful butterfly into the ugly eat-everything caterpillar. A brush against her bristling hairs will give you a rash!

Kirsty Coventry, like Professor Mthuli Ncube, were invited into the Mnangagwa cabinet of corrupt and murderous thugs to give it a human and intellectual face. Coventry and Ncube knew that and, just to prove they understood their principle role of sprucing up Zanu PF’s image, they have, in all they have done if not in words too, endorsed the July 2018 elections as having been free, fair and credible. 

After a year and half on the Zanu PF gravy train, hobnobbing with the Zanu PF thugs, the transformation of Kirsty Coventry is complete; she now thinks and talks nonsense just like any other seasoned Zanu PF thug!

“Local government (ministry) and municipalities own and operate our sports facilities and it has been up to that federation to organise the event. The Ministry of Sport, despite it being sport, has had no role to play,” said Minister Coventry.

“Good news: It has finally been agreed that the ownership and operations of the National Sports Stadium in Zimbabwe will now be transferred to the Ministry of Youth, Sport, Art and Recreation. We have the experience and passion to now use this opportunity for Zimbabwe to become a sporting powerhouse.” 

What a truck load of bull!

1. Is she telling us that she did not know the sorry state of decay and rot of National Stadium - the same can be said of everything else including hospitals, schools, roads, railway, you name - until now!

2. The country is broke, those refurbishing the stadium will want to be paid in money and not your royal highness’ “experience and passion!” 

3. Zimbabwe is facing an serious economic meltdown; unemployment has soared to 90% and basic services like education and health have all but collapsed. 34% of our people now live in extreme poverty, they cannot afford one decent meal a day much less other basic necessities such as shelter and health care. Whatever money the country has it must be used to revive the economy, the health care service, etc. before one dollar is spend on such things as sporting stadium. 

4. The threat of coronavirus outbreak is hanging over the nation’s head like an ominous monster storm, your continued wittering about the stadium is an annoying  distraction. Just because you and your fellow ruling elite can afford health care service outside the country does not meaning we must abandon the millions out there who have no choice but used the non-existent local service.

5. Zimbabwe is a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous tyrants and you are nothing more than pompous mascot paid, and paid well, to pretend Zimbabwe is a healthy and functioning democracy. Zimbabwe’s economic recovery and, indeed, the country’s very survival depends of dismantling the dictatorship which you are propping up. Madam, you need to get off your high horse and smell the coffee!