SADC leaders again fail to take any action to rein in Mugabe and end the circus of the GNU in Zimbabwe at the end of the regional meeting in Namibia. Commenting at the end of the meeting MDC Minister Tendai Biti said he was “reasonably pleased” with the meeting! There is a surprise.
Ever since MDC emerged as a political party in Zimbabwe it has been a party of “weaklings”, as you, Charlie Mingas, rightly put it. They are always bending over backwards to please. Always looking for opportunities to appease Mugabe and Zanu PF and excuse the dictator’s excesses. They are always gleaning for something positive even a sea of negatives.
The Zimbabwean economy is still in a mess; 80% are still out of work, the few in work are being paid pittance and basic services like education and health are barely functioning. On the political front the much talked about drafting of the new constitution is way behind schedule and signs are it will be a meaningless exercise because Zanu PF thugs have hijacked the whole exercise. Political motivated violence is on the increased again. The GNU has been bickering over trivial issues and ignored the economic and political issues affecting the people’s lives.
MDC clearly failed to get Mugabe and his junta to move one inch to ease the repression and the mismanagement and corruption that dragged the national economy into the gutter and are holding it down. One had hoped MDC would be screaming for SADC as the guarantors of the GNU to push Mugabe. SADC has done nothing on that score. MDC must have expected absolutely nothing to be “reasonably pleased” with nothing!
@ Raia wa Afrika and Fungayi
It is individuals like you who keep the flame of hope of Zimbabwe and Africa in general ever rising out of the hell-hole we now find ourselves burning. As you can see Mugabe apologies like Fungayi have already jumped on the truth you said and twisted it to hide the failures of their master, Mugabe.
The white farmers “grew not food but tobacco” Fungayi argues. That is not true. The country’s farmers, white and black – black farmers too have lost their farms in the farm seizures of the last ten years -, did grew food crops producing enough not only to feed the nation but to feed the region. Zimbabwe was the bread basket of Southern Africa for Christ’s sake! The country’s farmer also produced tobacco and other crops like cotton and flowers earning the country the much needed foreign currency. Mugabe and his thugs seized the farms and agricultural production nose dived.
Mugabe and his apologist would like the world to believe that what they have been doing in Zimbabwe is black economic empowerment. SA’s trade union COSATU described the beginning, only the beginning, of a similar black empowerment programme by the ANC government as thing by ANC favouring a select few at the expense of the majority as “elitists”. In the case of Zimbabwe Mugabe’s black economic empowerment is institutionalised looting by the ruling elite, period!
The Zimbabwe economy has no chance of ever recovering, not whilst the looters are in charge and/or are allowed to keep their loot. Nothing good can ever come out of looting, that is a universal economic fact!
@ Edward Ndaba
Please do not evoke the name of the Lord in vain! God gave Zimbabwe the rich land to grow all the food, a great abundance of flora and fauna, minerals wealth and to every Zimbabwean the discerning mind. What else do you want? Zimbabwe’s economic and political problems are man-made and therefore are within our powers to solve if we only get off our backsides and apply ourselves. The only help Zimbabweans need and have needed for a long time is a kick in the backside – the tragic economic and political repression they are suffering has not been enough!
@Ikene Ikene
It is tempting to blame MDC and before them PF Zapu’s failure to change Zimbabwe on the corrupting effect of Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe. The truth is both of these parties had enough time to know the kind of evil they were dealing with and act accordingly. They did not. The truth is there were no quality leaders in PF Zapu just as there are none in MDC.
Zimbabweans have been concerned about ending Mugabe’s reign of terror for decades now and as the situation got worse they panic and concern changed to desperation. In their desperation, they voted for MDC in 2008 in droves without stopping to think what exactly will happen after Mugabe was out. If only they had stopped to think, they would have realised that MDC were not offering anything. Tsvangirai and company had their eyes on being ministers and had no clue as what they would do next. And hence ever since they got their foot in the GNU and were appointed PM, Ministers, etc. they have done nothing!
Ending Mugabe’s reign of terror is the top priority I agree. But voting in a party of incompetent idiots has clearly not helped that cause. It is not enough to know what must be done, we must also get the right person to do it!
@ Fungayi
I have never denied that there are targeted sanctions what I have denied if you lies that the targeted sanctions are responsible for Zimbabwe’s economic melt down. The years of gross economic mismanagement and rampant corruption by Mugabe and his cronies are responsible for that.
I was pleased that the targeted sanctions were imposed; Mugabe and his cronies could not be allowed to ride rough shod over the people and the whole world turned a blind eye to that. After ten years of the sanctions the West should have reviewed them a long time ago – to make them bite even harder!
The targeted sanctions were imposed on Mugabe and his thugs for failing to hold free and fair elections and for serious human rights violations. The GNU has not anything on the ground, if anything the situation is even worse than it was in 2001. Everyone agrees that the GNU is NOT working. So why Senator Jim Inhofe (Republican-Oklahoma) wants the sanctions lifted is beyond me.
2 comments:
@Dread Dread6
One of the biggest prices Africa has paid for years of repression under colonial rule and now under repressive black regime is the army of mentally retarded citizens the system have produced. Citizen who were deprive of mental nourishment at the critical developmental stage of their lives. Physically, most of them look normal; they have ten fingers, two eyes, etc. But mentally they are incapable of handling two issues and in the extreme cases they are so single track minded that once they have accepted one notion no amount of reason can make them accept anything else. Dread Dread6 are one example of the extreme cases.
Let us take one example of your “tough” (but in reality stupid) question. “How as beneficiaries of chalk in schools, medicine in clinics …… we can continue to entertain the notion that sanctions are merely targeted at the regime?”
In January 2007 the Daily News announced the closure of Parerenyatwa Medical School for lack of funds – for your information Dread this is the biggest hospital in Zimbabwe and therefore all the other hospitals and clinic had closed long before then. The next story was about Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor; Gideon Gono was distributing new Mercedes Benz vehicles to the country’s judges to replace their old Benz (five years old). Over and above that the Judges were being allocated new Villas furnished with new Plasma TV.
Just a little instructive exercise for you Dread Dread6; now, answer your own stupid question for me! Go on.
With so many mentally retarded people it is ease to see why a canning dictator like Mugabe has thrived. Thirty years after independence he is still able to tell these half-wits that it is the whites who are to blame for ALL Zimbabwe’s problems and they believe him! Whilst their lives have become a hell-on-earth; in contrast Mugabe and the ruling elite have enjoyed a life of unimaginable luxuries. They can see it but still they refuse to believe their own eyes!
“Chinonzi rasha ndechawakabata chirimumusoro unofa nacho!” goes a Shona saying. You can advise a fool to throw away what he is holding but not what he has in the head; that he carry to his grave.
Still dictators like Mugabe and his acolytes must be punished for taking advantage of these mentally challenged members of society and, worse still, for setting back the development of the nation all these years.
@ Fungayi
The Senator talked of economic sanctions, he did not say they were not targeted economic sanctions but that does not mean they were not. You are splitting hairs.
Did the targeted sanctions cause any hardships to ordinary Zimbabweans? The answer is yes. Was the life of ordinary Zimbabweans getting progressively bad before the sanctions? Yes. Was their lives have been any better that it is if the sanctions were never imposed? Certainly not.
The right to have a meaningful say in the governance of the country is at the very heart of Mugabe’s reign of terror. I agree that free and fair elections do not put food on the table but I also know that those who gave up their right to free and fair elections have always woken up to find there is no food on the table and, worse still, they are completely helpless to do anything about it! It is for that reason that I ask that the targeted sanctions should not be lifted – Mugabe has done nothing to show that he is willing to grant Zimbabweans their basic right to free and fair elections and all the other human rights including the right to life! If anything the screw on the sanctions should be turned a full turn and widened to include a lot more than the present 200 individuals.
Senator Jim Inhofe is being naïve to think Mugabe has changed. The GNU is just the Mugabe dictatorship in a sheep’s skin! I certainly hope the rest of the Senators, Representatives and President Obama will not be as easily fooled by Mugabe as Senator Inhofe and vote to retain the targeted sanctions!
OK, so I should not believe anything I read on G&M or hear on SW Radio Africa about the political violence, rape or murder. You want me to go to Zimbabwe and see all these things for myself! To what end and purpose though? So that I too can be beaten up or worse? Of course if I live to tell the story you will still refuse to believe a word I say; you will want the Police to confirm the story. You have already refused to believe that the Police do not investigate political violence unless Zanu PF supporters are the victim. Indeed none Zanu PF members have been arrested and roughed by the Police for reporting Zanu PF thug violence.
Your turn; what is your real name? Marius de Kock asked, how much you harvested from your plot?
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