Tsvangirai is promising 1 million new jobs in the five year period 2013 to 2018 when, surprise, surprise the GNU in which he is the Prime Minister has completely failed to create any new jobs the last four years. Indeed many big companies have closed which others are barely functioning! He must think all Zimbabweans out there are complete idiots who will believe anything he says and thus have their votes - the one thing the people have left – just as an adult would takes away a doll from a sleeping child!
Big household companies like Zimglass and Kariba Battery have closed since 2008 and State owned companies like ZESA and NRZ which are too important to fail have continued in their downward spiral into collapse, dragging the whole nation with them. The Zimbabwe economy shrunk by 84% in the six year period, 2002 to 2008; a world record for a nation at fighting a war. The recovery could and should have been double digits rates, given the good leadership ensuring the removal of many huddles that had cause the economic melt-down in the first place; particularly since the economic infrastructure and skilled labour were still there plus the generous Marange diamond windfall.
Sadly, many of the huddles have remained in place; the corruption, lawless and violent invasion of white owned farms, the racist indigenisation laws, etc. Hence the much hope for economic recovery never materialise.
PM Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have been quick to point the finger of blame on Mugabe and Zanu PF, their partner in the GNU, for the poor economic performance with some good reasons too. After all it is Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs who are responsible for most of the lawlessness and looting. Still the PM must shoulder most of the GNU’s poor performance because, like it or not, he is an equal partner in this government; but, more pointedly, because, he was warned that the arrangement would not work but refused to listen because he could not wait to be on the gravy train.
In the last four years the PM has had many opportunities to force Mugabe to accept meaningful change on the economic and political front but again and again the he failed to do so. He was too busy globe-trotting, chasing women or otherwise enjoying the many luxuries on offer on the gravy train.
The call of new elections works magic on politicians the world over, it helps concentrate minds and politicians are never more attentive to the electorate. The PM and his party have come up with a new program promising at least one of the many things that party failed so dismally to deliver – jobs. Whilst the new program acknowledges some of the old huddles like the indigenisation policy, the electorate is supposed to assume MDC will have the political power and authority to do as it pleases. Only MDC is that naïve to believe that!
There is no media freedom, the voters roll is in a mess, the political violence is on the increase; everything, absolutely everything points to one thing that the next elections are not going to be free and fair. If there elections are not free and fair then regardless of who wins one thing will be certain; Zanu PF will still wield a lot of political power. Even if Tsvangirai and MDC were to win the next elections they will only be too keen to appease the Zanu PF cronies so corruption, looting etc. will continue. An outright Zanu PF victory will mean corruption, etc will be deeply entrenched.
It is tempting to be despondent; the electoral choice between Zanu PF and MDC is the mythical choice of the rock and the deep blue seas. Whilst the people are literally dying to end the cancer of greed and corruption that is destroying the nation; all Zanu PF and MDC want is to get back on the gravy train. Members from both parties are fighting each other like wildcats within their own party and then at party level for the seat on that train. Actually the people have a real one-in-a-life-time chance of derailing this gravy train, once and for all.
Both Zanu PF and MDC do not want a truly democratic Zimbabwe. For Mugabe and Zanu PF, they would have lost power years ago if democracy had ruled the roost and they would certainly lose the coming elections. Whilst MDC’s electoral victory would be assured if there was free and fair elections nonetheless Prime Minister Tsvangirai knows he would certainly have lost his position as MDC leader a long time ago. A free and independent media would have exposed his pathetic performance over the years, incessant womanising, etc.; showing him for the failed leader he is. Indeed it is for the same reason why MDC has resisted all calls to accept democratic practises within the party and not just call for them at nation level.
MDC's failure to have any of the democratic reforms implemented was partly due to the incompetency of the party leadership but also the fear on the full glare of the democratic spotlight turned on MDC itself. It is for this reason the party has willingness to take its chance and hold elections knowing fully well they will not be free and fair rather force through all the democratic reforms and face the reality of MDC itself being held to account by the electorate!
Both Zanu PF and MDC are expecting the people of Zimbabwe will accept this rubbish Copac constitution in the coming referendum; both parties have told the electorate to vote yes and, as a rule, they expect the electorate to do as they are told, period! Whilst each party is completely focused on its wildcat fight to be on the gravy train after the next elections neither of the party is expecting to fight a rare guard revolt of the electorate derailing the gravy train by voting NO to the Copac draft.
A NO vote will force the nation to implement the agreed democratic reforms and to write a democratic constitution which will lead to free and fair elections. As long as there are free and fair elections the electorate will force those in public office to keep their promises or kick them out of office. Then and only then can the electorate be sure the gravy train has been derailed.
Mugabe’s 2008 electoral defeat was a shock to the tyrant; a NO vote in the coming referendum would deliver the coup de grace!
3 comments:
@ David Taylor
No one would argue that Mugabe, Zanu PF and the military leadership should "come down hard on the perpetrators of this violence". But we must face the reality here, this has been going on for years now. Mugabe has used brute force to consolidate his hold on power; over 30 000 innocent people have been murdered by this tyranical regime for Christ sake! How many more people does he have to butcher before you people will finally accept the reality that he, Zanu PF and the military leadership are NOT going to "come down hard on the perpetrators"!
The other reality you are always ignoring is that PM Tsvangirai had four years to force through security sector reforms and for FOUR BLOODY YEARS he did nothing. He is now encouraging the nation to accept a new constitution that will do nothing to punish those responsible for all this violence insisting there will be no violence.
Why is it that you have never asked him to "come down hard on the perpetrators of violence"? He is after all the Prime Minister? Over 500 people lost their lives to elect him and his MDC friends; please do not tell me their sacrifice was all for nothing!
@David Taylor
I understand David but I am sure you would also understand where I am coming from.
You, I and the rest of ordinary men and women out there can condemn the violence and that is all we can do. Prime Minister Tsvangirai and his MDC party are in government with a parliamentary majority; they can and should do a more than condemn the violence. They can and should enact laws giving more powers to the Police, get those failing to do their duties fired, etc. if that is what is needed to be done. And yet for FOUR YEARS they have done nothing, other than offer the occasional word of condemnation.
Over 500 people lost their lives in 2008 alone electing Tsvangirai; they all believed MDC would keep their promise and bring democratic change and thus end the scourge of violence amongst other things!
To then turn around now and accept that Tsvangirai is "at least condemning" the violence as good enough is in fact symptomatic of the feeble electorate who hardly know what they want, even when they are blatantly obvious, and who lack the political spine to ever hold their leaders to account on anything, even their very lives! By failing to hold Tsvangirai to account for his failure to end the violence we are betraying not just ourselves but all those who have lost their lives in search for justice and we are betraying all future generations too who will in turn be victims of this violence, etc.
If we are serious about ending the violence and wanting to live in a peaceful, just, free and prosperous Zimbabwe then we must first transform ourselves from an enfeeble electorate to an informed and assertive one. If we want change then we will have to work very hard to get it. People like Mugabe with an invested interest in maintaining the status quo; they are working hard to stop change. People like Tsvangirai have learnt that Mugabe would allow them on the gravy train as long as they forgot about pushing for change. And that is exactly what Tsvangirai has done about his promise to bring democratic reforms – NOTHING! If we see the game these are playing then we are blind!
We cannot say we did not deserve the tyrannical regime of Mugabe or this dysfunction GNU complete with the flawed and indecisive Prime Minister Tsvangirai; ultimately, nations get the governments they deserve. We will need to be smarter and be more assertive if we are ever going to get out of this hell-hole we find ourselves!
@Savagehunter
I read another story of how Zimbabwe's small farm holders are the ones who are producing something off the land. The chefs who own all the big farms are producing just enough for their own consumption - "Chedu chokudya takachiwana!" as the often say in Shona. Needless to say it is the big farm owners who are always got the lion's share of farm subsidies. It was the big farms that employed the hundreds of thousands of farm workers which explains why unemployment in Zimbabwe has remained stubbornly here ever since the farm invasions started in 2000 - a nauseating 80% plus.
So the nation finds itself in this pathetic situation where it is paying thousands of dollars to individuals in farming subsidies but produces nothing. They who are in fact holding the whole nation to ransom by seating on a key resource – land – and we are paying twice over for it!
The black Zimbabweans buying all these 51% shares in existing mines, banks, etc. should be using that money to start new mining companies, etc. and thus create new jobs and ease the unemployment problem. Instead they want to buy existing businesses and piggyback on these because they know their new businesses would not compete. Most Zanu PF inspired businesses have either collapsed or have survived because there is corruption.
Zanu PF's indigenisation policies are nothing but corruption and looting in disguise designed to give vast economic rewards to the chosen few regardless of suffering the policy will cause. Corruption and looting do not create any additional wealth but waste it. The beneficiaries of corruption are reaping where they never sowed and they rarely appreciate what they got and thus use the resource(s) wisely. It is heart break for the individual who by merit or ownership should be given the resource to be thus denied.
It is whole community that suffers from the criminal waste of material and human resources born out of corruption and looting. As the national economic falters the corruption always step up a gear funds are even diverted from absolutely essential public services, the last bread crumb is taken away from the starving child, to pay for ruling elite’s never insatiable appetite for luxuries and highlife.
In Zimbabwe the corruption went into overdrive a few years ago with the looting of the white owned it dragged the whole nation into a hell-hole of poverty and despair. It is only beginning to dawn on us that it was infinitely ease to down the hole but near impossible to climb out again.
Corruption is not something new in SA; it was not from his salary as ANCYL President that Julius Malema made his millions. SA has allowed corruption to take root for too long, loitering with intend on the slippery slopes, and may soon reach the point of no return, if it has not done so already!
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