In his latest article the Zanu PF Columnist,
Nathaniel Manheru, dismissed the forthcoming address by Dr Morgan Tsvangirai at
Chatham House, London on "The Future of
Opposition Politics in Zimbabwe", as a none event. It is true, of course that, after
the debacle of failing to implement even one reform, Tsvangirai is himself a
spent force, an empty bullet casing, in Zimbabwe politics. But is a twist of
fate, so too is Mugabe and Zanu PF.
It is hardly a year since the rigged July 2013
elections and already Mugabe and Zanu PF’s hold on political power is decidedly
shaky. The regime political sun is setting and Manheru knows it; his piece was
a pathetic attempt to put on a brave face of business as usual to bolster sagging
Zanu PF moral. I say pathetic because he is talking of the Zanu PF sun rising from
the west.
“We worry less about the temporary structure (GNU) the
elections ended, concern more about the substantive outcome and certainty it
gave the country,” said Manheru. He was trying to underline why the July 2013
elections were a positive development.
It is very true, on 31 July 2013 Mugabe and Zanu PF were glad
to see the end of the GNU and very pleased with their own handwork of rigging a
crashing defeat of Tsvangirai and MDC. When Tsvangirai said he was going to
challenge the election rests in court the tyrant was fearful that might led the
regime being forced to produce the voters roll, the smoking gun in the vote rigging.
So everyone in Chibuku house heaved a big sigh of relief – the building itself heaved
- when Tsvangirai, with his characteristic blundering incompetence, withdraw
the court challenge.
With the contrived 62% electoral mandate and more than two
thirds parliamentary majority Mugabe and Zanu PF certainly expected to rule the
country with the same arrogance of the past. The only things certain in this
life are tax, death and that nothing else is certain. In rigging the elections
to secure for himself strong electoral mandate Mugabe created for himself a
credibility deficit which was to haunt him!
The chaos seizures of the white owned farms, the wanton violence
and vote rigging which were now the hallmarks of Zimbabwe’s election culture
all cemented Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs’ reputation of lawlessness thugs who
could not be trusted to up hold the rule of law, to pay back borrowed money and
to do anything right. And so none of the donors Mugabe was hoping would fund
his ZimAsset recovery plan contributed even a dollar. The would-be investors too
stayed away.
Mugabe was able to rig the Zimbabwe elections because he controlled
the whole electoral process; he manufactured voters, votes, Polling Stations,
etc. and so manufactured a Zanu PF victory. He could not conjure out of thin
air donor funding or investors.
So the real and unwelcome certainty Mugabe was has had to
accept these last 12 months is that he could not rig economic recovery! The consequences of the continued economic
meltdown was the poverty; government itself has struggled to pay civil servants
in the face of falling revenue and the ordinary people have suffered the ill
effects of having no running water and millions are living on less than a
dollar a day.
“We are not tearful about the so-called "government of
national unity": that cheap attempt at deodorizing an unrepresentative and
unworkable coalition of three contesting parties,” continues Manheru. In
reality the regime will be tearful with happiness if the GNU could return
because it knows something worse is coming.
After a year of staring at that empty ZimAsset begging bowl and
with poverty spreading like a raging forest fire Mugabe and Zanu PF have
already acknowledged the need to hold nationwide talks on how to stop the economic
meltdown and poverty. They are hoping for another GNU but deep down they know
the international community will not accept another fudged Zanu PF regime in
all but name as was the case with the 2008 to 2013 GNU.
The only real option on the table this time is implementing
the democratic reforms and then holding free, fair and credible elections. There
is spontaneous dropping of the jaw and wailing in Chibuku House and everywhere
by Zanu PF loyalists at this because they all know the party will not win free
elections. Free elections will be followed the dreaded regime change as sure as
day follows night!
Manheru is putting on a brave face and rally the Zanu PF foot
soldiers into believing the party won the 2013 elections and it is business as
usual in much the same way Josef Goebbels tried to rally the Nazi foot soldiers
with the Russians just outside Berlin city gates. He knew the Nazi regime’s bacon
was fried; the Russians were not there for a cultural visit and they were
taking no prisoners either!
Manheru knows Mugabe and Zanu PF’s reign of terror is over!
The end is certain; what is at issue here now is whether Mugabe will end up
being hunted down, cornered and killed as happened to his fellow dictator
Gaddafi. Whatever happens, Zimbabweans cannot wait for that day when they will
finally heave a large sigh of relief!
(To see the full Manheru article go to http://www.bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-50855.html)
13 comments:
@ Chimbwido
Well that is your view and you can hang on to it.
Now that the regime is in meltdown the people of Zimbabwe and not only going to allow radio stations like S W Radio Africa to operate from Zimbabwe we will go further and free ZBC and the local media from the suffocating struggle hold of Zanu PF.
Zimbabwe is going to join the rest of the world where there is freedom of expression and a free media.
Tsvangirai admits that the party’s traditional financial backers have deserted the party.
It does not matter how many times MDC leaders try to pretend that democratic reforms were not important the fact of the matter is the reforms were and are still important and the key to ending the Zanu PF dictatorship. Unlike many of the MDC supporters and, it seem, many of the leaders themselves the donor community appreciated the importance of the reforms.
Since independence, the political struggle in Zimbabwe has about securing a meaningful say in the governance of the country as represented by free, fair and credible elections. The rallying call before independence had been “One man, one vote!” Sadly after independence Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs had not honoured the commitment to a free vote and systematically denied the people a meaningful vote to entrench themselves into power.
The best opportunity ever for Zimbabwe to end Zanu PF’s iron grip on power since independ-ence was during the GNU; all MDC leaders had to do was implement the reforms agreed in the GPA. They did not implement even one reform in the five years they were in government. There was absolutely no excuse why they did not implement the reforms other than that they were bribed by Mugabe with the trappings of power and it would have been a sign of ingratitude on their part to raise the issue of reforms with the tyrant.
“MDC vadzidza kudya vanyerere!” said one Zanu PF leader during the GNU. (MDC leaders have learnt to enjoy the trappings of power and not to rock the boat!)
The second reason why MDC leaders failed to implement the reforms is that they are incompe-tent, breathtakingly so too.
It is hardly surprising then that the donors who had supported MDC thinking the party was com-mitted to bring about democratic change in Zimbabwe deserted the party in droves when the party failed to implement the reforms and bring about the democratic change.
"I have met them (donors) and asked them not to stop funding the people's struggle because it was not Tsvangirai's struggle, but that of the people,” Tapiwa Mashakada said. “As it stands right now we need to support our own activities.”
The need to end the Zanu PF political oppression is still there but it is nonsense to suggest that by funding MDC one will be helping in anywhere in the people’s struggle. MDC leaders have shown that they are more interested in trappings of power than in ending the oppression.
What a waste of time and public funds! Why do we need an IMPI to tells us something we have always known: end government ownership of the public media and end all direct and indirect control of information and create a truly free media and freedom of expression.
Some people will justify being in a committee to investigate whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow as long as they are paid for it!
President Robert Mugabe says the economy is on a recovery path following the introduction of the integrated result based management (IRBM), which will see all government and quasi-government institutions coming up with their strategic action plans. And these plans are depend-ent on the $27 billion ZimAsset plan for which the regime has failed to raise one dollar after a year of begging!
The Zimbabwe economy is in serious trouble and poverty is ruling the land. If poverty was a person then he is so big and powerful now that even Mugabe’s motorcade would pull over to let him pass!
The Zimbabwe economy is so weak now that none of our cities and towns can supply something as basic as clean running water; we have been sitting on a ticking health time bomb.
Unemployment has soared to 95% and millions are living in heart-breaking abject poverty for a long time now and it is getting worse and worse every day. This cannot go on for much longer and one of these days the people will vent their anger and frustration in the form of riots or worse. We must act now to stop this runaway economic meltdown and defuse the health and social time bombs before they explode in our faces.
Mugabe and Zanu PF rigged the 2013 elections and there are per se illegitimate. The country needs a legitimate government with the people’s mandate and the support and confidence of the international community to address the country’s economic and political problems. Until we have a legitimate government the economic meltdown will continue and get even worse. Mugabe should stop grandstanding and face the political consequence of having rigged last year’s elections.
Mugabe can go to all the business school he likes and come up a thousand IRBM plans (Nikuv’s latest con plan for which Mugabe will pay another $13 million for) as long as ZimAsset remains mockingly empty none of these plans will ever see the light of day. It is not the lack of the latest IRBM plan than we have a serious economic meltdown but rather the lack of a legitimate gov-ernment with who one has confidence to do business with!
Mugabe has already wasted a year trying to rig economic recovery he is now wasting more time trying some other stupid plans. He can try to weave and dodge but the economic reality of the economic meltdown is here to stay and will only get worse!
All these IRBM plans will never see the light of day as their take-off is dependent on the $27 ZimAsset plan taking off. After a year of begging the regime has failed to get even one dollar into that begging bowl. It is not the lack of the latest IRBM plan that we have a serious economic meltdown but rather the lack of a legitimate government with who locals and outsiders have confidence to do business with! Only a legitimate government can do that.
Mugabe has already wasted a year trying to rig economic recovery, he is now wasting more time trying some other stupid plans. He can try to weave and dodge but the economic reality of the economic meltdown is here to stay and will only get worse!
Zimbabwe is already sitting on ticking health and social time bombs because the country has no clean running water and the economic hardship brought on by the economic meltdown will lead to social unrest soon. The bombs must be defused a.s.a.p. by ending this economic meltdown and not making empty claims of economic recovery.
All Mugabe cares about is hanging on to power even if that means the bombs exploding in the nation's face. It is now up to the people of Zimbabwe ourselves to step up and demand that he resign or wait until the bombs explode and pay the price of the damage, suffering and deaths that will bring!
Forget all the nicety of appealing to Mugabe’s conscience – he has none – to his humanity or reason – he is a heartless tyrant whose only care now is to hang on to power at all cost. He would rather drag this nation into the deepest recesses of hell than give up power; that is the political reality we are facing now and must deal with!
@ Takura
Excellent article; well thought out.
I think there are two facts that will have a great impact on the dynamics of the three groups of war vets which you should have considered.
The first one is fear. Zanu PF has always been a party of bullies and thugs and to be a member one has to be a bully and a thug too. And it is the bullies and thugs who have dominated the par-ty and thus define the direction it took.
It is a great pity of course that Zanu PF has stifled all meaningful debate and the voices of reason to be heard. I would like to believe that there are many war vets and ordinary members alike who have never approved Mugabe’s autocratic way of doing things but never had the chance to be heard.
There second fact is the reality of the regime’s failure to deliver economic prosperity but only economic poverty has forced many party supporters to accept change.
On both of these two points the opposition have failed to give a convincing narrative as to why Zanu PF should open up and see the bigger picture, the nation, behind the narrow slit of selfish greedy of the Zanu PF position!
@ New Zimbabwe Staff reporter
This is one of the best pieces I have read on Tsvangirai and MDC’s breath-taking incompetence for a very long time. Thank you!
“Tsvangirai was handed an ineffectual prime minister’s position when he agreed to form a coalition government with Mugabe and his Zanu PF party after the violent but inconclusive 2008 elections,” you wrote, laying the solid foundation.
“He was readily told to stop imagining or pretending that he was the head of government while ministers from Zanu PF side of the coalition pretty much gave him little regard throughout the tenure of the fractious administration.” Up went the solid wall.
The one thing that Tsvangirai and MDC should have done was to implement the demo-cratic reforms and in their five years in government they failed to get even one reform implemented. Just one!
I would have said they failed because they are breathtakingly incompetent but would readily accept your pithy explanation that they were “so burdened with minimal responsibilities and virtually no authority” they had no time or energy to implement even one reform!
SADC leaders released a press statement just before the July 2013 elections in which the castigated Tsvangirai and his MDC friends for “enjoying themselves in government and forgetting why they were there,” in sheer frustration that not even one reform had been implemented. You have expressed exactly the same sentiment, “sated to distraction by the spoils of being in government,” you said.
This is the first time, I as far as I know, that Tsvangirai publicly admitted that he was conned. “They (Zanu PF) are now saying let’s talk. If they come now, we are a little bit cleverer; we will start by dismantling their hegemony and then form a government,” he said.
Whilst I would readily agree that every one of us has been cheated at some point or other in our life. But when one gets cheated over the exact something that was clear to others from the start (and was warned against but chose to ignore the warning) over and over again over a period of five years that is not normal. The individual concerned has no common sense, he is an imbecile.
The other day Tsvangirai also admitted that all the local and foreign donors who had help fund MDC have stopped paying and deserted the party. If MDC could not implement even one reform when the party had majority in parliament and cabinet and had the enthusiastic backing of SADC; what chance will the party have of getting the reforms implemented now that Mugabe and Zanu PF has everything in their favour. None!
If the Zimbabwe electorate had any common sense at all then they too must follow the example of the local and international donors and desert Tsvangirai and MDC now. As the old adages goes, you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!
@ Benben Nkomo
You are right Mugabe has never done anything for Zimbabwe other than drive the nation to distraction. And we have allowed him to do that because no one in their right mind can ever deny that in those 34 years we did not have any chance of ending his tyrannical rule. We had many, many chances to do just that but wasted them all because we were fast asleep.
The best chance so far was during the GNU, all MDC had to do was implement the demo-cratic reforms and thus dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship. The MDC leaders had five years to do this but failed to implement even one reform. We the people let MDC leaders of the hook because we too were fast asleep – as usual. Indeed we are so sleepy we still want the same incompetent and failed MDC leaders; Tsvangirai, Biti, Ncube, etc. to still lead.
Mugabe will come back to the talks once it is clear that the IRBM plans are not even pain killers to someone with a broken leg but a placebo; that is if the ticking time bombs have not yet exploded. Of course nothing would please him more than having the same in-competent MDC clowns to deal with.
Zimbabweans need to snap out of this sloth-like comatose and address this problem of stopping Mugabe dragging the nation over the edge into the abyss with the seriousness and urgency the matter demands!
The British had the courage and resolve to behead a tyrannical King Charles I when he threatened the very survival of the nation. Mugabe is doing just that and yet we have cowed and grovelled before the tyrant scarred to even lift our voices even when our own life was on the line. Fcuk me, we really deserve this tyrant and all the s***t he dishes out to us; for no other people on earth could be so passive and indifferent to their own plight!
@ Joseph Sagwati
Whilst I would agree that having our own currency is important it is unthinkable to rein-troduce the Z$ whilst Mugabe and Zanu PF remain in office. The regime will abandon the effort of collect enough money to pay the civil servants, for example, and print it fuelling the hyperinflation on the past.
It is better to have no national currency and some semblance of order than have the Z$ and chaos!
I think you are wrong to say there is “peaceful political existence that many in conflict rid countries and sub continents would envy” when Mugabe has done nothing else but so the seeds of such conflict. The ruined economy after decades of misrule have left many people so desperately poor, many of they see fighting as the only way for them to ever have a fair share of the nation’s great abundance. The brutal political repression has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans to deny them a meaningful say in the governance of the country. This was what the nation’s last civil war was about and it is naïve to rule out yet another civil war since none of the basic rights and freedoms have yet to be delivered.
Even when the nation was broke in 2008 Mugabe still managed to get the money to buy a ship load of weapons from China. Zimbabwe is one of the heavily armed nations in Africa.
Mugabe has been sowing the seeds of revolt and procured enough weapons to make sure the nation has enough bullets and bombs to wipe Zimbabweans off the face of this earth if a civil war is to break out.
Zimbabwe’s political calm is but the calm surface of the pool of water with fast flowing currents and Nile crocodiles lacking in the shallows. Nations like Libya and Syria they too had decades of what they thought was political calm only to find themselves overwhelmed by the chaos and conflict that now engulf them. They failed to see the dangers hiding just below the surface until it was too late to avoid the dangers. We too are being lured into a false sense of political stability when there is none!
@ Chimbwido
"Go to Zimbabwe but on our terms!" You still do not see that by Mugabe and Zanu PF's grip on power was lost the by their failure to rig economic recovery. There is no going back; the economy will continue on its dangerous nose dive dragging the whole nation into the deepest recesses of hell until the people are finally forced out of their sloth-like comatose sleep and finally kick the tyrant out of State House.
As the economy continue to collapse the economic hardship will get worse and worse something will have to give! Even a sloth being eaten alive by army-ants will wake up or be eaten alive!
When the people of Zimbabwe finally do something to end their three decades of torment the country may be left in the chaos that has befallen other nations like Libya or Egypt but even the-se country can say they got rid of the tyrant! The bottled anger in many Zimbabweans right now is such they would want to hunt the tyrant down and kill him like a rat!
There will be no Mugabe to impose "our terms"!
Everyone who has dared criticize this Zanu PF dictatorship is a traitor and I am sure the regime would love to dispatch me as it has done with over 30 000 other innocent Zimbabweans before me. None of them were ever charged and convicted in a court of law; the regime does not bother with such niceties.
You are right Nazi criminals have been hunted down and punished and it is right that happened. We have over 30 000 Zimbabweans who were murdered and many of those responsible are still alive. Once we have regime change in Zimbabwe, those murderers will be hunted down and punished.
Watch out! We both know you have shed innocent blood Chimbwido which is why you are scarred to see this tyrannical regime out of power. As long as Mugabe remained in office your crimes will never be investigated. Well the regime is collapsing under its own dead weight be-cause it is rotten to the core. Your past is being laid bare for the whole world to see.
Nothing even when it is done in secret can remain a secret forever; this is why one should never do unto other what they would not want done to them! You will pay for you evil past. Your efforts to stop the truth coming out is futile, none of us can stop the fig tree shedding its leaves because we like sitting in the shed!
You will take what is coming to you; regardless of your pretence that you are the injured party in this entire tragic Zanu PF affair. You will be brought before a court of law and afforded a lawyer; that is as much as you are going to get! Zimbabwe has to send a clear and loud message that tyrants and their murderous thugs will never be allowed to threaten the survival and stability of the nation ever again and there is no other way of doing that other than punishing Mugabe and some of his thugs! You have to be one of those to be punished, we both know that! I will see to it that you are punished!
@ Jotham
Tsvangirai will con MDC supporters and many Zimbabweans after his debacle of failing to im-plement even one reform but he will not con and donor to give him even one cent! Indeed MDC candidates in last year’s elections have no money to fund their campaigns because the donors stopped funding the party the minute they realised MDC was going to take part in the elections against their better judgement and advice not to.
Tsvangirai and his MDC friends are the most incompetent politicians of our time. Of course it is our democratic right to have idiots as opposition leaders just as we have tyrants in government but we will be foolish to expect the rest of the world to support us in any way in this foolishness! That is why donors have stopped funding MDC just as they have refused to contribute a dollar to Mugabe’s ZimAsset begging bowl! They have better things to do with their money than throw it in bottomless black-holes where not nothing good ever comes out, even light!
@ Tendai Kamhungira
Tendai, you are absolutely right millions of Zimbabweans are "wallowing in poverty" and as long as nothing is done to end this economic nose dive things are set to get a lot, lot worse! Poverty, brought on by the economic meltdown, is matching on growing stronger and stronger each day.
If poverty was a political leader then even Mugabe's motorcade will pull over and let poverty through. Even Zanu PF grandees like the late Nathan Shamuyarira was living in abject poverty and paid full homage to this new political guru POVERTY. Zanu PF tried to reclaim him as one of their own by painting his house to hide the years of neglect, rot and decay. Anyone who entered the house knew immediately poverty ruled the roost!
Instead of coming up with solutions to end the economic meltdown Mugabe is coming up with all these stupid plans that are not even painkiller but placebo to someone with a broken leg.
If the truth be told, there is the very survival and stability of this nation now at stake for nothing but the truth to be told, we are not going to end the economic meltdown until we remove this illegitimate Mugabe government which is the root cause of the corruption, the cancer killing the economy, and which has lost the confidence to do business with of both locals or outsiders alike.
Mugabe and his tyrannical regime are the cancer that must be removed to save the nation. We are being naive to expect Mugabe to play anything other than a deceptive and disruptive role in what is his and Zanu PF's demise! If we are ever going to save this nation from Mugabe dragging it over the edge into the abyss then we have to be a lot more assertive in our demand for him to go! So far all he has heard is a mouse squeak; tyrants like Mugabe will never give up power because of a mouse object to their rule!
@ Mara Mechavio
It is ok for you to say that because you are not one of those who have gone for days, weeks and even months without running water.
Do you know what it means to be unemployed for a month or a year? There are Zimbabweans who have been out of work for ten years or more now.
Zimbabwe is subject to the same laws of thermodynamics and basic supply and demand eco-nomic rules. Mugabe and his cronies can pretend that Zimbabwe is not subject to the same rules but the nation has paid dearly the consequences of such foolishness.
Tsvangirai failed to bring any democratic change in the past because he is breathtakingly incom-petent. You can either accept that and look for a competent alternative or retain him and remain stuck where you are! The rest of the world has moved on and it is you who is suffering the con-sequences of Tsvangirai's blunders not them!
“Gone are the days the world could not move on without them (donors). Now it's them who cannot move without the world,” you say. Whatever that nonsense supposed to mean! You are just like a wildebeest ploughing on following the animal in front without ever asking where it is going! Humans are supposed to think and not just follow blindly but clearly not all humans are capable of anything as mentally challenging as to ask Tsvangirai why he failed to bring not even one change during the GNU. Not even one!
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