The Zimbabwe community has been agog with excitement at the
prospect of Joice Mujuru, Rugare Gumbo, Didymus Mutasa and all the other
bigwigs recently sacked from Zanu PF joining the opposition camp. Sadly it is
all much ado about nothing as their addition to the MDC, Zapu, Mavambo, etc.
will add quantity when it is not quantity the opposition has lacked but
quality.
Mai Mujuru and other would not have been elbow out of the way
with such great ease if they had not been so naïve and incompetent. Surely,
surely they should have known that Mugabe and Mnangagwa fight dirty and
therefore they should have come up with plans of their own counter the cheating
or at the very least made a concerted effort to bolster the party’s
constitution and electoral system to ensure the elections were free, fair and
credible.
And yet the dirty trickery started the Mujuru faction was
caught completely by surprise. From the day Grace Mugabe launch her thank the
people rallies which were in fact nothing but relentless attack of Mai Mujuru;
the later and her supporters never mounted any fight back but instead scatter
in all direction in panic and confusion.
The way Mugabe and Mnangagwa completely outwitted the Mujuru
faction to force them out of the party although they constituted the majority
in the party is reminiscent of the way the two outwitted Tsvangirai and his MDC
majority to “win” last year’s elections. MDC had five years to implement the
democratic reforms identified for them in the GPA as necessary for free, fair
and credible elections. They failed to get even one reform implemented.
All the MDC leaders were out campaigning for a yes vote in
the March 2013 referendum on the Copac constitution convinced it would deliver
free and fair elections. Of course it did not such thing because it was a weak
and feeble constitution Zanu PF’s MP on the Copac committee, Paul Mangwana,
boosted the whole document had been ‘dictated’ by Mugabe.
Mugabe, a corrupt and murderous tyrant hell-bend on rigging
the elections to stay in power dictating a democratic constitution to deliver
the very thing he did not want – give me a break!
Tsvangirai and his MDC friends went into the election bushed
tailed with enthusiasm, confident they will win. By noon on elections-day, 31
July 2013, Tsvangirai made a public appearance, crest fallen, to complain of
the “stolen election”. Like Mai Mujuru and her supporters, Tsvangirai and his
MDC colleagues had been taken completely by surprise by Mugabe’s vote rigging
trickery.
So Dr Joice Mujuru and her supporters teaming up with Dr
Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Professor Welshman Ncube, Dr Dumiso Dabengwa,
Dr Simba Makoni, etc. will only mean adding a few more names of corrupt and incompetent
politician to a telephone directory size volume of equally corrupt and equally
incompetent opposition politicians; a much of a muchness. What is the
excitement about then?
In fact the same people agog with excitement today were agog
with excitement ever since MDC appeared on Zimbabwe’s political stage. These
people never stopped to scrutinise what MDC was offering, whether they could
deliver it, etc. They were working on the simple basis that anyone else other
than Mugabe was bound to be better than the tyrant. They could see that
Tsvangirai was NOT Mugabe that was more than enough for them.
What this over simplistic approach failed to appreciate is
that a careful assessment of Tsvangirai’s competence was in fact very
important. The only reason the nation is still stuck with Mugabe is because
Tsvangirai has proven to be corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent; the tyrant
has outwitted him again and again.
So the motion that anyone is bound to be better than Mugabe
has turned out to be a nonsensical one and not the bolt of wisdom many thought
it to be because that “anyone” must outsmart the cunning fox Mugabe first. The
corrupt and incompetent Dr Richard Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have
failed to outfox the fox even when they had parliamentary majority the backing
of SADC and a whole coterie of advisers and well-wishers. The later have since
deserted MDC in droves after being repeatedly ignored; when MDC went ahead and
took part in last year’s rigged election that was the last straw.
“Yes, Tsvangirai was corrupt in accepting the $ 4 million
Highlands mansion; it was a bribe to stop him implementing the reforms,”
admitted one diehard MDC-T supporters. “But what of it? You too would have
accepted the bribe if you were in his shoes!”
That is true.
Tsvangirai was not the only one who accepted the bribe and
sealed his lips on the democratic reforms, all the other MDC leaders did the
same thing. Mugabe saw to it that they all had all the creature comforts
political power and influence and when has their snout in the feeding trough
one does not criticise the gravy train culture much less bring up unpleasant
subjects like democratic reforms everyone knew Mugabe detested.
“Vanhu veMDC vadzidza kudya vanyerere!” (MDC people have
learnt to enjoy the gravy train good-life and not rock the boat with talk of
reforms!) Was the pithy explanation from one Zanu PF as to why MDC had
completely forgotten about implementing the reforms. He should know!
People like Mai Mujuru, Rugare Gumbo and all the others
recently dumped from Zanu PF have all sat there like cabbages and said or done
nothing to stop the corruption, brutal oppression, vote rigging and even mass
murders by the party because they too had learnt to enjoy the gravy train
spoils of power and not rock the boat. When it comes to being corrupt people
like Mai Mujuru are not privates but five star generals in this army with
decades of looting experience under her belt.
To shrug one’s shoulders to corruption with a “But so what!”
is not completely miss the point.
The reason why Zimbabwe is in this political and economic
hell is precisely because leaders like Mugabe are corrupt, they tasted power
and all the gravy train attractions it brought and they forgot about freedom,
human rights, justice, everything. He was hooked and all he wanted then was
absolute power and he did not care how much the nation suffered or how many
people he crashed under foot to get it.
Mugabe offered some of the political power to the likes of
Mai Mujuru, Regare Gumbo, Mnangagwa and all the others in Zanu PF and they have
helped him to intimidate, harass, rig elections and even murder the over 30 000
Zimbabweans to establish and to retain the Zanu PF dictatorship.
When Tsvangirai and his MDC came along on an electoral mandate
from the people to end the dictatorship and bring about democratic change, they
too soon forgot their promises to the nation after Mugabe offered them a taste
of the gravy train delights.
Surely it is self-evident that if we are ever going to have freedom,
liberty, justice, etc. we must elect leaders who are not corrupt and will not
forget their commitment to the people in pursuit of power and gravy train
delights. To elect leaders who have already proven to be so wicked and corrupt
they would betray the whole nation for the sake of owning half of Bindura as
Mai Mujuru has done or for the sake of $ 4 million Highlands mansion like
Tsvangirai is folly.
Electing a corrupt and incompetent leader is careless and we,
as a nation have been reckless in this regard. But to elect a corrupt and
incompetent leader again and again shows that we are idiots totally incapable
of learning from our past mistakes.
8 comments:
Once you tamper with the democratic process you are in trouble because those who lost will always claim they were cheated and therefore have good reason to be aggrieved. Even those on the winning side, they will always feel they deserved even more than the got. What makes the on-going war in Zanu PF such a bitter war is that it is being fought at a time when there are no consolation prizes to give away to the los-ers.
In the past when Zanu PF cadres were removed from office for whatever reason, they were slotted into some cushy job somewhere else. When the late Enos Nkala lost his ministerial position, for example, he was appointed CEO or some such position in State/Party blanket making company in Bulawayo. This time with pressure from the economic meltdown for the regime to reduce its bloated labour in every govern-ment department, parastatals, etc. all those who lose their position are out. With companies closing right, centre and left the chance of find a job or starting a viable business are zero. Those who lost in the factional war are being thrown to the hyenas.
As if to make such the hyenas have the losers the regime is closing all their corruption activities and in some cases it is following this up with corruption charges designed to bankrupt them economically.
Of course, the losers are going to fight this with all they have; it is not just a matter of political prestige and being called chef their every economic livelihood is on the line.
The winners of the factional war do not have much of a prize to take home either because their continued hold on power is now dependent on the regime stopping the economic meltdown now gripping the nation. The regime's economic plan, ZimAsset, is dead due to lack of funders to bankroll it. All Mugabe has man-aged to raise in one and half years is $7 billion out of the $27 billion he had asked for.
So the stage is set: the economic meltdown is set to continue for as long as Zanu PF remains in power and so the economic situation will get worse. 16% or 2 million are already living in abject poverty and it is naive to think it can continue to get worse ad nauseam. The regime will be forced to step down, if not by reason then by force.
So even the current winners in Zanu PF's fight for power will end up it too.
The economic chaos was as certain as day follows night because the criminal waste by this Zanu PF re-gime was simple to sustainable. The mismanagement and corruption that the regime has denied for dec-ades and thus allowing them to grow and spread have now infected every sector of the economy and kill-ing it. The national economy under Zanu PF was doomed and with it the regime.
If MDC had implemented the democratic reforms then Zanu PF would have been voted out in last year's elections. Now it is the economic meltdown and the tragic human suffering it has brought with it that is finally going to force the regime out office.
Kasukuwere Buying Deadly Weapons From Crimea, Russia, Says MDC-T’s Pfebve .
The nation is facing a serious economic meltdown and instead of spending every penny to get the economy back on track the regime is spending billions of dollars buying weapons. This is a regime that has lost the plot.
@ Patrick
I think Zimbabweans are single track minded. After independence the nation believed Mugabe was their hero and he could do no wrong. Even with all the evidence of the vote rigging and murders of the 1980s it was unthinkable to criticise vaMugabe. It was not until 2000, 20 years after independence, that many Zimbabweans accepted Mugabe was a corrupt and murderous tyrant.
Tsvangirai has already failed to force Mugabe and Zanu PF out of power because he is corrupt and incom-petent. And yet some people still view him as the only nation's hope for change. The nation is in deep, deep trouble and you would think they would be extra careful in whom they are going to trust with power after all the history of failures and betrayals. If anything they are even more careless.
The international community would like to help, God I am sure would want to help, but what can anyone do to help a nation that is hell bend on self-destruction!
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe is reportedly planning to recall some of his party MPs linked to for-mer Vice-President Joice Mujuru and call for by-elections that would see his wife First Lady Grace Mugabe contest the Mazowe South seat to enable her to qualify for a Cabinet appoint-ment, the Southern Eye reported on Tuesday.
The new purge is also expected to target some ambassadors and diplomats believed to belong to the Mujuru faction.
Anyone who thinks this political purge is over could not be more wrong, it has still a long way to go. There are two forces driving the purge:
1) Mugabe has every reason to fear the Mujuru faction as a political force; they have the inside in-formation on how the regime operates and for a regime now totally dependent on rigging elec-tions, intimidation and other dirty tricks to stay in power it has to be 100% sure there are Mujuru sympathisers left in the system. Following up on any of the leaders who have accumulated a lot of wealth and taking it all away makes a long of sense for the regime because an economically incapacitated enemy is politically incapacitate too.
2) The country’s economic meltdown is squeezing everybody and so there are going to be job cuts right across the board any of those left there will more cuts as those who loyalty to the regime is questionable will be forced out to make room for the loyal one who would have been dumped or are already out of work.
“All tyrants crave to be hero-worshipped and eulogised; in ZANU PF merit counts for nothing. If you want to remain on the feeding table, you have to continue lavishing praise on the supreme leader in a cult kind of fashion,” said Gutu.
Does anything else other than nonsense ever come out of Harvest House? MDC spent all their five years in the GNU "lavishing praise" on Mugabe and did they keep their places on the table? No; the tyrant keeping them in the teeth and threw them off the gravy train.
Gutu is wittering about lavishing praise to keep one's place on the gravy train to the people have themselves have been doing it for donkey years and have in turn just been thrown off the gravy train.
There is nothing in this world more annoying than being in trouble and a presumptuous idiot offering you stupid advice! “If you want to remain on the feeding table, you have to continue lavishing praise on the supreme leader!” Indeed!
@ Patrick
People can continue to talk of politics as if it is some supernatural force like drought which af-fects us all but over which we are powerless to change even one iota. We have no jobs and mil-lions are going hungry because of misrule, politics, a man-made problem and not a supernatural one. It is in our political power to sort this problem. Just as talking about bread will lead to wheat talking about wheat will lead to why farms are now being used to grow weeds whilst the nation starve - that is politics!
@ S Moyo
This is great stuff Simbarashe, thank you.
Zimrights is supposed to be fighting for human rights and God only knows their hands are full give the hundreds of thousands of thugs and murderers Zanu PF has produced over the years. One of the strategic ways end the country's culture of violence is to hold all those responsible for human rights violations to account and remind them that they will never get away with their evil acts. I cannot think of anything more counter-productive to that strategy than awarding those who got away.
Awarding Chinos this reward is akin to declaring a murder a saint just because he helped some old lady cross the street!
The sheer incompetent of our opposition and civil society in the last few years has been a great disap-pointment. Whilst MDC has let the nation down by failing to get even one reform implemented, it was the civic societies that had cheered and applauded the MDC all along.
For the good of the country, let us hope Zimbabweans will have opposition and Human Rights leaders who are focused and to scatter brain from now on!
Mutsvangwa is set to turn all war vets into mindless murderous thugs like Jabulani Sibanda there to harass, beat and even murder innocent Zimbabweans in defend the Zanu PF dictatorship. Just as Dzakutsaku had been harassing, beating and murdering innocent people in defence of the white racist regime, the war vets will be doing for Mugabe.
By failing to secure freedom and human rights after independence we left ourselves open to a tyrannical system of government and that is exactly what has happened. We have gone full circle and back to where we were before independence - an oppressive regime backed by security sectors in the regime's pocket and a murderous militia, etc.
All those 300 000 people who died in the liberation war died for nothing!
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