During
his recent visit to Masvingo Province VP Mnangagwa return to Zanu PF’s
favourite theme, black economic empowerment.
"A
true Zanu-PF leadership takes people were they ought to go, not taking the
people where leaders want to be," he said. "We have a destiny as a people and we are
guided by the principle of the revolution which is to ensure every Zimbabwean
is economically empowered.”
Tyrants
have an easy life; they can say whatever they want even if it is a truck load
of bull s***t without any fear of being held to account. The Zimbabwe economy
is in a total mess and millions of Zimbabweans are living in abject poverty and,
as long as Zanu PF remains in power, the nation’s future is grim. And yet here
we are with Mnangagwa, a senior member of the Zanu PF regime responsible for
the economic ruin, wittering about economically empowering the people!
Mnangagwa
is one of the ring leaders who masterminded and perfected Zanu PF’s vote
rigging machinery so that Zimbabweans are denied a meaningful say in on whether
Zanu PF has economically, but
politically and socially, empowering them or not.
Ever
since Mnangagwa’s appointment to first Vice President last year, some people
have pinned their hopes of change for the better on the day Mnangagwa takes
over from Mugabe, having given up hope of regime change through free and fair
elections. But those hopes of change for the better have been dashed because every
time Mnangagwa has opened his mouth. He has confirmed that he is just as
arrogant, corrupt, greedy and tyrannical as Mugabe himself.
“I
therefore ask of all the 12 wards in Chief Chirumanzu’s area that you should go
to the polls with the headman in front, district chairman following behind with
the people and the councillor should also come, then go and vote,” Mnangagwa
told the people during recent by-election campaign.
“We
know that each polling station has its own results, we will want to know from
each polling station where the people would have come from and how did they get
in. What we might fail to know is how death will come, but anyone who is voting
we can trace the pattern because they have one.”
The
notion that the nation should give Mnangagwa the opportunity to rule and see if
he is any better than Mugabe is totally misguided. Mnangagwa would be more
interested in consolidating his hold on power by doubling the number of CIO
agents so that all his political critics are watched 24/7 and that there is a
CIO mole in every village, for example, than in solving the country’s serious
economic crisis an. He will not care that his hare-brain schemes to consolidate
his political power base drag the nation’s economy into even deeper and
dangerous waters.
Zimbabweans
should ignore the political machination going on in Zanu PF and stop hoping
against reason that the departure of Mugabe will mark a turning point for the
better in the nation’s fortunes. We should concentrate on piling the pressure
on Mugabe and Zanu PF to accept the implementation of all the democratic
reforms agreed in the 2008 GPA followed by the holding of fresh elections.
It
is only when we have free, fair and credible election that we, the people can
have a meaningful say in the governance of the country and whether Zanu PF has
indeed economically empowered us or this is just a political lie we are
hopeless to refute.
Before
independence the whites never tired of telling the world how economically
prosperous, happy and even privileged the blacks in Rhodesia were and yet Smith
never allowed the blacks any media space to speak for themselves let alone
grant blacks a vote. Some things never change because we are still being told
Zanu PF has economically empowered us but are still denied a political voice and
vote to speak for ourselves.
Yes,
of course we want economic empowerment but above all we want political
empowerment too. The only reason of denying the people the latter is because
those with political power want to short change (as was the case with the white
racist regime) or even rip off (as Zanu PF has done) the ordinary people on
their economic entitlement.
We
should stop wasting our time and energy engaging Zanu PF in futile economic
debates. We have all had our fill on what are the root causes of the country’s
economic woes; Zanu PF has maintained it is “the illegal sanctions” and the
opposing side has said it is mismanagement and corruption. At the end of the
day Zanu PF has done as it pleased without taking into consideration what
anyone else said.
Zanu
PF conducted national elections to ensure there would never be regime change and
thus effectively denying the people a meaningful free vote. And so whether the
people themselves believed in Zanu PF’s policies or not, the nation was stuck
with Zanu PF and whatever course the party set to follow.
For
35 years Zanu PF has dragged this nation down this disastrous political and
economic route and we the people have never had a say in the picking of the
route and what we have found along the way.
Zanu
PF has economically impoverished, not empowered, us but first it politically
impoverished so that we will have no voice (no freedom of expression and free
media) and no free vote to speak the truth for ourselves and no chance to
remove the regime from office regardless how much we suffer economically,
socially and politically.
19 comments:
@ Patrick
Zanu PF has always promised the people of Zimbabwe economic power with its promise of mass prosperity in the 1980s. Even when the party was cutting back on the economic benefit to the peo-ple with the introduction of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes (ESAP) in the 1990s the party insisted these were temporary measure necessary for the economic prosperity to follow. The reality is the economic situation of the majority of Zimbabweans has never really improved especially since the introduction of ESAP.
For the few ruling elite their economic wellbeing has improved by leaps and bounce. Public Service Medical Aid Society (PSMAS)CEO, Cuthbert Dube was being paid $500 000 a month and his fellow top managers and board members were also getting five or six figure monthly wages and yet the majority public servants, the members whose subscription paid these mouth-watering salaries, are paid $400 a month or less. The huge salaries were soaking up all the cash PSMAS was failing to pay the doctors, hospitals, etc. providing the services to the members; members were being forced to pay out of their own pocket or else go without the service!
The huge salaries for the top managers whilst those in the lower grades were paid peanuts or nothing for months was a common story in Zimbabwe especially in parastatals, councils and other state controlled institutions.
Soon after independence Zanu PF has systematically eroded away the people’s democratic rights and undermined the independence of the democratic institutions by appointing party loyalists to run them. It is true that Zimbabweans have no political power and Zanu PF has been careful to down play this as if this was a luxury and not an absolute necessity.
The people have noticed how the promise of mass prosperity has slowly but sure turned into the nightmare of mass poverty but were voiceless to protest and politically powerless to remove Presi-dent Mugabe and Zanu PF from office.
Of course President Nkrumah was right; we need political power to secure economic rights. Zanu PF is using its usurped political power to deny us our economic rights.
Zanu PF has commandeered the nation’s resources and wealth and is sharing the loot amongst the few ruling elite if we are ever to get our share of the nation’s abundance and escape from the worsening economic slid into abject poverty then we must demand the restoration of all our political rights including the right to free and fair elections.
@ Tawanda
So if General Mujuru wanted Mugabe to step down and told him so to his face the General must have changed his mind when his wife was promoted to be Vice President. If the General was smart then he should have realized that the promotion was to confuse him and Mugabe was buying himself time to get rid of the General and then his wife! When Mugabe's plan worked!
We should never forget that both General Mujuru and his wife were simpleton and therefore totally inca-pable of producing an strategic plan. Mugabe was always miles ahead of not just the Mujurus but the rest of the Zanu PF leadership that is why Mugabe has been able to hold on to power all these years.
Mnangagwa may want to believe that he now has the finish line in his sight and yet it is still possible that Mugabe will give the crown to someone else tomorrow!
Besides if Mnangagwa was really smart then he should know that Mugabe has destroyed the country polit-ically and economically, Zanu PF is unelectable. And all the purging of so many Zanu PF leaders will make it near impossible for Mnangagwa to rig elections and get away with it. in short taking over the leadership of Zanu PF now is not an honour but a curse!
Parliament has been adjourned to 5 May 2015 but possibly longer because of lack of money.
“This does not augur well. Government and parliament were struggling to fund our trips and normal parliamentary business, but there is uncertainty around this closure. There is talk that it could be extended due to the poor financial position,” said an MP who declined to be named.
MPs and senators routinely claim money to cover fuel, accommodation, food and allowance ex-penses. Government already owes the legislators hundreds of thousands of dollars, with some former MPs still battling to get what is owing to them since their term of office.
Some hotels are now turning away MPs who needed accommodation owing to the accumulation of huge bills that government is failing to honour.
This Zanu PF government is doing its best to pretend it is business as normal and the economic meltdown is nothing more than a mythical monster created by the regime’s critics. But at every turn the regime has been reminded again and again that the economic meltdown is real and it is taking no prisoners!
Just how long does Mugabe think this chaos can go on!
It was Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa who told parliament that “alluvial diamonds in Ma-range were finished”. Of course it was a blatant lie because the mining has continued 24/7; he was just tired of having to lie as to why he was receiving no revenue from all that hive of activity. So the lie was revisited in the face of ever diminishing revenue collection.
Everything in Marange has always been hush-hush for years as the looting and plunder continued. No one knew the quantity, quality and value of the diamonds by mined; no one knew who was doing the mining where, when and how they shipped out their loot and where it was sold; etc. But with the government scrapping the bottom of the barrel it is not surprising that Minister Chidhakwa was collared “to improve on transparency, accountability and viability” in the sector.
Mine Minister Walter Chidhakwa proposed the amalgamation of the Marange diamond firms to improve on transparency, accountability and viability. But the initiative is proving arduous to implement. In an interview, the Mines Minister clarified that diamond firms were paying divi-dends – contrary to earlier opposing assertions – but at a low scale.
Marange and Chiadzwa diamonds have been valued at $ 800 billion and therefore could, poten-tial ease Zimbabwe’s economic problems. The country’s economic meltdown is far gone to be stop by money from Marange diamond sales alone particularly whilst nothing is done to end the rampant corruption and gross mismanagement driving it!
Mai Mujuru should fare a lot better than other Zanu PF member who left the party before her. She did not leave alone but with a number of other party bigwigs. She is leaving the party at the time when it is totally unelectable in a free and fair elections and has to rely on massive vote rig-ging but because she still have a number of loyalists still in the party Mugabe / Mnangagwa will find it near impossible rig the elections.
Mai Mujuru’s Achilles’ heel is that she has no brain; she is just a corrupt and blundering simpleton who was promoted Vice President, way above the level of her competency! She should follow the yellow brick road to the Wizard of Oz and ask for some brain!
Zimbabweans can elect her president but they will regret it for generations to come!
@ Patrick
In Africa it is not enough to say we are on the move one has to establish in what direction. In Zimbabwe we like to make one or two steps forward and then take eight or ten steps backwards; you will be surprised how many years it often takes before people realize that +2 - 10 = - 8!
Mugabe is still celebrating his role as a national liberation war hero and his 35 years as a corrupt and murderous tyrant are ignored as if they never happened!
@ Patrick
Universal suffrage has not been a blessing but a curse after the wanton violence as happened in 2008 many Zimbabwe would happily give up the vote if they could.
In a country where the majority of the voters cast their vote out of fear and/or ignorance it is hardily surprising then that the government that will emerge is corrupt and incompetent. So by accepting universal suffrage we had an inbuilt mechanism to produce a failed government guaranteed!
Of course tyrants like Mugabe have seen to it that the voters are brainwashed and are kept on the edge with fear at all times! Breaking this is not going to be ease.
Mujuru, in an interview after being fired from Zanu PF by the ruling party, said “it’s a shame and surprising that the politburo spent the long hours discussing about me and less in the economy.
“It shows that they care less on the welfare of the people who voted them into power but more concerned about protecting their positions.”
She should know after all she was part and parcel of the regime and for 34 years she sat there like a cabbage and said and did nothing whilst the country’s economy was being destroyed. In-deed she played her part in the destruction by leading from the front in the corruption and looting. She even tried to deny there was no looting when the salary scandal of PSMAS CEO, Cuthbert Dube’s $500 000 pay package broke out!
Now that she has been kicked out of the looting club she remembers the welfare of the people! She must think the people of Zimbabwe are all as simple and stupid as she is and will fall all over each other to embrace her as the one who cares about them! Decades of absolute power and good living has turned her into a real stupid idiot!
@ Patrick
I agree an active and informed electorate is the key to a health and functioning democracy.
Zimbabweans have cheaply given away their vote, the one thing they should never ever give away, because they have never appreciated its true value. It was like giving priceless pearls to a pig, to see them trampled into the mud and lost!
@ Patrick
The people are being brainwashed by Mugabe's sidekicks day and night and Tsvangirai's morons are joining in with their mind numbing nonsense! People like Mbiti are incapable of thinking and cannot be reached by reason or logic because they are brain dead. Years spend with their heads buried in their leaders’ backsides have killed off most of their brain cells due to lack of oxygen to the brain.
People Mbiti need a good kicking in the backside, that will force them to cry out and thus take in some fresh air!
ZEC is failing to pay the officials employed in the recent two by-elections although the National Social Security Authority had reportedly paid $18 million for the purpose. There 16 by-elections in the pipeline and the regime is failing to pay for two!
Zanu PF is trying its best to pretend that it is business as usual; the economic meltdown everyone is talking about is a myth. And yet the evidence of the economic meltdown is everywhere. Just how long does Mugabe thing this charade of running the affairs of the nation can go on!
@ Patrick
You are right, the economic meltdown is sure squeezing the regime harder and harder with each passing day. The economic meltdown is like a python that has its coils round its prey, each time it breaths out it squeezes tighter.
Mugabe's ZimAsset economic recovery plan is dead in the water for lack of financial backers. Not even the Chinese gave Mugabe a single dollar in the form of budgetary support hence the reason the regime cannot pay its bills. The Chinese told Mugabe they will not give him a dollar because he was a bad debtor!
Parliament has been adjourned till 5 May because there is no money to pay the MPs. The official employed to work of the two recent by-elections have not been paid because there is no money. There are 16 more by-elections coming up! Each passing day brings more bad news of how the regime is broke. How long does Mugabe and Chinamasa think they can continue to run the nation's affairs in this kiya kiya fashion?
It is just a matter of time before the regime accepts that it can no long manage. And the only way out is for the nation to go back to the democratic reforms that should have been implemented during the "008 to 2013 GNU.
So it is team work here the economy is squeezing Mugabe to accept that reforms and we the people must make sure the corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent MDC leaders do not have a say in what happens next.
Mugabe does not want another GNU but if push comes to shove and he is forced to do that he would everything in his power to have MDC as his GNU partners again because he knows he con them again into doing nothing about the reforms.
SADC and the international community has lost patience with MDC, they too know they will not implement the reforms fully, if at all. Our task is to ensure the people of Zimbabwe know and understand what the reforms are and why MDC cannot be trust to implement them!
@ Patrick
Frankly, we are in this political and economic mess because we have failed to establish a political in which those in public office are democratically accountable to the public they supposed to serve. And the ultimate expression of democratic accountability is that the people should be able to remove the office bearer from office and to change the regime.
The country cannot claim to hold free and fair elections in which the result is a predetermined no regime change. It is a nonsense; an oxymoron!
If the nation is to get out of this mess then we must hold free and fair elections because only leaders who are democratically accountable to the electorate can be trusted to serve the people! We are in this mess because we have had bad government for decades; we need good government.
We need a political system we can count on to deliver good and competent leaders from now on; that is way we must implement all the democratic reforms this time!
"It wasn't easy, hence the need to treasure this independence and remain peaceful and united at all costs. I'm happy that the Joint Operation Command led by Masvingo Officer Commanding Police Assistant Commissioner Martha Mofolo has confirmed to me that Masvingo is peaceful,." said Mnangagwa.
The rest of Mnangagwa's Crocodile Gang members who died and the tens of thousands others who died in the fight for freedom in the country must all be turning in their graves to see what the nation has became. The country is very rich in minerals, good soil and had everything going for it in 1980 and yet today millions are living in abject poverty and the situation is getting worse by the day. For 35 years the ruling elite have denies the ordinary people all the basic human freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful vote and even the right to life.
It does not matter how much Zanu PF tries to distort the truth about what has happened in the country since independence, the truth is there for all to see for themselves.
Mugabe is desperate to remain relevant and with his tarnished image of a corrupt and ruthless tyrant now cast in stone he is trying to remain relevant by leading the lunatic fringe! He publicly tells the white jour-nalist he does not speak to whites and yet he has been begging from white for money all the time. Since 2008 it is the Western donors who has paid 98% of Zimbabwe's imported medicines, if they stopped Zim-babweans will be dying like flies!
It is ok for him and his family; each time they are sick the taxpayer coughs $3 million for them to go to Singapore for treatment. He can afford to be totally obnoxious; it is the ordinary Zimbabweans how will pay dearly for his lunacy, they have been paying dearly for 35 years!
It is going to take generations to recover from the economic ruins and political scars Mugabe has inflicted on the nation. As for the international notoriety of Zimbabwe being synonymous with the lunatic Mugabe; that is a historic stain that can never be rubbed out!
There talks that Mutasa and Tsvangirai are going to meet and talk of forming a coalition party. Birds of a feather flock together or be it one is coming from the north whilst the other is from the south. Tsvangirai and his MDC troops have a lot in common with Mutasa, Gumbo, Mujuru and all the other Zanu PF big-wigs purged from Zanu PF in the still on-going spring cleaning – they are all corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent and both will do absolutely anything to get back into power.
Only yesterday the former Zanu PF thugs had played their party in rigging elections including organizing and carrying out the beating, rape and even cold blood murders of MDC supporters. Tsvangirai and the other MDC leaders are so desperate to get back on the gravy train they will kiss the blood stained hands of the former Zanu PF thugs.
The only thing people like Mutasa and Tsvangirai care about is securing political power and since they have no ideology, principles or values to guide them, they will go wherever the political wind blow them. Both have betrayed the people when they were in power because it is in their nature to sell even their own for the slave price of a piece of calico cloth and a handful of beads. If Zimbabwe is ever to get out of this political and economic nightmare then it is the people themselves who have to wise up and reject these corrupt and incompetent individuals!
MDC-T had five years when they were in the GNU to implement the reforms and failed to get even one reform implemented. Not one! Now Zanu PF holds all the trump cards and they think the reforms will be implemented just because MDC finally had their eyes opened by being trounced in the July 2013 elections. How naive is that!
MDC took part in the 2013 elections without an reforms because they were sure they would win the elections regardless. The golden opportunity to implement the reforms was lost. If Zanu PF is going to be forced to implement the reforms it would have to be something else that forces them and not the village idiots who failed to implement the reforms when they had the chance to do so.
MDC-T have also lost all their financial donors who deserted them because MDC are corrupt and incompetent. Elections cost money and if you have no money you are certain to lose elections. So putting aside the fact that without reforms Zanu PF would rig elections MDC would still have no money to mount an election campaign anywhere.
So any MDC leaders who still believed the party could win elections without the reforms would have their eyes forced wide open by the reality the party in broke to pay for election materials and expenses. Tsvangirai knows just what it means to be broke; he is fighting hard to keep up the appearance of one living in a $4 million mansion - his bribe for making sure no reforms were implemented - on zero income.
MDC-T leaders will now fight over the scraps of the 7 MP and senate seats allocated from proportional representative system. Tsvangirai would, no doubt, do all he can to get one of these seats and some income!
Parliament has already been adjourned earlier than normal because the regime has no money. Most local hotels have stopped taking MPs because parliament has not been paying its bills. So even the 7 who get back on the gravy train, they will be shocked to find luxuries of the GNU years are gone!
MDC are bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted! Of course is both nonsensical and futile and will only make it impossible to get the horse back in the stable!
Everyone knows it was MDC themselves who failed to implement the reforms in spite all the warning for them to do it. So for them to boycott elections because Zanu PF has not implemented the reforms is just MDC hiding behind a finger and blaming Zanu PF. No one will ever blame Zanu PF over this; if we are going to call for a boycott then it must be over something else and not blaming Zanu PF for MDC’s incompetence!
Gumbo's statement comes in the wake of demands by political observers that the People First group takes responsibility for the crimes that their former party Zanu-PF committed. That way, they said, the group would prove they had sincerely reformed from the ways of their old party.
"Yes, we have contributed to some of the things but we are ready to correct that," said Gumbo.
"We must accept responsibility for some of the things in our society. Others like [Didymus] Mu-tasa have come out in the open to say that he did not know that the party leadership could be that cruel. We accept that and we understand it will take some time for people to appreciate that we accept change."
After 34 years in power people like Mutasa “did not know that the party leaderships could be that cruel”? This is a sick joke!
Mujuru, Mutasa, Gumbo and the rest of the Zanu PF People First leadership were part and par-cel of the corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship all these years and they want the nation to believe they did not know what was going on? How naïve!
The truth of the matter is these people did not even notice all the mismanagement, corruption and brutal political oppression that has been going on all these years because it not affect them and when they were the chief beneficiaries they positively encouraged the mismanagement, etc.
Whilst they remained Zanu PF members, they did not bother about what the people wanted or their suffering because the party rigged elections to stay in power. But since the day they were kicked out of Zanu PF, they know they will have to win back the people’s confidence and their votes if they are to restore their political careers. And what could be better than telling the people they are sorry about their suffering and they have the cure.
They have not even thought through what the problem is and yet pretend to have the solution. If they had thought through what the problem was then they would have realized they, corrupt and incompetent lead-ers, are the problem. The solution is not ensure the country never ever elect such men and women into leadership positions ever again!
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