Douglas Mwonzora, MDC-T
Secretary General, is heading a party delegation visiting UK, Norway and Australia
at the invitation of these nations.
“We are also going to take that chance to meet
with our party structures in these countries and intensify our 2018
political campaigns which have already started in earnest,” said Mwonzora.
Mwonzora confirmed MDC-T has abandoned its “No
reform no elections” stance although he would not say what the party’s new
strategy would be. This is just another case of the party flip-flopping on key
policies.
Zanu PF has panicked at
the prospect of the MDC-T’s re-engaging with some of the Western countries. MDC
lost all political credibility with SADC and most other countries especially in
the West after the party failed to get even one democratic reform implemented
after the five years in the GNU.
“Firstly, we are worried by the issue of external
funding because the whole essence of funding political parties from the fiscus
is to develop politics loyal to the nation,” threatened George Charamba, Mugabe’s spokesman.
“When you have overtly
hostile stance hinted by MDC-T, we have to reassess our own re-engagement
efforts with the EU. Surely the EU cannot run with hares at the same time
hunting with the hounds.”
This is just Zanu PF
shooting from the hip; MDC has not received a cent of the $3 million the party
is entitled on the basis of the 2013 election result because government is
broke so the threat to withhold political party funds is a hollow one.
As for the EU –Zimbabwe re-engagement
the whole process has stalled because Zanu PF has failed to end the cancer of
corruption, scrap the obnoxious indigenisation law and other key economic reforms
necessary for meaningful economic engagement.
What is sickening about
the Zanu PF over-the-top reaction that the tyrannical regime should make a big
song and dance about MDC-T sourcing their own funding when the regime source it
funds from stealing for the impoverished people of Zimbabwe!
In the last few years
Zanu PF’s biggest source of funds has been from the plunder and looting of
Marange and Chiadzwa diamonds. Mugabe received as much as $2 billion in loyalty
from the diamond plunder in 2012 alone according to Partnership Africa
Canada.
Years of underfunding
have resulted in the collapse of basic services like health and education and
most towns and cities cannot supply clean running water because government
revenue is not enough to pay wages let alone anything else. During the GNU former
Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, complained that government was receiving a
fraction of the tax from the diamond mining. Since the rigged July 2013
elections which resulted in Zanu PF resuming total control of all facets of
political power tax from the diamond industry has dried up completely.
First finance Minister
Patrick Chinamasa said there were no alluvial diamonds left in Marange and
Chiedzwa. He then changed his story and said government had suspended
collecting tax from the industry “to help them through their financial problems”.
All nonsense of course; the wealth from diamond bounty is going straight into
the pockets of the Zanu PF ruling elite and their foreign mining partners, the
ordinary people are to have none of it!
Right now millions of
Zimbabweans are starving and thousands will die because the country has once
again failed to produce enough to feed its own people. Ever since the Zanu PF
chefs seized the white owned farms in 2000 the nation has been forced to import
food every year; a serious fall for a country that until then was the bread
basket of the whole region. Still, the country could buy the food if the wealth
from diamonds was not being looted!
It is therefore rich
that Zanu PF should be the one making a big song and dance condemning MDC-T for
finding someone rich to fund their political activities when Zanu PF is taking
bread out of the mouths of starving masses of this country to finance its
corrupt and tyrannical activities.
At the end of the day
we have to deal with the reality that Zimbabwe is still in this political and
economic mess because MDC leaders failed to implement even one reform during
the GNU and thus allowed Zanu PF to rig the July 2013 elections. The only
reason why no reforms were implemented is because MDC leaders have no
“ideology, principles and vision”, as Professor Welshman Ncube, one of the
leading MDC leaders in the GNU, has since admitted.
So one has to ask the
British, Norwegians and Australians what Saul on the road to Damascus
transformative moment has befallen Morgan Tsvangirai turning him from the
individual with no principles and vision to the competent leader and thus
worthy they re-engagement with MDC-T? We are certainly not aware of any such
change; indeed Tsvangirai has since the rigged 2013 continued to blunder from
pillar to post – as with the recall of the MDC-Renewal MPs only to give the
seats away to Zanu PF –, to flip-flop – as with abandoning of the no reform no
elections stance -, etc.
Zimbabwe is in this
political and economic mess because for the last 35 years the people have made
the mistake of believing the nation can enjoy freedom, peace, human rights,
economic prosperity, etc. even if the nation’s lacked common sense much less
principles and vision. The country’s serious economic meltdown and brutal
political oppression has forced the people to think and the lesson of electing
competent leaders was slowing sinking in, finally. The last thing the people of
Zimbabwe want is for someone to give them the false hope that the nation can enjoy
freedom, peace, etc. by once again electing corrupt and incompetent leaders
like Morgan Tsvangirai.
No politician in UK,
Norway or Australia with half as bad a track record of corruption and incompetency
as MDC leaders would ever be re-elected into public office. So why are these British,
Norwegians and Australians abusing their financial muscle to impose these
corrupt and incompetent MDC leaders on the people of Zimbabwe?
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