Throughout the GNU, SADC leaders reminded Morgan Tsvangirai
and his MDC friends to implement the democratic reforms designed to stop Zanu
PF rigging future elections.
“Follow the Global Political Agreement roadmap,” they told
the MDC leaders.
Sadly, MDC leaders paid no heed. Not even one reform was
implemented in five years of the GNU. Not one!
Next, SADC leaders tried their best to stop Zimbabwe going
into yet another meaningless election process in which Zanu PF will, once
again, rig the vote. With no reforms implemented, they advised Tsvangirai and
friends NOT to contest the 2013
elections.
But sadly, once again, MDC leaders paid no heed. As we know,
Zanu PF blatantly rigged the July 2013 elections.
When the MDC-T passed the “No reform, no election!” congress
resolution in 2014, which the other factions adopted; I heaved a large sight of
relief. “Finally, finally MDC leaders have learned the lesson on the folly of
contesting flawed elections,” I said to anyone who cared to listen. I felt like
Atlas with the world taken off his shoulder!
Now you can imagine how I must be feeling right now knowing
Tsvangirai & co. have gone back on their own party resolution and SADC
leaders’ sound advice NOT to contest
the elections with no reforms! Former US Ambassador Chris Dell warned that
Tsvangirai was hopeless at taking advice.
Dell
described Mr Tsvangirai as a “flawed figure” who was “not readily open to
advice, indecisive and questionable judgement in selecting those around him,”
according to Wikileak report.
“He
is the indispensable element for opposition success, but possibly an albatross
around their necks once in power.”
Ambassador
Dell was spot-on, everything he predicted has come truth, especially Tsvangirai’s
total inability to take advice, with disastrously consequences the nation.
“Albatross
(large sea bird with a 3m + wingspan weighing 8kg +) around one's neck,” my
Google search tells me, “is a phrase alluding to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem
“ The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner,” in which a sailor who shoots a friendly albatross
is forced to wear its carcass around his neck as punishment.”
Frankly
I cannot think of any “opposition success” Tsvangirai has brought, in spite MDC’s
17 years + on the political stage and countless golden opportunities to bring
change, but know this albatross carcass is the milestone dragging the whole
nation into the abyss.
It
is not just folly but madness to keep contesting flawed elections, now after 37
years + of rigged elections.
Still,
the spotlight must now shift from Tsvangirai to his followers and the people of
Zimbabwe at large.
“The
United States failed to effect regime change in Zimbabwe because it was working
with a weak MDC party with an inept leadership, leaked classified documents
have revealed,” The Herald first reported of the leaked documents on 30
November 2010.
The
ordinary Zimbabweans themselves, who have suffered the consequences of the
corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship, have risked life and limb to elect
Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends into power because they are desperate for
regime change. It does not say much of one who risk life and limb to elect an
inept leader.
When SADC leaders warned Tsvangirai and the other MDC leaders “if you go into elections
next month, you are going to lose; the elections are done”. The SADC
leaders were speaking to the ordinary Zimbabweans too and they, because they
stood to lose the most, should have taken it upon themselves to make sure
Tsvangirai and company paid heed to the warning. The people dropped the ball in
2013 by allowing themselves to be dragged by MDC into an election whose outcome
was already known before the first ballot was cast.
The
people of Zimbabwe will have to be really naïve and gullible to be dragged,
like sheep to the slaughter, into yet another flawed election process. There is
absolutely no excuse why any thinking Zimbabweans should participate in next
year’s elections until democratic reform are implemented to guarantee free,
fair and credible elections. They have been cheated of their right to a
meaningful vote these last 37 years, what else will it take for them to finally
realise the folly of it all!
5 comments:
Speaking at a rally in Zimbabwe's third largest city, Gweru, he said Mandela made too many concessions towards the white minority.
"in Zuma's (SA President Jacob Zuma) administration why the whites still have so much power ... he said "I ask your friend Mandela" as if Mandela was still alive . . . apparently, Mandela negotiated with the whites by himself. Chaive chikuru kwaari yaive freedom yekubuda mujeri achikanganwa kuti zvikuru ndeizvo zvaakaendeserwa kujeri (Apparently Mandela viewed his release from jail as more important but forgetting about how he had been jailed in the first place)," Mugabe said.
Mugabe said Mandela insisted going alone to negotiate with the apartheid government.
President Mugabe is desperate to hide his record as a failed leader and is finding solice in attacking the late African Icon, Nelson Mandela. Shame, shame! Shame on you, Mugabe.
The world will always remember you as the inept, corrupt and murderous tyrant who turned the once breadbasket of the region into a country so poor run it is now depended on imported food aid. The nation is so impoverished it could not even buy its own food. Mugabe murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans to establish and retain his de facto one party state! Nothing he can do or say will ever air brush that from history!
@ Dr Maismba Mavaza
“The irony of the matter is that MDC accuses ZANU PF of presiding over unfair elections forgetting that ZANU PF went to war to gain and preserve the one man one vote system. Participating in an election was the main reason ZANU PF engaged in the war of liberation. It begs logic to claim that the party is rubbishing what it fought for,” you said.
When Zanu PF went to war is called for one-man one-vote but, to look at what the party has done ever since it got into power, there is no doubt that the party did not mean a word of it. Indeed, long before the war was over the party was already seeking to establish a one-party, Zanu PF, state in Zimbabwe and made no bones about it. Even you should know that there is no room for one-man one-vote in a one-party state.
In 1980, President Mugabe was forced to accept a Lancaster House multiparty constitution. As soon as he got into power, however, he started to systematically undermine it to impose his de facto one-party state. Zimbabwe has never ever held free, fair and credible one-man one-vote elections.
“What was accomplished by the bullet (Zanu PF’s ascendance into power) cannot be undone by the ballot!” Boasted Mugabe as he unleashed war veterans, party thugs and Security sector personal to harass, beat, rape and murder Zimbabwean to force them to vote for him in the 2008 presidential run-off. Even SADC and AU election observers, well known for approving some dodgy elections, could not pretend the elections were a free and fair elections.
“It begs logic to claim that the party is rubbishing what it fought for,” you said. No what begs logic and insults the very memory of the thousands of Zimbabweans who have died for freedom, human rights and dignity in Zimbabwe is that there should be even one Zimbabwean out there who would lie and pretend what Mugabe has done is what the nation aspired for!
To suggest Zanu PF has been holding free and fair one-man one vote elections is just too stupid for words!
I agree Tsvangirai is an albatross, turned milestone, around the nation's neck dragging the nation into the abyss as he blunders from pillar to post. Unlike the sailor in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” who had the albatross around his neck as punishment for shooting a friendly bird we have this Tsvangirai milestone round our necks because he trusted the corrupt and incompetent idiot.
People risked life and limb; millions were harassed, beaten, raped and lost their homes and livelihood and over 500 were murdered in 2008 alone; to elect MDC into power on the promise the party would deliver democratic change. Once in power Tsvangirai and company have failed to deliver even one democratic change because they were bribed to kick reforms into the tall grass.
Tsvangirai and company are sell-outs, period!
Zimbabweans, out of ignorance and laziness, have been very slow to see Tsvangirai and the MDC leaders for the corrupt, incompetent and sell-outs they are; just as they were slow to see Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs for the incompetent, corrupt and murderous thugs they are.
Both Zanu PF and MDC have been a milestone around the nation’s neck. Zimbabweans are today the poorest people in the world, we were classified a middle-income nation on par with such countries as Bolivia and Malaysia in 1980. The milestones have dragged us this deep into the abyss in four decades.
Destroying the country’s economic was easy and rapid rebuilding it up again will be hard work and will take time. But before we can even start the important task of rebuilding, we must first discard these milestones we are foolishly hanging on to out of the habit of following leaders, even those who have proven beyond all doubt that they are corrupt and incompetent, like sheep to the slaughter.
The trouble with MDC leaders is that they do not listen and do not accept advice from anyone. Gutu is all excited here about the Kenya’s Supreme Court’s decision to nullify the presidential elections after examining the evidence of electoral irregularities. What he is failing to understand is that Kenya’s judiciary is fairly independent thanks to Raila Odinga doing his homework of implementing the democratic reforms during that country’s 2007 to 2012 GNU.
Zimbabwe’s courts would never make a similar ruling because they are still firmly under Zanu PF autocratic control. MDC did not implement even one democratic reform during our GNU. Efforts by SADC and many other to get MDC to implement the reforms fell on deaf ears.
The argument right now is that MDC should not contest next year’s elections without implementing the democratic reforms necessary to ensure the courts are independent. We can amass all the vote rigging evidence we wish but to what end and purpose if Zanu PF is the judge, jury, prosecutor and executioner in a matter in which they are the defender.
MDC’s insistence in contesting next year’s election with no reform, on the grounds the party has some mystical Win In Rigged Elections (WIRE) strategy flies in the face of common sense. This is like being told Zanu PF are using a dice with six on all six sides and MDC insisting on putting a bet that Zanu PF will not throw a six! Even if MDC produce the dodgy dice as evidence, no one would want to know because that is exactly what everyone had been warning of.
The real decision here is for Zimbabweans themselves to decide whether they will still follow MDC blindly like sheep to the slaughter into yet another flawed election process next year, knowing fully well the election will be rigged. This time the people KNOW, or should know, it is folly to contest flawed elections and that the is a heavy price to be paid for folly and it is they who will pay it!
Khupe is not attending the MDC Alliance launch.
Did MDC lose the 2013 elections because the opposition was not united?
Mugabe had 62% of the votes and so a single opposition candidate would have got 38% and still lose. Mugabe rigged the 2013 elections and therefore stopping rigging next year's election is the real challenge here.
The opposition are expending all their time and energy of building a coalition only because they have given up on getting democratic reforms implemented. This is just a time wasting delusionary move that will do nothing to stop the vote rigging and thus get the democratic changes the nation is dying for.
The solution here is not to contest flawed elections and thus give the process some modicum of credibility. The opposition is using the promise of coalition to justify why they should contest the flawed elections. They have their beady eyes on the few gravy train seats Zanu PF gives away to the opposition to entice them to contest.
It is high time that the people of Zimbabwe themselves stopped being so naïve and gullible. There is a mountain of evidence proving that MDC leaders are corrupt, incompetent and are sell-outs. The people can ignore the evidence and continue to follow Tsvangirai blindly like sheep to the slaughter; the is a heavy price to be paid for being naïve and it is them who have paid the price and will continue to do so until they learn!
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