Wednesday 4 October 2017

Mushonga, unemployment is a serious national, not regional, problem - stop stoking tribal fires

Moses led the Children of Israel from Egypt, a land in which they were slaves for generations, to the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey. Of course, no one can ever say for certain, but one can say with some certainty that without Moses many Jews would have perished along the way and never reached their destination.

So, one of the qualities of a great leader is to lead the people to a good destination without one’s guidance many, if any at all, who have never reached. The converse is the bad leader who will encourage and even coerce people to go into the depths of hell itself! Zimbabwe has had the great misfortune of having these devilish leaders.

There is no debate that in Robert Gabriel Mugabe we have Zimbabwe’s answer to Germany’s Adulf Hitler. Mugabe has turned a nation that took great pride in being the breadbasket of the region into one that is failing to feed itself. We are starving in the land that, for all practical purposes is the Garden of Eden; in a day and age when human ingenuity has turn deserts in blooming orchards, such is the damning testimonial of Mugabe’s failed leadership.

On the political front Mugabe has ridden roughshod over the people’s hopes and dreams of freedom, liberty, peace, human rights and a fair share of the nation’s riches. To establish and retain his de facto one-party (Zanu PF) cum one-man (Robert Mugabe) dictatorship the tyrant has systematically denied the people their fundament human rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections and even the right to life. Mugabe has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans in pursuit of his insatiable greed for absolute power and material wealth.

A Zimbabwe where 90% of our people are unemployed, 72.3% of us live on US$1.00 or less a day making Zimbabweans the poorest in Africa, people have lost hope and self-respect, etc. is the hell-on-earth. This is not the Zimbabwe we wanted, Mugabe dragged us here!

There is a glimmer of hope of finally ending Mugabe and his Zanu PF dictatorship’s reign of terror; the regime is imploding, the rotten core cannot hold and things are falling apart. It is most disconcerting that there are some failed politicians who willing to take up from where Mugabe left and drag the nation even deeper into this hell for their own selfish political gain.

When people like MP Priscilla Misiharabwi-Mushonga talk of Matabeleland being “marginalized” in parliament she is not trying to avoid a civil war but stoking one in a desperate effort to boost her chances of being re-elected back into parliament. Unemployment has soared to 90% plus, 72.3% of the people live on US$ 1.00 per day or less, etc. these are appalling statistic applicable in the whole country. Unless the Right Honourable MP can produce the evidence to prove, it is irresponsible to such sweeping allegations.

She was citing the case of Wellcash debt collectors describing them as an institution highlighting the gravity of marginalisation in Zimbabwe.

According to her, the company has taken over debt collection in every corner of the country basing on a human resource base that is predominantly Shona and male.

"It does not make sense to me that in a country where you have Mashonaland, Manicaland, why not just find the lawyers that are resident in that particular province to do the job that is there," she said.

Unemployment is a very serious problem in Zimbabwe, no parliament has utterly failed to deal with otherwise we would not be talking of the dizzying heights of 90% plus. The case of Wellcash debt collectors, whatever its merit, will do nothing to reduce the runaway unemployment rate and therefore should have been raised with relevant company or minister and not waste valuable parliamentary time.

Let us be absolutely clear here, the people of Zimbabwe risked life and limb to elect MP Priscilla Misiharabwi-Mushonga and her fellow MDC colleagues into power on the promise they will deliver the democratic changes necessary to end the Zanu PF dictatorship. As she can see the dictatorship is still here and thriving. MDC had many golden opportunities, the best of which were during the GNU, to implement the democratic reforms which would have ended the dictatorship but wasted them all.

“Mazivanhu eMDC adzidzi kudya anyerere!” (MDC people have learnt to enjoy the gravy train lifestyle and not rock the boat!) Zanu PF cronies used to boast during the GNU when the world asked why MDC leaders were not implementing the reforms.

MP Misiharabwi-Mushonga has not only been an MP for years, she one of the ministers in the bloated GNU. Like the rest of her MDC colleagues, she too was too busy enjoying herself she forgot why she was in the GNU. There will be refresh parliamentary elections next years and she has been frantically fighting to be noticed.

Misihairabwi warned of the high likelihood of civil unrest as Ndebeles are now frustrated of being labelled tribalists when they are raising purely marginalisation issues.

"We are not trying to do political mileage, we are not trying to be tribalistic but we are actually talking about something that is so serious that unless it is addressed," she said.

"And I keep saying this in this House, unless we address this thing, one day we are going to be in a civil war in this country. 

"You cannot continue to treat a particular people in a particular attitude and expect that they will not stand up to that kind of oppression."

The danger of social unrest is real, the present economic situation that has driven unemployment to the nauseating heights of 90% plus, left 72.3% living on US$1.00 or less per day, etc. is socially, morally and politically unsustainable. The danger of more street protests, we saw many last year, or worse is real but to suggest such unrest will be confined to one region or tribe is mischievous, to say the least.

Rebuilding Zimbabwe from the four decades of ruinous Mugabe corrupt and tyrannical rule will be hard work but we will make the work even harder for ourselves if we are going to go into the work a divided nation with each fighting for his/her own tribe, region, village, etc. It is utterly intolerable that those who betrayed the nation and failed to deliver the reforms they promised should be the ones exploiting the misery of the people to cover for their own incompetence.


The people of Zimbabwe, not just those in one region, are angry with Mugabe and his thugs for dragging them into this economic and political hell-hole. You, MP Misiharabwi-Mushonga, are driving a regional wedge between the people just to engender yourself with the people in that region because they have been questioning your pathetic performance as MP and minister. We are sick and tired of corrupt and incompetent leaders who want to drag us where we go not want to go. We do not want a civil war, you are stoking it for your own selfish reason.  

11 comments:

Zimbabwe Light said...

Patson Maseko Mushonga should not take of unemployment as a problem affecting one part of the country alone when is affects the whole country. She is the one stoking tribal fires to make herself relevant. She is a pretty useless MP and the people have been asking her to name even one thing she has ever done!

No nation on earth can afford such reckless leaders, when one makes these regional sweeping statements in parliament the issue assume a great gravitas than when ordinary people say the same thing.

Zimbabwe Light said...

@ Ngulube

You praise will be music to her ears! But tell me what has she ever accomplish in all her years as MP and minister? Least you forget, we are in this political mess because she and her MDC friends were bust enjoying themselves during the GNU and forgot to implement even one democratic reform!

Zimbabwe Light said...

Heal Zimbabwe has reported that it has recorded 22 human rights violations from 13 districts from the 22nd – 28th of September 2017.

The trust said in the period under review, three categories of human rights violations were recorded. 

"These include intimidation (with threats of violence or threats of withdrawal of food aid or agricultural inputs), forced participation (in political meetings, financial or material contributions) and partisan allocation of proof of residence by traditional leaders. The levels of intimidation remains a concern with 86.36% (19 cases) being recorded this week, followed by forced participation in political activities with 9.10% (2 cases) and partisan allocation of proof of residence to potential voters with 4.54% (1 case)," said the trust.

Heal Zimbabwe Trust has been warned that its peace campaign, well-meaning as it may be, is not going to end Zimbabwe’s entrench culture of vote rigging and political violence; we need to implement the democratic reforms to achieve that. What is mind boggling is, the Trust is reporting all these cases of political violence and still carries on with its peace campaigns regardless. Why?

“HZT views such intimidation tactics as an impediment to freedom of expression and a threat to peace and social cohesion," said the trust.

Does HZT have an absolute right to promise the simple people in the rural areas the elections will be free, fair and credible whilst ignoring the evidence before them proving that it a lie? Right now, it seem as if they have!

Zimbabwe Light said...

Police stopped VP Khupe holding a rally.

“This was an internal party meeting. This is the issue we have always been debating, because these overzealous State agents are now abusing this thing called Posa. I am sure they can even disperse family meetings,” Moyo said.

The notion that Zimbabwe can ever hold free, fair and credible elections without reforms is a case of closing one's else to the reality before them. 

Babies believes whatever was before them all disappear only to reappear again when they open their eyes. It is only when they learn to synchronise what they see with the other senses such as touch and hearing that they the realise things do not necessarily disappear just because one has closed their eyes.

After 37 years of rigged elections to continue to contest flawed elections hoping against hope to win the rigged elections is to refuse to revert to the mentality of a baby and refuse to see the vote rigging only to acknowledge it after the results are out, when one opens their eyes again. People must refuse to continue this nonsense of contesting flawed elections. We know absolutely nothing has been done to stop vote rigging and we can see some of it taking place already with the failure to start the BVR on time, for example. We do not have to go through another rigged election to know Zanu PF rigs election.

We must demand the reforms to stop vote rigging must be implemented BEFORE another election. If is bad enough that an adult should want to behave like a baby but I will be damned if I will let anyone coerce me into behaving likewise!

Zimbabwe Light said...

Bhogwe Mandla Bhogwe No one is saying there is no unemployment in Matebeleland, indeed with unemployment at 90% plus it would be odd not to find many, many unemployed and poor people there. The point here is that the problem is everyone in Zimbabwe, it is a national problem. As an MP she is in parliament to find the solution to this national problem for the good of all. What has she been doing all these years whilst unemployment soar to 90% plus.

She is just desperate for votes to secure her gravy train seat in next year's election and hence the reason she is saying all this. She knows we all see our problem as worse than our neighbour and exploiting this for her own selfish political gain.

There is no way she is ever going to create employment opportunities just for the people in one region reducing unemployment to 10%, say, whilst unemployment remains 90% in the rest of the country. She is just playing games with the thousands out of work to get their vote. Once back in the gravy train, she will forget them just as Zanu PF has done with its 2.2 million new jobs!

If it was true that the people of Matabeleland were indeed worse off that everyone else, then the more reason they should kick her out for being the worst MP in the country! Other than wasting parliamentary time to message her huge ego and using foul language, she really has nothing to offer as a MP.

Zimbabwe Light said...

@ Bhogwe Mandla

It seems you have done all the hard work already and I would not want to steal your thunder! Please pen an article and tell us how many from each tribe/region/gender/etc. are employed in each Border Post, DA Office, etc. but make sure you figures cover the whole country and not just one region or town! Since the Right Honourable MP Priscilla Misiharabwi-Mushonga, is the one who has stated this regional difference as a proven historic fact by bringing it up in parliament; no doubt she has already done her research and share her findings with you.

If our parliament was not full of dimwits, someone should have asked Mushonga to producing the evidence to prove her outrageous allegation designed to play on the misery of the unemployed for cheap political brownie point. Indeed, if that august house was not full to the rafters of the most useless, corrupt and incompetent politicians in human history then unemployment would have never soared to these dizzying heights of 90% and stayed there for more than a decade now in the first place!

Zimbabwe Light said...

@ Roy

"Nhamo yomumwe hairambirwe sadza!" (Someone else's problems are nothing compared to one's own troubles!) goes the Shona adage.

With unemployment sitting at a dizzying 90% plus I will bet you that everyone out there now thinks their poverty is much worse than everyone else. What the manipulative Priscilla Misiharabwi-Mushonga is doing here is playing on a weakness we all have and agreeing with the people in Matabeleland that their poverty is the worst in the whole country, “Now vote for me!” She is just taking advantage of the poor for selfish political gain and we, the electorate, will be fools to fall for it for three reasons:

1) She has been MP and Minister for years what has she ever done to stop unemployment soaring to these dizzying heights? She is one of the MDC leaders who wasted the five GNU years and failed to implement even one democratic reform. She busy hyper ventilating and “speechless” in the presence of Mugabe.

2) Parliament is there for solving national problems and unemployment is certainly a national problem and to present it as a purely regional or tribal, which is not solved will result in a “civil war” is to stoke regional and tribal strive. The last thing we want is these useless, corrupt and incompetent MPs wasting even more parliamentary time debate with region, town and village is more worse than the other. We want solution to the soaring unemployment, collapse education and health services, etc. and not so macabre poverty contest!

3) If Priscilla is interested in regional solutions to regional problems and then she should stand as a local councillor or village head. People like her has been in parliament for far too long for any good they have ever done, she and her corrupt friends should be gone and the nation will be better off for it!

Zimbabweans risked life and limb electing her and her fellow MDC friends to end the Zanu PF dictatorship and end the economic meltdown. After 17 years of idle of gravy train life she is stoking tribal strive in her desperate bid for votes and another five years on the gravy train. What political cheek! No! Do not call, we will call you. Goodbye! Au Revoir! And good riddance!

Zimbabwe Light said...

Mugabe can be seen in the below ZBC footage also pointing a sharp finger at Mnangagwa while visibly furious and vocalising what appears to be either a complaint or a reprimand.

Mnangagwa told Masvingo Province saying he was truly poisoned at Mugabe’s Interface Rally in Gwanda, while announcing that people shall discover the truth at the end “kumagumo.”

Zanu PF is imploded, the party is rotten to the core, the centre cannot hold, things are falling apart!

Zimbabwe Light said...

44 Political Parties Formed In 2 Months! Some people have put the total number of political parties in Zimbabwe at 72 as of today. There is still six months or so before the elections, time for a few more parties to come out from under the rotten logs; we will have 100 parties contesting next year’s flawed elections.

Some people have said many of these parties are funded and organised by the CIO. This is possible since most of our opposition parties and heavily infiltrated by the CIO so that some parties should be started by CIOs is only a small variation to modus operandi!

The main reason Zanu PF, through its CIO operatives, is now playing a major role of building up the opposition, instead of the traditional one of undermining the opposition, is a simple one – Zanu PF needs a credible opposition to get away with a rigged election next year. The MDC factions lost political credibility after contesting the 2013 elections with no reforms, Zanu PF had hoped that they will regain the credibility but, sadly, that has not happened. Zanu PF is certainly casting its net far and wide in the hope this will be seen as proof of a democratic electoral process.

On the other hand, some of the new parties would have been formed by private citizens, to be infiltrated by CIO agents if they ever take off. People know that the long await opposition coalition has been a great disappointment to many people, to say the least. MDC Alliance has been “a sum of zeros”, as Mugabe had aptly put it. The absence of any meaningful opposition party has encouraged new one to be formed to fill the void.

A situation in which there are many candidates, the more the merrier, contesting each seat suit Zanu PF to the T. Ideally, the party would want to win and leave the opposition feeling they would have won if they had not split the votes that way no one is likely to pay any attention on how the regime had rigged the vote.

It took Tsvangirai the last four years to get six other opposition parties to join him to form the MDC Alliance. Now he must start all over again and try get the remain 66 parties to join him. Well his work in cut out for him, no wonder he failed to get even one reform implemented since the July 2013 rigged elections! What a circus!

Zimbabwe Light said...

25 571 people have registered to vote countrywide and 75 political parties as of 2 October 2017 announce Rita Makarau.

There is no doubt that the target of 7 million registered voters will be reached the regime has its varying ways of increasing the number of registered voters. Since voters will only be allowed to vote in only one polling station, the regime has worked out various way to deny many people the vote by the simple act of them turning up at the wrong polling station. Of course, many of these vote rigging tactics will be uncovered if there was a verifiable voters’ roll. There will be NO verifiable voters’ roll for 2018 elections.

Zimbabwe Light said...

You do not need me to hold your hand; you can go ahead on your quest to discover the real Zimbabwe and not what political opportunist like MP Mushonga are painting. If you cannot see that she is exploiting the unemployed and desperately poor people for her own selfish reasons then you have a problem.


Ask Mushonga when did she become aware that Matabeleland was being marginalised and what she has done about it? She, like the rest in MDC, had the golden opportunity to deliver the democratic changes Zimbabweans risked life and limb to elect MDC to do during the GNU. What reforms did she bring about? Not even one reform because she was too busy swanning “speechless” every time Mugabe was in the room.

Zimbabwe is in deep, deep economic trouble because the country has had the great misfortune of having some of the most corrupt and incompetent leaders, leaders like our foul-mouthed, brain-dead swanning MP Mushonga, in modern human history. Having a naïve and gullible electorate has not helped.

The Right Honourable MP Priscilla Misiharabwi-Mushonga is stoking regional and tribal hatred by making totally unfounded statements to bolster her lacklustre political career; if you cannot see that, I can. She must be stopped and will be stopped! Zimbabwe is not going to be dragged into a civil war just so a corrupt and incompetent politician can have another five years on the gravy train!