“Rene manyanga hariputirwi!” (It does not matter how long it takes, in the end the truth will always come out!) So goes the Shona adage. The truth of Robert Mugabe’s corrupt and murderous reign of terror is coming out.
“The commanders sent us with a very chilling message, they said ‘please go and get the president to appreciate the gravity of the situation out there.’ There was the possibility of a Libyan scenario where the president would have been dragged out of the Blue Roof and lynched. It was going to be possible because the soldiers said ‘we cannot turn our guns on civilians who are marching against the president and spill blood.’ I started visualising an image of Muammar Gaddafi, I literally went argh argh!” George Charamba told the Daily News on Sunday.
“The second scenario of impeachment, they said ‘if the impeachment starts, we cannot stop it because that would be to start a coup d’état’.
“The third message was to say ‘we are fast losing control of the process.’ The process was to have Mugabe restored as substantive leader of this country and then decide on his own to say I am tired I am handing over power. But there were those processes that were taking place and if they would have happened, there was no longer any legacy to restore.”
So after 37 years of the Zanu PF regime rigging elections to falsify Mugabe and the party’s popularity the for one brief moment the regime acknowledge the reality that the people of Zimbabwe hated Mugabe so much they would have lynched the tyrant.
There is no hiding the spontaneity of the hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans who marched demanding that Mugabe must go. People who have never said boo to a rat were openly demanding that Mugabe must go. If the coup plotters thought they could contain the situation for once they were telling Mugabe the truth when they told him “we are fast losing control of the process”. There was no way the nation was going to tolerate the possible of Mugabe in office when for a few more days; the currents of mistrust and hatred of the tyrant were too strong and deep for that!
The possibility of Robert Mugabe ending his life the same way Muammar Gaddafi did was real.
If President Mnangagwa and his Joint Operation Command, the Junta behind all the vote rigging, corruption and political murders of the last 38 years, thinks that the removal of Mugabe has completely defused the situation in Zimbabwe, they are wrong. People are expecting the Zanu PF regime to deliver meaningful economic recovery and, most important of all, the restoration of all their freedoms and human rights including the holding of free, fair and credible elections.
The people are not blind or stupid; they know the Junta was the real political force behind Mugabe responsible for all the vote rigging and all the other economic and political mischief. The people can see the coup plotters have targeted the G40 members as the only ones who were corrupt when many of the new regime’s leaders are just as corruption. It is common knowledge that people like VP Chiwenga have amass such wealth as 40 golden watches, fleet of cars and his C&M mansion is there for all to see!
It will not take long for the ordinary Zimbabweans to realised that the November coup did not bring about any meaningful change to their economic or political situation. For the filthy rich few, the looting, vote rigging, etc. has continued as if the coup never even happened, it is business as usual! It will not take much to rekindle the anger and hatred people had against Zanu PF before the November 2017 coup.
Zimbabwe’s economic situation in which unemployment has soared to 90% and 72.3% of the people live on US$1.00 or less a day is socially and politically unsustainable. If the removal of the figure head, Mugabe has failed to bring about any noticeable economic recovery, it is clear this is so; then, Zimbabwe’s undemocratic political system needs another revisit!
Once rekindled the people’s anger and hatred of Zanu PF will not be so easily pacified as happened last November. If it must take the burning down of one or two mansions and public lynching of a few Zanu PF thugs to finally drive home the message that the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship must be totally dismantled then so be it!
The people’s public support the November coup plotters was not blank cheque to Mnangagwa and his Junta friends, it was on condition that the regime bring about economic recovery and restores the individual freedoms and human rights immediately. The failure to implement even one reform is proof the regime has no intention to restore the people’s power to have a meaningful say in the governance of the country. Failure to hold free and fair elections later this year will confirm this government’s dictatorial intentions and whatever truce there was after the coup will be over.
6 comments:
@ Tuhwe
The coming elections are not going to be free and fair. President Mnangagwa has promised free and fair elections and has even taken to sending twitter message about it but has do nothing to implement the democratic reforms. Without the reforms there is no way the elections will be free and fair.
Indeed, instead of implementing the reforms President Mnangagwa has been implementing the vote rigging programme the regime had devised before the November 2017 coup. He dished out the new trucks to bribe the Chiefs on Saturday, which Mugabe had already promised to do.
SADC leaders have advised that Zimbabweans should not contest flawed elections, it is insane to do so.
Former U.S Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Johnnie Carson, recently told PBS NewsHour, a popular American evening television program, hosted by journalist and anchor of the show, Judy Woodruff, that Mnangagwa was Mugabe's clone, who was "very bitter" and a "hard man" who spent many years under colonial imprisonment, during which he endured torture.
Mnangagwa has been trying to portray himself under the new political dispensation, as a conciliatory national leader bent on healing and rebuilding the distressed and downtrodden nation.
"Zimbabwe has thrown out a dictator, but it's uncertain whether the country is moving towards, the political and economic reforms that so many Zimbabweans want," said Carson on the program. "Emmerson Mnangagwa is virtually a younger version of Robert Mugabe. In many ways, he is a clone of President Robert Mugabe. He, like Mugabe, spent many years in prison and was tortured while he was there. He came out a very bitter and hard man. He is, like Robert Mugabe, very articulate. He's very resilient. He's very disciplined. He, however, has served as an enforcer (of Mugabe's rule), serving initially as the country's intelligence chief for nearly a decade, and responsible for some of the country's worst human rights violations in 1980 and again in 2008 and '09, when Robert Mugabe stole an election."
I could not agree with ambassador Johnnie Carson more; Mnangagwa is a clone of Mugabe. The two men love absolute power and have shown they are all equally ruthless in the drive to achieve that singular goal. It is this quality, more than anything else that have kept them together all these last 37 years.
Ambassador Carson is also right that Mnangagwa is a “very bitter and hard man” but he is wrong to attribute that to “many years in (Rhodesian) prison and was tortured while he was there”. There other people who have endured similar if not worse treatment, notably SA’s Nelson Mandela, and they did not lose their heads.
The ease with which Robert Mugabe has toyed with Emmerson Mnangagwa and the rest of the Zanu PF is the one thing that was left many people questioning the intellectual aptitude of those around Mugabe. Margaret Dongo once called the Zanu PF leaders “vakadzi vaMugabe” (Mugabe’s subservient concubines); because of their collective habit of deferring to Mugabe on everything, they all seemed utterly incapable of thinking for themselves.
The great tragedy here is after 37 years of ruinous corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule led by Mugabe that has left ¾ of the population wallowing in abject poverty and desperate for change; it sheer rotten lucky that the nation should therefore find itself ruled by Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s clone! Any hope for any meaningful recovery is clearly out of the question because Mnangagwa, like Mugabe, has failed to embrace democratic change because he cannot risk losing power in a free and fair election!
Zimbabweans in the Namibian capital Windhoek say they are “shocked” and “embarrassed” to have been charged by the “cash-strapped” embassy to see visiting President Emmerson Mnangagwa, reports Namibian news site The Villager.
President Mnangagwa was dishing out new Isuzu trucks worth millions of dollars to Chiefs to buy their loyalty and next day the regime is asking very poor people to pay, what to them is clearly a fortune, to help pay for the venue for the meeting! So, the regime continues to spend millions on vote rigging schemes but has no money for even the everyday expenses. The whole trip was to woo Namibia to accept the regime's position that it can hold free and fair elections without implementing even one democratic reforms demanded by the regional block before the 2013 elections.
The November coup was a close call in that Zimbabwe could have easily slip into an all-out civil war; SADC leaders must take note. By refusing to play ball and reject the elections as null and void SADC leaders will force Zimbabwe to implement the democratic reforms and thus end the chaos that existed in Zimbabwe for decades now.
SADC leaders asked the 2013 elections to be postponed to implement the reforms they must put the foot down on this matter and not allow themselves to be hoodwinked by Mnangagwa.
President Mnangagwa to visit Mozambique and Zambia next, own his free with no reform election charm offensive
SADC leaders told Zanu PF and MDC that the 2013 election must be postponed to allow the democratic reforms to be implemented. “If you go into elections next month, you are going to lose; the elections are done,” they warned the inept MDC leaders. Their warning is still valid today.
Zimbabwe has not implemented even one reforms since the rigged July 2013 elections. And yet President Mnangagwa, promised to hold free, fair and credible elections (the country’s first such elections if he can deliver). This is the age-old puzzle of how to square the circle!
It is easy to guess what President Mnangagwa is telling the SADC leaders; that he is going to hold free, fair and credible elections without implementing even one reforms by charming them all that since the removal of Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe has entered a new dispensation in which the nation does not NEED the democratic reforms implemented to have free and fair elections.
He is basically trying the same chop logic argue he and his November coup plotter used to bamboozle the world – staging a coup and insist it was not a coup but a “military assisted transition”! At gun point? Yes, but it was still not a coup!
SADC leaders have good reason to want Zimbabwe’s chaotic political crisis resolved decisive this time, the November coup could have easily turned into a blood bath. All the SADC leaders have to do is agree, as they did before the 2013 elections, that it is impossible to hold free and fair elections in Zimbabwe without implementing the reforms first. They will then declare the elections null and void and thus force Zimbabwe to implement the reforms and finally sort the country’s crisis.
As the country move towards the elections SADC leaders will amass even more damning evidence such as povo being frog marched to attend Zanu PF rallies by Chiefs; the failure to produce a verified voters’ roll; etc. that will force them to dismiss the sham elections.
Mai Mujuru is complaining that she is not receiving her retirement package!
The idea that every leader is entitled to a posh house worth millions which they will then keep we they retire is madness. New born babies are dying in hospitals and clinics for lack of money to buy something as basic as an incubator and yet our political leaders live in mansions worth millions, drive the latest model limos, etc. This must stop!
President ED Mnangagwa is next week expected to attend World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland where he will join other Head of States including US President Donald Trump.
Wonder what the two men will say to each other if they were to meet!
ED "Hello! My name is Emmerson Mnangagwa, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe."
DT: "Oh yeah! You are the fellow who staged the world's latest coup!"
ED: "Well, it was a coup but it was not a coup!"
DT: "Oh boy! You still cannot make up your mind?" (No wonder the country is a s***thole!)
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