ED ignores Zanu PF violence to talk about "democratic ethos" - essence of "legitimacy trap" P Guramatunhu

“Zanu PF's hotly-contested primary elections took place countrywide yesterday amid violent and chaotic scenes, as well as damaging allegations of bribery, favouritism and the imposition of candidates - prompting the ruling party to postpone the internal polls in many constituencies to today,” reported Daily News.

“In Mashonaland Central, police made several arrests in Mazowe West where alleged supporters of the sitting MP, Kazembe Kazembe, were said to have slashed the vehicle tyres of rival Tafadzwa Musarara.

"The tyres were deflated and my driver was attacked, and I know it is the work of incumbent MP Kazembe Kazembe's campaigning team who were spotted at the scene. Arrests have been made under RRB 333861440," Musarara told the Daily News.

If there is so much violence and mayhem by Zanu PF members directed against fellow Zanu PF members how much worse when it is the against the opposition whom they consider to be puppets of the West seeking regime change!

If the violence is taking place in urban centres how much worse will it be in the rural backwaters where the Zanu PF thugs rule the roost!

It is disappointing that President Mnangagwa is not even concerned about the violence in his own party. “Whatever teething problems we have experienced so far, we remain convinced that the democratic course we have started in the management of our party affairs is the correct one, indeed one befitting a party of our history, our strength and our stature,” he said.

“As the ruling party, the democratic content and standards of our processes define and preordain our national politics. We thus not fear to widen the scope and play of the elective ethic in our party affairs and processes. Whatever challenges we face in the interim must thus be in the direction of firmly rooting the democratic ethos which, after all, we planted in the land through our historical sacrifices as a party of the national liberation.”

What “democratic ethos” has Zanu PF ever planted?

Here lays the essence of the nation’s failure to make any head way in addressing its teething economic and political problems. The root cause of the economic problems is the criminal waste of national resources, material and human, through mismanagement and corruption. For the last 38 years, these problems have been allowed grown and spread like cancerous tumour to force the economy into the state of total meltdown pushing unemployment into the nauseating height of 90% and ¾ of our people into abject poverty.

First the nation could not get the Zanu PF government to address these problem, the regime simply ignored the calls for changed and ignored the tragic human suffering brought on by the economic decline. Ordinarily the people would have voted Zanu PF out of office but this did not happen because the regime has routinely rigged elections.

In short, the root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic problems is the nation’s failure to remove Zanu PF from office even when it was clear the regime corrupt and incompetent and must go. The nation was stuck with a corrupt and tyrannical regime for 38 years and counting.

There is no hope of getting meaningful regime change as long as Zanu PF retains the carte blanche powers to rig the vote. The party has resisted all efforts to get democratic reforms, designed to take away the vote-rigging powers, implemented. As we can see from his remark above, President Mnangagwa maintains Zanu PF is a democratic party that does not rig elections.

“Nearly 20 years into Zimbabwe's unresolved Machiavellian Moment, and as the old order has been bleeding to death slowly, while the new has been struggling to be born, it has become quite clear that the birth of a new dispensation is being arrested by the country's lingering illegitimacy trap,” admitted Professor Jonathan Moyo in a recent article written from his hiding place in exile.

“The means for legitimately getting into, staying in and getting out of political office in Zimbabwe, in government and mainstream political parties, have remained contested since 1980. Just about all holders of elective public office in politics, especially but not only at the level of the presidency, are illegitimate. The problem has been so pervasive that it has found expression even in appointed offices in the civil and security services. It is notable that key members of the ZDF "command element" that staged the November coup had outlived their tenure and were thus in the command illegitimately.”

Moyo is running away from President Mnangagwa and his junta regime, his erstwhile former Zanu PF colleagues. Moyo and a few other G40 faction members have been on the run since last November’s military coup in which saw ED and his Lacoste faction seize power.

It is heartening to hear Professor Moyo is admitting Zanu PF’s failure to hold free and fair elections and hence the “lingering legitimacy trap”. It is disappointing that Moyo is admitting this now when he has lost power and influence to help get the nation out of this trap.

Whilst there no stopping these flawed elections going ahead now, the way out of this legitimacy trap is for the international observers admit that with no meaningful reforms it is impossible to hold free, fair and credible elections and thus declare the elections null and void.