“Last year SADC Election Observer Mission (SEOM), led by Dr Nevers Mumba of Zimbabwe, reported that Zimbabwe’s election process was flawed and illegal. The regional body should have denied the Zanu PF political legitimacy, at the very least.
So, thanks to the indecision by SADC leaders, Mnangagwa became president of Zimbabwe for the next five years and, in a few days now, will become chairman of the regional body for a year. He is, per se, illegitimate for Pete’s sake. And now we must await the consequences of what tomorrow brings with having him at the helm.
“As Zimbabwe faces criticism for the arrest of political activists, South Africa has stated that it cannot influence the decision to move the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Summit from Harare,” reported Bulawayo 24.
“Despite calls from opposition groups within Zimbabwe and the region to relocate the summit due to concerns over human rights violations, South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) has emphasized that hosting the summit is a matter of tradition within SADC.”
True, it is normal practice that the incoming chair of SADC would host the summit; that makes perfect sense. However what SA and the rest of the SADC leaders cannot deny is that what is happening in Zimbabwe is anything but normal. Consider the following:
- 1) Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF regime blatantly rigged last year’s elections. SADC and AU election observers condemned the process as flawed and illegal. SADC accepted the observers’ report and, per se, endorsed that Mnangagwa and his regime are illegitimate. For whatever reasons the regional body did not take any punitive action against the region other than that many of the leaders did not attend Mnangagwa’s inauguration as it the norm.
- 2) Mnangagwa and his regime has stubbornly, publicly and repeatedly maintained that the elections was free, fair and credible and those saying otherwise “is their business.” The regime’s hunting dogs have publicly abused the SADC Election Observers particularly Dr Nevers Mumba from Zambia who was the chair. Mnangagwa himself is on record asking Russia’s President Putin for military assistance in the fight against Zambia.
- 3) Zanu PF regime has turned Zimbabwe into a North Korea Police State with opposition leader and human rights activist be arrested tortured and imprisoned in a knee-jerk reaction because the regime does not want the world reminded that it rigged the 2023 elections and is, per se, illegitimate. Peaceful public protests are allowed in every healthy and functioning democratic nation foreign visitors or not.
SADC leaders have failed to rein in the Zanu PF regime’s repeated violation of the country’s own laws and constitution and the regional body’s own principles and guidelines by rigging elections and denying its citizens their basic freedoms and rights.
SA’s ANC government has propped up the Zanu PF regime for the last 20 years and President Ramaphosa was one of only three heads of state who attended Mnangagwa’s inauguration last year. ANC propped up Zanu PF for Ramaphosa & Co.’s own selfish political reasons. By supporting a fellow liberation war party’s continued rule they hoped that would help ANC’s stay in power. It did not work. ANC lost its absolute majority in the 29 May 2024 elections.
ANC leaders owe the people of Zimbabwe an apology for their role in keeping Zanu PF in power against the democratic wish of the people. And this would be a good time for ANC leaders to correct their past wrongs.
It is normal to cancel or move the SADC summit, especially at such short notice - 3 days before the event. Still it is within the power of each member country to refuse to attend in protest against the madness we are witnessing in Zimbabwe.
Doing nothing is NOT an option, it is tantamount to backing the regime’s madness. The last thing Zimbabweans want to hear is a feeble excuse from Pretoria for doing nothing, after all ANC has done to drag them deeper and deeper into this hell!
The real question that SADC leaders must answer is: How long is Zanu PF going to be allowed to ride roughshod over the people of Zimbabwe with impunity? And Is lawlessness the new norm in SADC or is it just Zanu PF that is above the law?
22 comments:
@ Grace Ruredzo
"Hakuna zvakadaro in life zvirikutaura..
You lacking the essential tools to do what God instructs everyone to do . However, if God gives you the mission, then you are already fully equipped with whatever you need to complete it. He is President period !!!
It's then our job to cultivate those tools to the fullest.
Hu Chairmanship hwe Sadc mukoma ED handina paakamboti hwu chairmanship ndehwake ; when the pilot is taking off ; Hapana anomboti achiti ndege yavayangu handiti !!
Let go the hate . He is doing for every Zimbabwean.
As I said blacks are the one race who will crush their on kith and kin and do not even notice it! Which part of “there are 49% of Zimbabweans living in abject poverty whilst billions of dollars in diamonds, gold, lithium, etc are being looted out of the country every month”; are you failing to understand?
@ Grace Ruredzo
"Aaah Iwewe wakapiwa accountability dzacho here nhai . My highway roads ayo urikuti mari yacho irikubva kupi nhai ??
Let our minds be filled with good thoughts, Let us be wise to new generation, let us built them with wise words .. hate words destroy them… zvakafanana nababa vabuda mumwe vachinorara ku girlfriend; you don’t teach the child kuti baba vako varikuita musikanzwa ; unotomuudza kuti baba varikubasa handiti . Kuitira mwana ayende kuchikoro ane pfungwa idzodzo ; tomorrow he will be one of
Doctors . We are all responsible for
Our country period Z."
One cannot reason with someone whose brain has ossified into fat. The fact that Zimbabwe’s economy has all but collapsed, basic services like education and health care gone and looting of the nation’s resources is in overdrive, etc. it is all water off a duck’s back. You are what you are - a moron!
Thousands died fighting to end white colonial oppression and now thousands more have died to end black on black oppression!
@ Grace Ruredzo
“Not true .. I speak with students everyday . We should built our country together . It’s our duty to open up those factories .. listen to Divine song .. it encourages us to.”
How nauseating! So you think you are doing the right thing by denying the truth and the suffering and deaths of millions of ordinary Zimbabweans.
Common sense is something the teach at school or university and that is why there are men and women with university qualification, lecturers like you, who have no common sense.
You do not have the common sense to realise the sheer futility of destroying the nation’s human and material resources, as Zanu PF has been doing these last 44 years, in the blind pursuit of absolute power and the wealth it brings.
Mnangagwa blatantly rigged the 2023 elections, frog marching rural voters to the polling stations as if they were cattle being herded to the dip tank. How anyone can allow a fellow human being to be so ill treated, which less one’s own kith and kin, speaks volumes of the moron!
Zanu PF has never had an problems recruiting highly qualified black Zimbabweans to do the regime’s dirty bidding. In fact, so did the white regime. You are in good company!
@ Grace Ruredzo
So you think you will change Zimbabwe by propping up Mnangagwa and his cronies, the very men and women who have destroyed it? How any one cannot see that Zimbabwe has been sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss under Zanu PF is a mystery. But then given your intellectually ability, I should not be surprised. You have the intellect of garden slug.
You might be a University lecturer of a renowned institution for all I know and yet when it comes to common sense you real have none. You are just another highly decorated moron!
The tragedy for Zimbabwe is that, as a nation, we do have more than our fair share of morons and worst of all they have a loud voice and a vote. Make no mistake it is the morons, on both sides of the political divide, who are keeping Zanu PF buffoons and MDC/CCC sell outs in power.
A little learning is a dang’rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir’d at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc’d, behold with strange surprise
New, distant scenes of endless science rise!
Alexander Pope: A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Alexander Pope was right for it is none other than the morons with University Degrees intoxicated on “shallow draughts from Pierian spring” who are holding the nation hostage to fortune and change!
“I speak with students everyday!” I cal well imagine what anyone can ever learn from you - certainly not common sense!
@ Musariri
“WM you seem to only concentrate on negativity and negativism about Zimbabwe...
You must be paid for it.”
If those negativities are true then they must be told and dealt with.
Zimbabwe is a failed state and, per se, has lots and lots of negativities which have clearly been neglected. No more pussy footing around, we must deal with those problem here and now!
Mnangagwa must have spend a cool US$5 billion in bribes alone in last year’s rigged elections from buying chicken, chips and drink for the hired crowd, buying twin-cab trucks for chiefs and church leaders, US$40 000 house loans for MPs and senators, right up to US$ 230 000, US$ 400 000 and US$500 000 for deputy ministers, judges and ministers respectively.
Meanwhile the nation’s infrastructure is in varying stages of rot and decay for lack of funds. Even big referral hospitals like Mpilo and Parerenyatwa have no beds and medicine; one can only imagine the sorry state of the provincial and district hospitals.
It is clear the country has spend a fortune in sprucing up everything from the roads, to summit venue, villas to accommodate the visitors and vehicles for the security services. All to hide the fact that Mnangagwa rigged the elections and is therefore illegitimate.
Never before in human history has a nation paid so dearly for the glory of Caesar at the expense of the good of Rome! The more so for Zimbabwe given we can ill afford it!
@ Godfrey
Which people are you talking about? Surely not those who participated because of greed, they took up their share of gravy train seats and they were happy. Not those who conned to participate because they believed the lie Chamisa had plugged all the vote rigging loop holes out of sheer stupidity. By participating in their millions they made it hard for SADC to punish Zanu PF; we must be very clear on that point!
@ Keynes
Why should rural folk purchase the land? Buying it from whom? Bona Mugabe has title deeds to 12 farms with enough land to fit Lesotho; how much did she pay for it? Stop talking nonsense!
https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-244577.html
When SADC leaders accepted the damning SEOM report about Mnangagwa rigging the 2023 elections they should have denied him political legitimacy too. They did not and now they cannot deny him chairmanship of SADC.
The prospect an illegitimate presiding over SADC for a whole year is daunting but worse still for Zimbabwe, five more years of this wholesale looting and tyrannical oppression is the stuff of nightmares. Worse still for Zimbabwe, he and his Zanu PF thugs are gearing to rig 2028 and stay on. Lord have mercy on us all!
It is an outrage that millions are being kept in abject poverty deliberately and some people think it is funny. No wonder we are a failed state.
@ Shamu
“Uri mudzakutsaku futi iweweNumber 1 you are a failed politician!Maratings ako paYouTube where you average about 20 views per post are the same as your political ratings!Majority vana vako nehama dzako out of those 20 ratings.Your frustrations you vent on your golden boy Chamisa!You are a good writer and you enjoy Animal Farm.Put your talent to good use and start writing children's books.U might get a breakthrough on that one instead of sulking every day about Chamisa Musiye akadaro!”
I will be more concerned if you said that what I said is not true than the number of viewers of my You Tube is low. My primary concern is to speak the truth and educate the brain dead Zimbabweans.
@ Big Mike
"Tibvire Kure iwe Mari yacho ndeyako.kugwadziwa NE chicken inn Kasi hauzivi kuti tinorima huku nema potatoes nekuita Own makambani anobika zvinhu zvacho.saka wogwadziwa kuti takadyirei chikafu chakanaka.Tichatochidya ende huye tirikuchidya.tigere muno.iwe gara ikoko duzuman.wakangofanana NE bere Riya repano mazuvaano rakati ziii."
So you think the US$ 5b on bribes alone came from Mnangagwa's own deep pockets and, if asked, he will produce the tax returns to show where he got the money and paid tax like everyone else! How naive and stupid you are!
This is a Zanu PF captive slave! Zanu PF is keeping millions of Zimbabwean in abject poverty, denying them title deeds to even one acre of land on which the mud hut stand for selfish political reasons.
How many more years are we going to allow this modern day slavery to continue? It is one thing to be poor because of one’s own fault and another to be deliberately held back by some one else.
Zimbabwe’s rural folk cannot breath because Zanu PF thugs have their heavy boot on their throats crushing the into the gutter!
The regime wants the foreign currency for itself in exchange for worthless local currency. It will tax remittances and/or make ZiG only legal tender!
@ Temba Mliswa
Mliswa specifically advised Zanu-PF youth Chairperson Tino Machakaire, who has been running around denouncing Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who is regarded as the front-runner in the race to succeed Mnangagwa.
The former legislator questioned the sincerity of the youth's support for Mnangagwa, suggesting that they should formalize their endorsement through established party channels rather than resorting to "gung-ho tactics."
"I have been following the drama in the ruling party over the President's term and the 2030 chants. Funny enough, the actions and utterances appear a reprise of what we have been through before. We have been here before and it never ended well for many," Temba Mliswa said.
"………My advice to him would be to calm down and focus on the specific job he was given by the President and avoid these trenches.”
Zanu PF is a party of ruthless thugs who have no respect of others people’s rights and rule of law they only pay lip service to all these niceties for the purposes of deception.
Mliswa has the wrong end of the stick, Mnangagwa is a thug and knows only too well that deception is the name of the Zanu PF factional war. Mnangagwa himself would be instructing Tino Machakaire on these “gung-ho tactics”. Whatever else Mliswa believes the Zanu-PF youth Chairperson should be doing is not what Mnangagwa want.
Of course, Machakaire knows there are rich rewards for sticking out his neck if Mnangagwa wins and his political career will end if his horse should lose. There is a list of Zanu PF leaders whose careers have soared to dizzying heights only to crash overnight because they backed the wrong horse. Look at Kusukuwere, Professor Jonathan Moyo, Patrick Zhuwao, etc. they never thought they would be anything less than minister for life! Now they are licking their wounds in exile, luck to have escaped with their lives!
Machakaire has decided to back Mnangagwa in this rat race and is hoping his gamble pay off!
The Zimbabwean government has missed the deadline for completing the 18 state-of-the-art presidential villas in Mt Hampden, which were intended to host heads of state during the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit scheduled for tomorrow.
Despite hiring a Swiss construction company, Mabetex Group, and importing materials from the UAE, the villas remain unfinished. The company deployed 500 workers and invested significant funds, but construction continued up to just two days before the summit.
With the villas incomplete, government officials are scrambling to arrange alternative accommodations for the visiting leaders. It is expected that they will be housed at three hotels in Harare: Hyatt Regency (formerly Meikles Hotel), Rainbow Towers, and Monomotapa Hotel.
The villas, once finally completed, will be sold to the ruling elite for a song! You would not buy a matchbox house in Mbare for the same mount of money.
Zimbabwe society has become highly stratified with the filthy, filthy rich few on the one hand and the filthy, filthy majority on the other. The gulf between the two is frightfully wide and deep; it cannot be bridged.
The poor are desperate to escape whilst the ruling elite are guarding their privileged lifestyles with their very lives, they know they did not earn it by merit and cannot compete to hold on to what they have. This is clash of the titans, the irresistible force vs immovable object. This has been the recipe for chaos and mindless destruction.
Zimbabwe’s economy has been in decline ever since the country’s independence in 1980. Things have got progressively worse as the nation’s economy shrunk the ruling elite have resorted to worse and worse politic repression in their desperate effort to hang on to absolute power.
All is well that ends well, Zimbabwe’s economic mess and political paralysis will not end well! There will be crying and gnashing of teeth! The tragedy is the political paralysis means there is no way of preventing this!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xL8zJ1hpCI
The no-expense-spared SADC Summit show has kicked off. What a show! What pomp! And all of it is for the glory of Caesar, the more extravagance to cover for the illegitimacy.
The glory of Mnangagwa trumps the good of Zimbabwe. And Zimbabwe itself has become a highly stratified nation with few filthy rich ruling elite and filthy poor and politically powerless majority separated by an unbridgeable wide and deed chasm. This is socially, politically and morally unsustainable. We must dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship a.s.a.p.
We can end the Zanu PF dictatorship if we can stop the Chamisa Chete Chete brigade participating in flawed 2028 to give Zanu PF legitimacy on the back of another Chamisa idiotic lie of plugging vote rigging loop holes!
Mnangagwa insisted in calling his regime Second Republic because he did not want to be associated with the Mugabe era although the two are the two sides of the same pariah state coin.
Indeed, Mnangagwa was Mugabe’s number one henchman in the creation and imposing the Zanu PF dictatorship. In 2008 when the party lost the elections he was the one who staged the electoral coup to stop MDC getting into power.
Even if we give Mnangagwa the benefit of the doubt that Mugabe was such a ruthless tyrant and a control freak; he governed Zimbabwe all by himself and everyone else was powerless, “vakadzi vaMugabe”, as Margaret Dongo disparagingly called the Zanu PF MPs, ministers, etc. And we should give Mnangagwa a chance to prove himself.
He has promised to make Zimbabwe an upper middle income nation by 2030, “Vision 2030”, as he called it. He had 13 years to do this. He has been in power now 7 years and there is nothing to show for it. Zimbabwe is still a pariah state whose economy is in a mess and the political tyranny of Mugabe days are all still there. Vision 2030 is a mirage.
If your maize crop flowering and yet it is barely knee high when it should be taller than the elephant; one does not need to wait until the end of the season to know there will be no bumper harvest. We know Mnangagwa has failed to revive the Zimbabwe economy. We must fight for democratic reforms to be implemented and put an end to the double curse of rigged elections and bad governance.
https://www.facebook.com/4415858595176450/videos/898054532240023
The Zanu PF regime has had its share of the US$ 2 billion remittance cash send to Zimbabwe every year now the regime is thinking of how it can get more if not all of it!
At present the bank or money agent pays the recipient of the remittence in forex in full. The regime must be thinking of getting a cut as tax and, ultimately, get all the forex by making the local currency the only legal tender. People will be obliged to sell all their forex at the official exchange rate and buy forex at the inflated black market rate.
The chief beneficiaries will be the few who can buy forex at official exchange rate and sell it in the blackmarket - ruling elite! We have been down this road before.
The idea of remittence money making the rich richer and the poor poorer, yet again, is sickening!
@ Reentech
“Well very rich indeed ... To you everyone is a moron, the 1.8 million people who voted Chamisa and the 2 million people who voted ED put together... That makes their sense hugely very common in Zimbabwe! You are not part of that herd ... isn't it ? I leave it to you to judge for yourself who has common sense and who does not!”
You are moron, as I said. Of course, the 1.8 million who voted for Chamisa must be morons because only a moron would believe Chamisa’s idiotic lie that he had plugged all the vote rigging loop hole.
Mnangagwa rigged the elections so there is no doubt that some of the 2 million who reportedly voted for him are not real and a significant number of the real ones would have been frogmarched to vote for him. Why would I call some one who was coerced to vote a moron when I know they had no say in the matter?
@ Padzarondera
“The beneficiaries will be the gvt criminal chefs who will end up buying the $US at the bank rate and put it on the black market.
Who’s do stupid as keep his money in banks owned and controlled by these unrepentant hooligans.”
RBZ Governor has just issued a signed statement acknowledging the importance of the diaspora remittance contribution to the Zimbabwe economy and the millions of Zimbabweans who are dependent on the money for their their basic needs and some even their very survival. The regime itself is earning 17% of its forex from remittance. The statement was to reassure everyone the government was not going to kill the goose that lays the golden egg by changing its forex policy.
The recipients of the remittance will continue to receive the money in forex and in full, said RBZ governor.
Of course, Zimbabweans know better than to trust this Zanu PF regime. We all know how RBZ assured the nation that their forex accounts will not be touched only to have the balance converted to local currency overnight, for example! This is a Zanu PF regime that has rigged the 2023 elections, for the umpteenth time. Declaring Zig as the only legal tender currency would be nothing compared to blatantly rigging elections! RBZ Governor’s reassurance statement is not even worth the paper it is written on!
@ Chatufa TV
“SADC HAS FAILED ZIMBABWEANS.”
This is a lie that must be put right! SADC is not perfect and it could have done a lot more for Zimbabwe but to say it failed Zimbabwe when we not only failed ourselves but SADC as well when it tried to help is foolish, to say the least.
It was SADC that forced Zanu PF to sign the 2008 Global Political Agreement that gave birth to the 2008 to 2013 GNU. The primary purposed of the GNU was to implement the democratic reforms to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends failed to get even one token reform implemented in 5 years because Mugabe bribed them with the trappings of high office and the rest is history.
Of course, it is stupid to blame SADC when it was MDC leader who sold out by not only failing to implement reforms but by participating in flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy out of greed. It is shocking that there are many Chamisa Chete Chete nincompoops out there who were conned to participate in the 2023 election and even now, with the benefit of hindsight, refuse to accept Chamisa lied about plugging vote rigging loop holes.
By refusing to accept historic facts and, worse still, blaming SADC because they would not accept that Chamisa is a mere mortal with a well documented track record as corrupt and incompetent, the millions of these Chamisa zealots are proving that Zimbabwe is NOT ready for democratic rule.
This video is trash in that it is brainwashing people when it should be educating them.
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