Mcube blame failure to "operationalize" Act for rigged 2013 elections - he sold out that is the truth!

Zimbabwe’s land reform has been a total failure; many have argued that it was the farm invasions that triggered the country’s economic decline from which it will never recover until the matter is properly dealt with. But since it is only Zanu PF’s voice that is heard on the matter; the party’s position and thus the nation’s position is the land reform has been a resounding black empowerment success.

 

Mugabe has taken the land reform as his greatest legacy he now has Zanu PF hardliners and war vets who have taken it upon themselves to defend this legacy with their very lives. In other words the nation is stuck with a failed policy it desperately need changed to turn round the economic decline! 

 

It is not only Mugabe and Zanu PF who have taken advantage of the fact that the Zimbabwean people have no political voice and have thus sort to impose their own narrative on the nation. The country’s opposition leaders and parties have done the same. Professor Welshman Ncube has jumped on to the same bandwagon.

 

Professor Ncube, together with his fellow MDC leaders like Morgan Tsvangirai,Tendai Biti, david Coltart, Obert Gutu, Eddie Cross, etc. were tasked after the signing of the 2008 GPA to implement a raft of democratic reforms and write a new democratic constitution to ensure future elections are free, fair and credible. At the time, the GNU was given 18 months but it lasted 60 months over three times as long but, worse still, they failed to deliver the set tasks.

 

MDC failed to get even one of the many reforms implemented; not one.

 

The new Copac constitution presented to the nation was a weak and feeble one which was never going to deliver free and fair elections contrary to MDC leaders like Professor Ncube and Tsvangirai’s repeated promises before the March 2013 referendum that it will.

 

Just as Mugabe has stubbornly refused to admit his land reform was a total failure and offered all manner of stupid excuses for the subsequent economic failures; MDC leaders too have stubbornly refused to own up that they sold-out in failing to implement the reforms and they too have offered all manner of feeble excuses. 

 

“Readers will recall that the new national constitution contained new clauses on electoral reforms and that an agreed new Electoral Act had been agreed to,” proffered Professor Ncube.  “But before it could be enacted and operationalized, ZANU PF abandoned the GPA electoral roadmap and with the support, some might say connivance, of the then Supreme Court sitting as a constitutional court, frog marched the country to premature elections which were then conducted under electoral laws enacted by Presidential decree but not operationalised.”

 

This is nonsense of course because the new constitution alone, even if it had been a democratic one, was never going to deliver free and fair elections without the raft of reforms. MDC had failed to get even one reform implemented. Not one!

 

Even if the nation was to accept that the operationalization of the Electoral Act was all that was required to guarantee free and fair elections; one has to ask why MDC had failed to get the new constitution approved and the Act operational in five years. They were supposed to have done all this in 18 months, they had 60 months instead and yet still failed to complete the job!

 

If there was any question of Mugabe “frog matching” the nation into the elections then there was also the question of MDC dragging their feet to avoid elections.

 

“I still remember vividly the woman from Binga,” wrote Professor Ncube, “who had voted for the party at a polling station in Binga and was shocked on reading the election results put up at the door of the polling station showing that the candidates she had voted for had obtained no votes at all and had to sell her goat to come to the MDC Bulawayo Regional office to seek an explanation as to how it could have happened when she together with others had voted for the party at that polling station. Even more disappointing for her was our inability to explain to her how such electoral outcomes were possible in those circumstances.”

 

Why did you not tell her the truth Professor; that she was not the only one disappointed with the rigged elections; that you had been warned about implementing the reforms by ignored warnings because you had sold-out; that you are boycotting all elections because all party donors deserted you because you are corrupt and incompetent; etc.

 

“I therefore insist that by not participating we are sending a strong message that there should be a change. It is not the mechanistic exercise of fake elections that brings democracy. Elections must be Elections, which means they must present a real opportunity for people to make a choice between or among different political parties/ individuals,” pleaded Professor Ncube.

“My colleagues and I who lead the opposition parties have to be prepared to defer our dreams for better national good rather than pursuing rent-seeking parochial interests. The MDC and I are in it for the long haul – to win – not just dressing the devil in pin -striped suits to conceal its evil nature.”

But is that not the point Professor; that throughout the five years of the GNU you and you fellow MDC leaders “pursued rent-seeking parochial interests” and kicked the reforms into the tall grass. You are now counting on the Zimbabwe electorate not noticing you betrayed them and thus get yourself elected back into power again.

 

If Zimbabwe had been a healthy and functioning democracy you, Professor Ncube, and your MDC friends would have apologized to the nation on 31 July 2013 for selling-out and then resigned from the political stage, never to be heard or seen again. Since you lot will not do the honourable thing and resign someone has to tell the nation the truth about you and ensure you are never ever elected into office again.

 

Professor Ncube you sold-out during the GNU and that is the truth!

Mugabe says SA needs "liberating" - it is Zim that needs liberating from the tyrant!

As if it is not bad enough that Mugabe has no regard for the rule of law or the suffering of others, including his own people; now he is piling on the pressure for others to follow his example.

In his sick way, Mugabe has now come up with a “new” cause of the wave xenophobia attacks of black foreigners by South African blacks – the late SA President and world honour statesman, Nelson Mandela got political freedom but failed to economically empower the black South Africans.

 “This is what Nelson Mandela forgot to do,” said Mugabe. “He (Mandela) thought freedom was number one, which was correct but when they negotiated they got freedom but with European rights preserved.”

After helping end white racist rule in 1980, Mugabe has overseen the transfer of prime farmland from a few thousands whites to black Zimbabweans and is now targeting foreign-owned mines and industries.

“It’s a xenophobia of whites, not of blacks. You cannot live in palaces while others are living in shanties. Anyway, the ANC should take care of that,” he said.

During the SADC Heads of State meeting in Victoria Falls last year, after which meeting Mugabe assumed the chairmanship of the regional body, the Zanu PF regime tried its best to sell to the other leaders is land policy as a template of black empowerment other should follow. There were no takers then but clearly Mugabe has not given up.  

“So we must help them. They need another liberation,” said Mugabe.

Poor President Zuma he has the nosy devilish neighbour everybody dread!

 

Yes Mugabe transferred prime farmland from a few thousands whites to black Zimbabweans but not just to any black Zimbabwean; a select few black Zimbabweans got the farms, with some getting as many as five farms each, who all failed to make productive use of the farms.

 

The collapse of Zimbabwe’s agricultural turned the country from a net exporter of food and other agricultural products to a net import of food. Worse still, because the country’s economy has driven by the agricultural sector, the collapse of the later triggered the collapse of the national economy too. The national economy took a nose dive following the start of the invasion of white owned farms in 2 000 and it has never recovered.

 

Mugabe’s white farm invasion benefited the luck few in the ruling elite but it was been a total disaster for the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans, the victims of the food shortage and the economic collapse.

 

Mugabe has never held free, fair and credible elections in all his 35 years in power and hence the ordinary people have never had any democratic say on the Zanu PF regime’s land policy or any other policies. But after successfully rigging the elections the regime has always used the manufactured landslide victory as proof of the popular support of its policies. 

 

It is all very well for a leader like Mugabe who is not democratically accountable to the people to pedal his failed policy that benefited a few at the expense of the majority as great success story. Mugabe knows there are many very naïve and gullible people in SA will see themselves as the new farm owner should President Zuma institute a similar system. As far as they are concerned SA’s farm redistribution will result in the empowerment of the blacks with none of the negatives Zimbabwe had.

 

President Zuma is shrewd enough to know a chaotic land redistribution, similar to that in Zimbabwe, will result in the fall in agricultural production, if not total collapse, and that the country’s economy will also be adversely effected. Mugabe got away with it but President Zuma will not be so lucky because SA, unlike Zimbabwe, is a democratic country with a tradition of holding free, fair and credible elections!

 

President Zuma and his ANC regime will not get away with a chaotic farm invasion that will benefit a few at the expense of the overwhelming majority; that much is clear.

 

Former President Nelson Mandela’s greatest legacy to the people of SA is that he gave them a healthy and functioning democracy in which the freedoms and rights of all its people including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country and the right to life itself is guaranteed. A healthy and functioning democracy is something Mugabe has completely failed to understand; he has continued to ride roughshod over the people’s freedoms and rights.

 

Mugabe the bully he is, is not only used to denying his own people a meaningful say in the governance of Zimbabwe he now wants to bully President Zuma to follow in his footsteps. Mugabe wants SA to implement his failed policies in the name of black empowerment regardless of all the evidence of how miserably his policies have failed.

 

“So we must help them. They need another liberation,” said Mugabe. How arrogant. How typically, how arrogant. It is Zimbabwe that needs to be liberated from a corrupt and murderous tyrant!

Mavhinga is still wittering about ZimAsset plan - with such a confused lot no wonder Mugabe is refusing to change!

 

Confusion in the Zimbabwe public over the political and economic reality in the country is stopping Mugabe accept the political reality that he has failed and the need for regime change.

 

 

"Instead of focusing on ZimAsset and how to finance it for economic development and the improvement of people's lives, Zanu-PF's focus now is on petty party positions which do not benefit the people. This party does not know how to put people first," Dewa Mavhinga said. - See more at: http://www.bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-national-byo-67894.html#sthash.N7oHv0XT.dpuf

 

 

Get real Dewa!

 

Mugabe’s ZimAsset plan was designed to throw lots and lots of cash, $27 billion to be exact, on the economy with no attempt being made to address the mismanagement and corruption behind the economic meltdown. The plan was to overwhelm these wasteful practices with the cash so that cash left over then be put to productive use resulting in the hoped for economic recovery.

 

No donor, not even the Chinese, have been sold to this hare-brain scheme and hence ZimAsset is now died because no one was prepared to bankroll the plan. No one in Zanu PF itself still talk of ZimAsset, they know the plan is dead in the water, and so they too must be surprised that someone like Dewa Mavhinga still thinks so highly of the plan!

 

 

Even the brain-dead Zanu PF hardliners have given up on ZimAsset and have been forced to revisit the party’s time honoured “no regime change” stance and to question how much longer the party can resist implementing the democratic reforms which will spell its demise. The party has successfully rigged past elections to achieve the “no regime change” objective and got away with it. The country’s worsening economic situation is forcing everything to be reviewed.

 

 

There is no doubt that the country is facing a serious economic meltdown, so serious it is not socially and politically unsustainable. Since Zanu PF’s ZimAsset plan is died in the water and the party has no plan B to deliver the economic recovery and thus end the economic meltdown, the party has no choice but to accept the implementation of the cursed democratic reforms.

 

Since Zanu PF, at least as it is presently politically constituted, will never deliver any economic reforms it is imperative that democratic reforms are implemented and fresh free and fair elections held. The regime to emerge out of these elections will have the democratic mandate to carryout far reaching economic reforms and the confidence of donors and investors alike – the pre-requisites for economic recovery.

 

Mugabe is shrewd enough to know that the “no regime change” mantra that had saved him so well until now had ran its course and regime change is now as certain as sun rise. The only reason the tyrant has not bitten the bullet and stepped down is because he can see there is still a lot of confusion in the political opposition parties’ camp and in the Zimbabwe public too. That anyone as prominent and respectable as Dewa Mavhinga should still be wittering about ZimAsset shows there are still a lot of confused Zimbabweans out there. As long as confusion continues to rule the roost, Mugabe will hope against hope that he will never have to accept regime change!

MDC-T's secret "strategy" to end scourge of violence is a lie for us to drop demand for all GPA reforms!

The issue of politically motivated intimidation, harassment, beatings, rapes and murders is a very important matter in the nation’s fight for free, fair and credible elections. It is therefore infuriating that MDC’s corrupt and incompetent leaders still fail to deal with this matter with the seriousness and urgency the matter demand!

 

“Asked if his party has found a strategy to counter a recurrence of the violence ahead of the next elections in 2018, MDC-T spokesperson Obert Gutu gave an emphatic yes,” reported New Zimbabwe.

"We definitely have a solution but it would be full hardy for me to disclose matters of strategy," Gutu said, adding, "But I want your readers to appreciate that this time around Zanu-PF will not have its cake and eat it. We will definitely send them packing."

“However, during the 2013 campaign period, top MDC politicians, among them Theresa Makone, who was both party women's assembly secretary and cabinet minister, openly urged supporters to retaliate when attacked by the enemy.

 

"If you are beaten up, hit back. We do not want people who just take it lying down. Look today there are very few women here-many have stayed home because they are afraid of what happened here last week when there was violence," she said then.”

 

There is no doubt that MDC-T has no answer to Zanu PF’s culture of violence to achieve political goals other than “If they hit you, hit back!” Mrs Makone was advocating. This is worse than an eye for an eye until the whole nation is blind! These MDC morons know the Zanu PF thugs have the whole state machinery; the Police, Army, CIO and the Courts; every time the opposition have tried to fight back, they have only made things even worse.

 

These MDC leaders have been out telling their supporters to fight back and they jump back in their cars and go back to the relative safety of their low-density urban homes. If they are followed there they have escape further afield. Tsvangirai took the fastest 100m dash to the Netherlands Embassy last time Zanu PF thugs drove past his house.

 

It is the poor MDC supporters and the ordinary Zimbabweans, with nowhere to go or hide, who have had to deal with the wave after wave of Zanu PF thugs, war vets and the whole State machinery on their own. Tell these people to fight back is like telling a mouse cornered by a gang of cats to fight back.

 

In wanton political violence of 2008, Mugabe used the reckless fight-back calls to justify his claim that the violence was “from both sides of the political divide”!

 

This top secret MDC-T “strategy” that will stop Zanu PF’s culture of violence is nothing but yet another MDC empty promise that will add up to naught just their repeated promise that the Copac constitution would deliver free and fair elections. Tsvangirai claim the new constitution was an “MDC child” which was a blatant lie; Mugabe “dictated the constitution” boasted MP Paul Mnangagwa, the Zanu PF Copac co-chair. The real test was to confirm this, the new constitution failed to deliver free and fair elections.

 

What is really annoying in this is there is an answer to ending Zanu PF’s culture violence; implement the raft of democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) design to cut the political umbilical cords that have made it impossible for State institutions like the Police to carry out their duties without the present Zanu PF partisan bias.

 

Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends had five years during the GNU to implement these reforms but failed to get even one reform implemented. Not one!

 

SADC, who were the guarantor of the GPA, reminded MDC of the need to implement the reforms but MDC ignored the warnings. Mugabe bribed MDC with the gravy train lifestyles plus the $4 million Highlands mansion for Tsvangirai to forget about the reforms. Of course MDC betrayed the nation in failing to implement the reforms and thus deal with this scourge of political violence and all the other related problems that have made it impossible to hold free and fair elections. They sold-out!

 

Last month MDC-T came up with a list of eight reforms they want Zanu PF to implement for them to end their election boycott. None of the eight demands would end the scourge of violence and, no doubt, the nation is to assume MDC-T’s secret weapon will deal with the violence problem!

 

After the sell-out during the GNU MDC did not just lose the rigged July 2013 elections their also lost all political credibility with SADC, the donors who had funded their political activities and with the people of Zimbabwe too. As more and more realized how MDC had sold-out they stopped supporting the party.

 

MDC-T has fighting a losing battle to remain politically relevant in Zimbabwe and in their desperation the party has become reckless. The MDC-T’s attention seeking eight reform demands is one reckless gamble in that even if Zanu PF was to implement all of them, the nation will still not have free and fair elections. The promise of a secret strategy to end the Zanu PF scourge of political violence is another gamble to take the nation’s attention away from the demand to have all the GPA democratic reforms implemented as the only sure way to end the scourge of violence and deliver free and fair elections.

 

Zimbabwe’s worsening economic situation is putting Mugabe and Zanu PF under great pressure to accept meaningful political reforms. We must demand the implementation of all the GPA reforms with no compromises. To accept MDC-T’s revised list of reforms on the mistaken believe that MDC-T will have other ways of dealing with the problem of political violence and all the other problems would be a serious and foolish compromise.

 

President Mugabe and Zanu PF will continue to resist the implementation of the GPA reforms as long as they can and thus they are the main obstacle to the nation ending this corrupt and oppressive Zanu PF dictatorship. However the nation must now acknowledge that MDC leaders have now become part of the problem and not its solution; in failing to implement the reforms the cost the nation a golden opportunity during the GNU to end the dictatorship and ever since they have been coming with all manner of schemes to take our eyes off implementing all the reforms.

Mugabe arrested Dzamara to avoid regime change: it is the path we chose to avoid our destiny that leads us there!

Sometimes one meets their destiny by the path they chose to avoid it! “Regime change” has been the one curse Mugabe and Zanu PF have left no stone unturned to avoid. And the regime has successfully avoided regime change, until the July 2013 elections which the regime claimed a victory but has turned out to be hollow victory. Since that rigged election, the wheels have fallen off the Zanu PF juggernaut but it seems it was the arrest of Itai Dzamara, a fly in the ointment, which has made regime change more certain than ever.

 

Itai Dzamara and a handful of followers staged a few public demonstrations demanding that Mugabe and his cabal must resign because they had failed to deliver on their promise to bring economic prosperity. Mugabe, painfully aware of his regime’s abysmal economic record and the worsening economic situation; arrested Dzamara and no one knows what has happened to him.

 

Mugabe thought Dzamara would serve as a warning to the nation to all those who should dare to challenge his rule and as for Dzamara himself, Mugabe was sure he would soon be forgotten. Dzamara has not been forgotten and instead pressure is growing on the regime to find him. Last week it was the EU who was demanding Dzamara’s release and now the Americans are adding their voice.

 

"This to us (disappearance of Dzamara) is something that raises significant concerns and we have discussed with the government that they have to conduct a full and transparent investigation," said US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, Steven Feldstein.

"We have had the allegations and the circumstances of the disappearance and I think it's important that we have the facts as quickly as we can.”

The facts are that Mugabe rigged the July 2013 elections and thought it was going to be plain sailing from there on. He has had many very rude awakenings.

 

The first and immediate awakening from the economy; shares in the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) fell by a staggering 35% on the news of Zanu PF election victory and the economy has been on a nose-dive trajectory ever since. Mugabe thought he would rig economic recovery with his ZimAsset plan which did not seek to address the underlying economic problems of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption but instead overwhelm these wasteful structural weaknesses by throwing lots and lots of money, $27 billion, into the economy.

 

Sadly Mugabe failed to get any donor to bankroll his plan. Not even his “all weather friends”, the Chinese, were prepared to finance such a hare-brain scheme. So ZimAsset is well and truly died in the water.

 

The economic meltdown which had started with the fall of ZSE shares has been on a home run for over a last year. Companies has closed, unemployment has soar to 90%, over 16% of the people now live in abject poverty, etc. and the situation is get worse by the day. As long as Zanu PF remains in power the economic meltdown is set to get even worse.

 

 

The second rude awakening for Mugabe is in-fighting that has broken out within his own party Zanu PF. The economic meltdown has resulted in a significant shrinkage of the national cake and Mugabe’s bloated army of cronies and hanger on have started fighting amongst themselves over the small cake like a clan of hyenas fighting over a hare. The fight is to the death because all those who are purged from the party will face poverty.

 

The third rude awakening for Mugabe has been the realisation that Zimbabwe faces social unarrest because the economic meltdown was social and politically unsustainable. The regime was hoping the arrested and disappearance of Dzamara would serve as a warning to all those who dare threaten his rule.

 

To the people the economic meltdown is like the forest fire to a herd of buffalo; just as the herd know the lions are a serious threat the buffalo know the lions will kill one or two individuals whereas the forest fire will wipe out the whole herd, similarly the people know the economic meltdown threatens the whole nation and not a few individuals the regime will pick off.

 

The demands by the West for the regime to reveal what it has done with Dzamara means the regime’s threatening move has, if anything, backfired; the regime’s human rights record is under even closer scrutiny than ever, it is being forced to scale down its plans to use force to subdue an increasingly restless public at the time when it should be stepping up!

 

In the economy Mugabe has met more that his match! He has stayed as head of his party, Zanu PF, for 50 years and as head of the country for 35 years because he was able to bribe, cheat, bamboozle and even kill his political opponents within his party and outside. His gravy train honey pot trap not even the threats of murder had any effect on the economy; it had neither human weaknesses to be exploited nor backside to be kicked.

 

Yes, it can now be said, that whereas all humans had failed to force Mugabe to accept regime change; it was the economic meltdown that started in earnest the day Mugabe rigged the July 2013 elections that forced the tyrant to accept regime change.

 

The irony of all ironies, it was the decades of mismanagement and corruption that has fuelled the economic meltdown and it was Mugabe’s own political patronage system that created these cancers and their denial that has allowed them to grow and spread. After three and half decades, with some tumours the size of tennis ball, the cancers have come home to roost in their millions like red-billed quelea!

 

The tumours must be removed or the economy will collapse and since Mugabe and Zanu PF have neither the political will nor the political credibility to be trust to carry out this ask there is no other way out than for Mugabe and Zanu PF to step aside. The regime change they have killed in the past to avoid it now as certain as sun rise.

 

It was the arrest of Dzamara, ostensibly to stem wave of social unrest, which has trigged the tsunami wave that is now sweeping the regime aside! Yes it is the path one takes to avoid their destiny, regime change for Mugabe, which leads them to that destination.

Kasukuwere warned he "is a dead man walking" but then so is Mugabe!

At a recent press conference war vets savagely attacked Zanu PF political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere accusing him of plotting to remove Mugabe with the British and Americans – a mortal sin in Zanu PF theology.  

 

“Tyson (Kasukuwere’s nickname) is a dead man walking,” a senior Zanu PF official told the Daily News.

 

Not that anyone is surprised; Zanu PF is a party of thugs, they do not live by any civilized laws. The only law they know and understand is the law of the jungle – screw them before they screw you! They call each other comrade but they would smile at you, kiss you and then stab you; they can do that in reverse order too, just for the hell of it. They trust no one; they have never trusted any one. They do not trust themselves so how can they trust someone else.

 

War vet leader Victor Mutemadanda, spearheading the purge of Kasukuwere, is but an overzealous new version of yesteryear war vet thug Jabulani Sibanda. Victor was wittering about Kasukuwere plotting regime change with the British. What is so insulting about this is for the last 35 years this Zanu PF regime has denied the people of Zimbabwe a meaningful say in the governance of the country. The regime has held the regular elections but always tampered with the process to produce a “no regime change” result.

 

What is so insulting is the regime has systematically denying a meaningful vote but to add hot chilli to the open wound has maintained that it is outsiders and not Zimbabweans who want free and fair election with regime change as one possible outcome.

 

The whites treated blacks as immature infants; they insisted in calling blacks were “Boy” or “Girl” regardless how old the individual happen to be. They denied the blacks a vote for exactly the same reason ten year olds do not have a vote the world over.

 

Independence did not bring exactly the one-man-one-vote the nation had been promised; as far as Mugabe and Zanu PF were concerned the only vote that counted was one guaranteeing no regime change any other vote was discarded. Mugabe has corrupt all the state institutions like courts, Police, etc.; instead of courts safe guarding the freedoms and rights of the people they have made it possible for Mugabe to ride roughshod over the people’s hopes and dreams of freedom, justice and liberty in pursuit of his singular goal of “no regime change”! Misguided war vets like Mutemadanda and Sibanda have been the tyrant’s willing foot soldiers in his satanic scheme.

 

It is clear that Mugabe’s ZimAsset plan has failed to deliver economic recovery and as long as the tyrant remains in power the economic meltdown; which is behind the unemployment soaring to 90%, has forced 16% of our people into abject poverty, etc.; will only get worse.

 

We need to end this stupid “no regime change” nonsense Mugabe has imposed on the nation; it is an oxymoron to civilized free and fair elections. We want the democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 GPA implemented and fresh free and fair elections held.

 

The nation accepts that Zanu PF is a party of thugs and that is imploding.  Kasukuwere was the pack leader of the thugs who hunted down and purged Jabulani Sibanda, Joice Mujuru and many of her supporters out of the party last year. Today, hardly a year later, Kasukuwere is himself the hunted as for Mutemadanda, he will be next.

 

No one in Zimbabwe is going to lose sleep because Kasukuwere has been purged or even killed. What the nation will not accept it an attempt by any of the Zanu PF factions to national struggle get the democratic reforms implemented so there can be fresh free and fair elections.

 

Mugabe can purge Kasukuwere and his followers out of the party or even have them all killed it makes no difference to the people of Zimbabwe but what he must understand is demand for him to step down so that all the democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 GPA can be implemented followed by fresh free and fair elections still remains on the table. Indeed the nation views all his internal party wars as a distraction and a waste of time; Zimbabwe must end the economic meltdown a.s.a.p. and therefore has no time to waste on petty Zanu PF factional war!

 

The present economic meltdown is socially and politically unsustainable and since the only way the nation can ever hope for economic recovery is by way of regime change then regime change is now as certain as sun rise. Mr Mugabe, you have managed to avoid regime change for 35 years but will not do so now; politically, you are the dead man walking!

Magaisa team with The Herald to send opposition into wild goose chase whilst the hare, Mugabe, get away!

Dr Alex Magaisa teams up with the Herald to send the opposition on a wild goose chase as the opposition chases Mugabe’s 63% popularity rating according to an Afrobarometer survey.

 

“My message to the opposition in the wake of the Afrobarometer survey has been that the opposition should not be flippant in their response to its findings. Even if they have criticisms of the report and believe that it is not a true reflection of the people's attitudes, my advice has been to adopt the "What if it is correct?" approach,” Magaisa told The Herald Political Editor, Tichaona Zindoga in a long interview.

 

“In other words, even if you don't believe it, assume that it might be right and find ways of addressing the issues that it raises.”

 

This is a nauseatingly nonsensical argument, design to set the opposition on a wild goose chase whilst the hare they should be after is allowed to get away. 

 

No doubt Dr Magaisa gave MDC the same stupid “what if it is correct!” advice in 2012 following another Afobarometer survey that gave Mugabe a higher popularity rating than MDC. MDC took their eyes off the ball – of implementing the democratic reforms – then to focus on holding nationwide political rallies which had MDC leaders criss-crossing the country east to west and north to south and everywhere else in between to improve their rating.

 

In the end Mugabe did not “win” the July 2013 elections because he was popular but because he was able to blatantly rig the election; that is the irrefutable historic fact. Nearly one million voters failed to cast their vote, most of them were suspected to be MDC supporters, in that election because Mugabe, with the help of the Israeli company Nikuv, had deliberately posted the voters names in the wrong constituency.

 

Zanu PF supporters were issued with voter registration slips which allowed them to vote although their names were not in the voters roll. The arrangement these supporters to at more than one polling station. There were many confirmed reports of bussed in voters voting on elections day.

 

If MDC had ignored the Afrobarometer’s survey and just concentrated on task of implementing all the democratic reforms, as SADC and other parties advised, then MDC would have stopped Nikuv tampering with the voters roll, for example, because an independent and none partisan ZEC would have ensured an accurate voters roll was produced and released to all parties on time.

 

There would have been no bussed in voters because a reformed Zimbabwe Republic Police would have arrested those involved and thus nipped that vote rigging trick in the bud, etc. In short, the July 2013 elections would have been free, fair and credible.

 

Instead of advising MDC to once again concentrate on getting all the democratic reforms implemented and thus stop a repeat of the July 2013 elections in Zimbabwe’s next elections; Magaisa is once again telling the opposition to take their eyes off the ball. And judging from MDC-T’s response the distraction is working!

 

“Naturally, the MDC will use the (Afrobarometer) report to inform its strategies going forward. These types of surveys assist us in providing data on the electoral environment,” responded MDC-T spokesman Obert Gutu.

In all it’s over 15 years in politics MDC-T has never produced anything anyone could call a “strategy” and no one expects these corrupt and incompetent individuals to do so now or ever.

MDC failed to implement even one reform in their five years in the GNU because they are incompetent, they swallowed hook, line and sinker of Magaisa’s stupid advice, and corrupt, Mugabe bribed them to kick reforms into the tall grass. Of course MDC leaders “sold-out” as Mukanya Thomas Mapfumo rightly pointed out. 

“It is an indisputable fact that the present political environment in Zimbabwe is dominated by fear and insecurity largely because of the tyrannical and dictatorial tendencies of the Zanu PF regime. Since attaining independence in April, 1980, the Zanu PF regime has, over the years, perfected the art of political thuggery, voter intimidation and electoral manipulation,” continued Gutu, with his usual breath-taking incompetence.

MDC-T has already produced a watered down list of eight reforms from the original raft of democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 GPA. Whilst MDC-T has rightly identified Zanu PF’s culture of political violence as a serious impediment to the holding of free, fair and credible elections yet none of the eight reforms the party has demanded will do anything to end this serious problem. Nothing!

 

Even if Afrobarometer’s survey was right and one accepted Magaisa’s "What if it is correct?" approach; still it would have made no sense back in 2012 to ignore the implementation of the democratic reforms given Mugabe’s historic record of rigged elections. Today, with the benefit of hindsight of yet another Zanu PF blatantly rigged July 2013 elections; one would expected MDC’s commitment to getting ALL the democratic reforms implemented properly unshakeable. Instead MDC is again neglecting this task to chasing this popularity rat race!

 

'Tsvangirai has no formula against Zanu-PF,” says Magaisa. Well that one is true regardless of whether Dr Magaisa is a stupid advisor giving stupid advice or Dr Magaisa is in fact a double agent pedalling stupid advice to an equally stupid opposition. If indeed Tsvangirai had the formula against Zanu PF then the latter would not have found it so easy to blatantly rig the July 2013 elections. It is already clear that Zanu PF will rig the next elections if allow MDC to dictate what reforms should be implemented next time!