According to Zimbabwe’s voter roll there are 41 000 Zimbabweans over the age of 100 years four times the number of centenarians in Britain although the latter has more than twice Zimbabwe’s life expectancy and five time our population.
I wish the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) had dug deeper into Zimbabwe’s voting system because they would have uncovered a lot more dirty. In 1995 Ms Margret Dongo, an Independent candidate but former Zanu PF MP and CIO operative, challenged the result of the Harare South parliamentary election giving victory to her Zanu PF opponent. Ms Dongo produced sworn statements from people who had been bused from other constituencies by Zanu PF had voted in Harare South. A number of dead people were still on the voters’ roll and surprise, surprise some of the dead had “voted” too!
Before the Ms Dongo court challenge Registrar General Mudede would have no doubt boasted the Zimbabwe’s voters’ roll was “100% perfect”. In 1995 Mudede conceded there were irregularities in the initial 1995 Harare South elections. Ms Dongo won the rerun.
The Mugabe dictatorship is a big monster with long tentacles touching every corner of Zimbabwe society and it has corrupted everything that touched. It is not just the Police, Army, Judiciary, Media, the Reserve Bank and a few other more obvious institutions that require reforming in Zimbabwe; everything façade of Zimbabwe society need democratic reform.
Mudede is a very important part of the Zanu PF dictatorship and having a multitude of errors in the voters’ roll gives the regime countless ways to rig results. Of course the voters’ roll is perfect for Mugabe’s the sinister purposes!
Still the pressure for regime change has been mounting year after year; not even the creativity manipulation of the voter’ roll or the brutal intimidation of the voters could deliver a Mugabe victory in March 2008. Zimbabweans are more determined than ever, the coming elections will deliver a decisive victory for the people and the serious business of reforming the Police, the Army, Registrar General’s Office, etc can begin.
99999
@Madmom
We sometimes make the mistake of demanding democratic qualities from our leaders or more specifically national leaders when these same qualities are noticably lacking in the rest of our society. If there is no democratic debate in our schools, offices and homes how can we expect it in parliament?
I do not like to be criticised and I do like to "Lord" over everyone. But I admit I hate anyone "Lording" over me and I do reject the notion that I should not express my opinion on matters affecting my life - even if the said opinions should turn out to be wrong, I still believe it is my right to express them.
Societies that have encourage the free flow of information and ideas, debate and criticism have greatly benefited because the competition it created has force everyone to think through carefully before they spoke or acted. This has allowed few mistakes to be made and, when mistakes have been made, to learn from them and thus avoid repeating them. When there is no debate or competition half digested ideas are the steeple food. And when mistakes are made; autocratic system compound them by going into denial or finding a scapegoat for their failures.
Stifling criticism will benefit the individual but like it or not mankind is a social animal and no nation let alone individual can exist in total isolation and so, as a society, we have to agree on the rules to govern our interaction.
The problem is not so much that the Julius Malema and Robert Mugabe of our world do not know the basic human rights and freedoms which should be the entitlement of all citizens. That they do; they never tire to remind us how the white colonial regimes denied them and the blacks these rights. They problem is that now they are in a position of power and authority they see nothing wrong with denying everyone else these same rights.
They have managed to conned the black majority to go along with them by tell them a) that political rights like freedom of expression, the right to free and fair elections and even the right to life are not important. It is the economic rights they should be concerned about.
b) the mismanagement, corruption and ultimately the looting of the nation’s wealth and resources will benefit the poor when in reality it is the few who benefit at the expense of the majority.
“I have found the leaders and their adherents do not like criticism,” you said. I would agree with that too. Leaders like Mugabe wanted a one-party dictatorship and never made any bones about it. The same can be said about almost all the African leaders. Their followers were whipped into believing a one-party dictatorship will be best for them too. It is easy to see why they followed like sheep; the only political debate they knew and understood was that of dominate or be dominated; eat or be eaten!
Mugabe devoured the opposition and with all his critics silence he turned on all Zanu PF supporters who dared complain that his policies were hurting them! After thirty years of corruption and repression there no Zimbabweans, except the dictator’s cronies, who still believe the dictatorship was good.
Even latter African leaders like Morgan Tsvangirai and Museveni of Uganda who stood on a platform of democratic reform they too are as autocratic as the leaders they sought to replace. MDC is no more democratic than Zanu PF.
Given a chance the ordinary people will embrace democracy, like the sheep in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, they will agree with whoever happened to be speaking at the time at first but with time they will learn to distinguish rhetoric from fact. Left to their on devices leaders will never allow the electorate to criticise them The Arab Spirit has shown the rest of us how to break the vicious cycle of replacing one dictatorship with another.
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