Mugabe rigged the 2013 elections because Tsvangirai and us, the people, let him rig!

Ever since the draft Copac constitution was released in July last year a few of us have campaigned hard to have it rejected in the March 16^th 2013 referendum because it was too weak and feeble to deliver free and fair elections. Tsvangirai and his MDC friends said otherwise. We warned that accepting this Copac rubbish would slam the door shut to implementing the democratic reforms.

The people did not listen to the warnings and approved the Copac constitution. No one can say the just ended elections were free and fair; Mugabe did not use violence as he has done in the past, but got a landslide victory by rigging the election on a grand scale. Yes, MDC had lied about Copac delivering free and fair elections.

If the approval of the Copac constitution in the referendum had slammed the door shut to reform then the return to power of Mugabe and Zanu PF will mean the building containing the planned reforms will now be burnt to the ground.

What is at issue here is that after 28 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption that had resulted in one of the worst economic melt-down in human history; and brutal political repression that had resulted in the death of over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans Mugabe and Zanu PF were finally forced to accept democratic change in 2008. For the last five years there have been many chances to force through the democratic changes but all these chances were wasted by Tsvangirai and MDC.

Mugabe is back in office because of Tsvangirai’s breath-taking incompetence pure and simple! He failed to implement the reforms and to produce the democratic constitution – the prerequisites for free and fair elections.

This once in a generation chance to bring about change was lost because Tsvangirai took his eyes off the ball!

“The blame must be shared by all the three parties in the GNU including Mugabe,” some people have argued. Nonsense! No one in their right mind expected Mugabe to carry out any democratic reforms. So now that no reforms were implemented; are we expected to count him amongst those who should have implemented the reformers!

“Tsvangirai and MDC were only junior partners in the GNU; they had no power to force through any reforms past the all-powerful Zanu PF,” MDC die-hard loyalists would say. There is no doubt that Mugabe and Zanu PF had all the real power and that they would have fought tooth and nail to stop the reforms. But the truth is Mugabe has never had to use his dictatorial powers to stop reforms because MDC has never produced any proposed reforms for the tyrant to resist. 

SADC, as the guarantor of the GPA, would have stepped in to force Mugabe to accept reforms.

Tsvangirai would tell you in defence of his record of failures and blunders that his top priority was “to serve the nations from the economic brink!”

Yes Zimbabwe economic was on the brink in 2008; inflation then was 500 billion per cent and it dropped to single digits soon thereafter; the empty shops are now full of food and other goods; etc. So yes MDC did save the nation from some of the most telling effects of the economic melt-down – some, not all because unemployment, corruptions, etc. have continued to this day. Still there was no reason why Tsvangirai did not implement the democratic reforms.

There not one serious political analyst worth his/her salt who would even suggest that scrapping of the Z$, the lifting of price controls and all the other economic measures adopted by the GNU since 2008 to help stabilize the economy are in any way mutually exclusive with implementing democratic change. Indeed, the GNU would have achieved even greater economic recovery if there had been meaningful political reforms!

Tsvangirai did not implement the reforms because he was naïve to believe the few economic achievements he had brought were more than to guarantee MDC’s political popularity with the electorate. He went even further than that; he believed he would win the elections even if Mugabe tried to cheat and hence there was no need for him to bother implement the reforms.

As recent as Tuesday July 30^th, the day before the elections, Tsvangirai still boosted that he would win by 70%! By then everyone was concerned about the ill effects of the one sided media, the failure to issue the voters’ roll and to the name the Polling Stations, etc. Everyone was alarm that is, except Tsvangirai; he really relished  the extra challenge the situation presented – he would defeat Mugabe even after the later had tried every dirty trick to rig the vot! 

Tsvangirai presented his chubby electoral cheek to Mugabe and challenged the tyrant to give him his best shot! He was warned and knew the tyrant has a notorious reputation of fighting dirty.

B o o f u u u! Lights out! Tsvangirai did not even know what hit him!

The only good thing is that Tsvangirai’s blundering political career is over; he can now go back to Bohera and herd goats! His gamble has costed the nation the one in a generation chance to end this Zanu PF dictatorship. That is simple too high a price for the nation to pay. Those who feel sorry for Tsvangirai do not comprehend the enormity of his blundering incompetence!

The fact that Mugabe had a breathtakingly incompetent political opponent is no excuse why he has continued in his satanic ways.

 

“Very soon there will be victory celebrations, something Zanu PF is entitled to do,” wrote Nathaniel Manheru in the Herald on Saturday when it was clear Mugabe had rigged and “won” the elections. “Read against 2008, Zanu PF worked hard, won deservedly. But more fundamentally, and well beyond partisan politics, this will be a party for the victory of the country, our Zimbabwe. We have jumped past a key hurdle in our politics. For far too long violence had stalked our elective politics, threatening to create a ritualistic tradition of a bloody rite every five years.”

 

How refreshing; this is the first time a Zanu PF loyalist has admitted the party’s murderous past.

 

After 33 years of mindless political repression and violence, over 30 000 killed and still he calls this grim reality a “threat”. But that is to be expected; it only those were sheltering from the storm who talk of a “soft” rain whilst those they throw out of the shelter know it was “a hard and bitterly” rain.

 

“We had grown so used to hurting, maiming, killing and dying that we could hardly do without all of these, nay, craved for more gore” continued Manheru “Now we appear to have put that bizarre predisposition behind us, hopefully put it behind us for good.” 

 

Even the arrogant Manheru knows Zanu PF has not put its murderous past behind it for good and that is why he qualified the phrase with a “hopefully”. Mugabe explained why Zanu PF craves violence: because those liberation war heroes who have been masterminding the beatings, rapes and murders “are still in liberation war mode,” the tyrant explained!

 

And the tyrant and his murderous thugs are back in full control of the country again because Tsvangirai, MDC and we, the people, allowed them to rig the elections! Yes we, the people, played our part in this tragic saga!

 

It was U.S. president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) who defined democracy as the “Government of the people, by the people for the people”.

 

For the last two decades the people of Zimbabwe have been asking for democratic change but, alas!,  they clearly do not have the foggiest idea what it is they have been calling for. If they did then they would have been on the streets demanding the implementation of the reforms as soon as it became clear the GNU had kicked reforms into the tall grass!

How can we have a functioning and effective democratic government when those tasked to govern, the people, do not have the foggiest idea what is happening in their own village much less in the country.

Someone once said, "The best way to hide something from Black people is to put it in a book.”  He was trying to explain one of the things that have held blacks back – ignorance! Hide, why bother hide anything; I would say.

Zimbabwe is in this political mess because for decades we have refused to see Mugabe for the murderous tyrant he was. The evidence of his corrupt and tyrannical tendencies was there for all to see by the mid-1980s; we buried our heads in the sand and refused to see it!

As far back as 2002 the USA Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Chris Dell, described Tsvangirai as a “flawed and indecisive leaders” and yet we the people most affected by his incompetence refused to see it. Once again we buried our heads in the sand.

No doubt , there will be many more chances to end this Zanu PF dictatorship in the coming years but unless we stop this stupid habit of spending all our time with our heads buried in the sand; unless we do something to end the curse of ignorance those chances will be wasted too.

Right now, we should be celebrating the dawn of freedom and liberty; denied us these last 33 years. We are being asked to join Manheru, Mugabe and the rest of the Zanu PF thugs, to forget that we were once again denied our basic to a free vote, and instead join them in the celebrating the fact this year they only rigged the elections and no one was beaten, raped or killed in the bargain as had become the norm.

 

The arrogance of this Zanu PF tyranny is insufferable! Until we learn to counter it, we will have to suffer for generations!