The
Communist Party of China reportedly (CPC) warned Zanu PF provisional chairpersons
visiting China in 2012 to receive “ideological
and mass mobilization training” in preparation for the 2013 elections that Zanu
PF “must embrace change or die”!
The change the Chinese wanted to see was not quite the
same change most Zimbabweans had been talking about in democratic change. The
Zanu PF officials were not in China to be trained on how to win free and fair elections;
what do these Chinese know about that, the CPC has never ever held any meaningful
free elections since seizing power in 1949. The CPC has faithfully changed the CPC top
leadership every ten years; that is the change they wanted Zanu PF to embrace!
After three decades of the same incompetent, corrupt
and oppressive Zanu PF leadership; God knows there was crying need for change
and renewal in the party. The CPC must have been very disappointed when Mugabe
failed to listen and use the December 2012 Zanu PF Congress to effect change.
There are reports showing that the Chinese went on to
help Mugabe and Zanu PF to rig the 2013 elections but there is no doubt that
the Chinese were already wry of Mugabe. Before the elections Mugabe was buoyant
confident that the Chinese would pay most if not all of the $27 billion ZimAsset
bailout. Helping him to rig the elections was one thing giving him a blank
cheque was a bridge too far.
The only thing certain with Mugabe was that he would squander
bailout and would have nothing to show for it. This was a bottomless pit and
the Chinese were certainly not stupid to throw their money into such a hopeless
venture!
The Chinese have since made it clear that they will
not contribute even one Yuan to Mugabe’s $27 billion ZimAsset begging bowl. No
one else has contributed anything and now it is obvious that the Zimbabwe
economy is in serious trouble. The CPC, alarmed by the sheer pace of Zimbabwe’s
economic nose dive, have once again repeated their warning to Mugabe to embrace
change or die.
“The CPC officials we met were
surprisingly very candid with us,” a Zanu PF back from a recent visit to China told
the Zimbabwe Independent. “They told us in no uncertain terms that due to the
political risk of the country there was no way they would give Zimbabwe the billions
it urgently requires.
“They said although
the country was considered to be generally peaceful, there were worrying issues
that concern them which they urged us to deal with as soon as possible.
“The president’s age
was a major point of anxiety for them and his continued hold on power when he
should now be handing it over to a younger and energetic successor probably at
the party’s congress in December.”
Even if there was to
be a changing of the guard in December it is inconceivable that is would be a far
reaching root and branch change demanded after the three decades of no change. Mnangagwa
and Mujuru, for example, have been part and parcel of the Mugabe regime for the
past three decades to be considered a change of guard but after waiting for all
these years for the chance to rule; they will fight tooth and nail to ensure
they rule.
But much more than a
change of name at the top, Zimbabwe’s economic recovery and political stability
will depend on the restoration of the rule of law and recovery of the nation’s
looted wealth, we need the seized farms put back into production again. It is
hard to see anyone in the MDC much less in Zanu PF with the vision and political
spine to deliver that.
Mugabe and Zanu PF
should have listened to their Chinese friends’ warning in 2012 to embrace
change. Sadly Zanu PF did not listen; the party’s December 2012 Congress retained
the same old, incompetent, corrupt and oppressive leaders and per se chose to
die. The only thing of real concern now is that Mugabe and Zanu PF having
chosen to sign their own death warrant they should not be allowed to drag the
whole nation into the abyss with them.
15 comments:
@ Saifa
If we are serious about getting out of the political and economic mess we are in then we must go beyond being anti Mugabe and anti Zanu PF. We could and should have achieved real political change last year and it is important that we understand why the 2013 elections were a complete failure.
Mugabe has failed to get even one single Yuan from the Chinese into his $27 billion ZimAsset bailout. The Zimbabwe economy is heading for the rocks and the crash and Mugabe and his Zanu PF crew are going down with this ship!
We must be ready to rebuild a new democratic and prosperous Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe must rise from the ashes like the Phoenix but if we can not even see how MDC has failed in the past then we will miss the chance again.
You are still stuck on Mugabe and Zanu PF - that is the a luxury Zimbabwe can ill afford. When Mugabe and Zanu PF go; we must fit the ground running. You can not see that - I can!
@ So what
The very fact that Tsvangirai has failed to remove Mugabe out of office although he has had three good chances to do so already should tell you something. Yes we all want Mugabe out but we will not do it with Tsvangirai, that is what the many wasted chances of the last years say.
Mugabe has remained in power only because Tsvangirai is a blundering and incompetent leader. Just what else does Tsvangirai have to do to prove he is incompetent? If you cannot see this then you are blind and the country cannot waste time arguing an obvious and elementary point.
THE Research and Advocacy Unit (Rau) has released a new report which questions the source of President Robert Mugabe’s controversial one million extra votes in the disputed July 31, 2013 general elections compared to the 2008 polls.
RAU questions where Mugabe got his 1.03 million votes.
“If a more complex scenario is assumed, and all the possible sources for Mugabe’s final tally are included, the problem of the unexplained votes still does not go away.
Even if one attributes every single vote from all obvious sources to Mugabe – loyal-ists from 2008, newly registered voters, assisted voters, and switches in allegiance – the source of some 134 223 votes of his tally still remains unexplained.”
Rau also tables the number of unaccounted votes by province which shows there were anomalies countrywide.
It says the unexplained votes can only be derived from fraudulent votes – either ghost polling.
Mugabe rigged the July 2013 elections and he thought he would get away with it. Even with Mugabe stubbornly refusing to release the voters roll there is enough in-formation on the public domain to question the legitimacy of Mugabe’s presidency!
Mugabe is not going to get away with rigging the vote; not this time!
ZIMBABWEAN and South African police have retrieved bodies of 15 sus-pected border-jumpers who drowned while crossing the Limpopo River recently.
We should have sorted out political problems last year when we had the best chances ever and by failing to implement the democratic reforms we wasted all those chances. And now we are paying dearly for it; the economy in total melt-down, collapsed basic services like ed-ucation and health and now the death toll is rising.
The many stories of rampant corruption, something Mugabe has denied throughout the years, has put to bed the debate of what is behind Zimbabwe’s economic melt-down. It is not the sanctions, it never was, it is rampant corruption that has caused the economic melt-down!
@ So What
I agree that we should all sympathise with those who are not so fortunate; still telling someone where they have gone wrong and thus how they can get out of their misfortune. What is wrong with telling someone to use their head.
Indeed it is you who is not using their head if you think Zimbabwe is going to get out of this economic and political mess whilst we seat on our brains.
@ Dhehwa72
Those who ask for "evidence of vote rigging" are either blind because the evidence is there already, or they are the ones who rigged the elections and therefore will never admit to vote rigging. Either way, you will be answered in time - watch this space!
Government IS broke but that has not stopped it approving $15 million car loan for the 355 MPs and Senators.
A few months ago the same government spent close to US$20 million on luxury cars, including Mercedes Benz and SUVs for 26 cabinet ministers, 13 ministers of state and 24 deputies. MPs got nothing.
MPs had become increasingly restless since the July 2013 elections, especially MDC legislatures who thought they were back on the gravy train only to find Mugabe had bundled them into the Mbombera coach which he then abandoned on a remote siding. The MPs decided to hit back.
Most of the embarrassing stories of how the various government departments have been underfunded and the salary scandals in parastatals have come out from the work of parliamentary committee. Instead of addressing the problems before him such as rampant corruption Mugabe is doing what he has always done in similar circumstances – shoot the messenger, if not bribe him!
“We had a meeting this morning (Wednesday) on the issue and it is increasingly clear that each legislator will be given a US$30 000 car loan to purchase vehicles locally. We have had a series of meetings which also discussed allowances and salaries,” one MP told the Zimbabwe Independent.
Of course, gross mismanagement and rampant corruption will continue; if we are going to hear any stories from now on they will be coming from somewhere else and not parliament. Mugabe has bought the MPs’ silence – “vhara muromo” in Shona – and it has never failed.
When Tsvangirai and his MDC friends in the GNU felt they were not being allowed granted the same gravy train privileges as their Zanu PF counterparts they too make a racket. But the day Tsvangirai got the cheque for the $4 million mansion, the gen-erous travel allowances, etc.; he, Biti, Ncube and other MDC leaders were the ones pestering the West to lift sanctions again Mugabe.
Before they received their vhara muromo they agree that Zimbabwe’s economic problems were caused by the gross mismanagement and rampant corruption. After they got their gravy train tickets the mismanagement and corruption disappeared like morning mist under the African sun!
Worse still, Tsvangirai and his MDC friends forgot about implementing any of the democratic reforms agreed in the GPA; not even the constant reminder by SADC leader could get them to do anything on this score. Zimbabwe is in this political mess because Mugabe rigged the 2013 elections because MDC failed to implement even one democratic reform.
Of course corruption is rampant in Zimbabwe, the MPs know as well as everyone that they cars, salary and generous allowances Mugabe is offering them is a bribe –vhara muromo. They will be hypocrites to condemn corruption when they have just received a bribe!
@ Twister
I have fought against censorship and as a people we have been heavily censored. We have no voice. Instead of fighting to free ourselves of all this censorship we are the ones advocating self censorship even for the most pathetic reasons.
If you write an article, you cannot respond to any comments; ""You cannot have a cake and eat it at the same time!" Nonsense!
Ideas are like milk from a cow; it is only by milking it that you stimulate the cow to produce more, it is only by exchanging ideas that we under stand the subject matter.
@ Twister
No intellectual worth his salt would stop commenting for fear that such comments could invite more comments from whoever.
If responding to comments means that I am not any intellectual, then so be it. In-deed, if that is what it means to be an intellectual then that is a badge I do not care to wear.
@ Muverengi
Tsvangirai formed MDC on the principle promise to bring democratic change. The GPA came up with a raft of democratic reforms which were supposed to be imple-mented and MDC was itself a party to that agreement. How many reforms did Tsvangirai implement? He had five years to implement the reforms but not even one reform was implemented! Now ask yourself why he failed!
If you still do not understand the connection between the failure to implement the reforms and the rigged July 2013 elections, even now with the benefit of hindsight, then you should look in the mirror to see who is shallow.
Zimbabwe is in this political and economic mess because, sadly, the country has a lot of very shallow and naïve voters like you my friend. And the nation has no hope of getting out of the mess as long as these people continue to have this closed door mentality and would not even see an incompetent individual like Tsvangirai even with a mountain of evidence to prove it.
Yes many Zimbabweans voted for Tsvangirai just as many of them voted for Mugabe is 1980; that did not stop someone becoming a tyrant and landing the whole nation in this mess. To knowingly elect a tyrant is stupid but to knowingly replace the tyrant with an incompetent idiot takes the biscuit.
The flip side is that if you are stupid you would not knowingly do these things of course!
@ Josphat
Tsvangirai said the new Copac constitution would deliver free and fair elections, for example. Are you saying he said that because he was "a junior party" in the GNU or did he believe that it would?
How can we be serious about getting ourselves out of this political mess when we will not even admit to ourselves when someone has made a blunder? Is it that we are too stupid to see the blunder or too stupid to think the blunder would have no effect if we denied it even happened?
We are not going to get out of this hell-hole Mugabe landed us until we stop burying our heads in the sand and start using our heads to think! You are in denial and thus still have your head buried in the sand!
This is a great article Eddie except for one thing; it talks about historic problems we have already dealt with and gloss over the problems that have held us back these last few years and still doing so today.
We know Ian Smith was a racist and have dealt with that in the bitter war of independence. Ian Smith is dead and buried.
We know Mugabe is a corrupt and murderous tyrant we elected Tsvangirai, you Ed-die Cross and the rest of your MDC friends to implement the democratic reforms so we could have free and fair elections and thus put an end to this repressive Zanu PF dictatorship. You lot had five years to implement the reforms and failed to have even one reform implemented.
"The election results of July 2013 put the whole economy into reverse and by the end of the year revenues to the State were in decline and the banking sector was once again in crisis and unable to pay back its depositors" you write. This is great!
You have said nothing about Mugabe being able to blatantly rig the elections be-cause none of the reforms have been implemented and it is all your fault. You did not implement the reforms necessary for free and fair elections.
In the 2008 elections the national economy was in such a mess and the people were so desperate for change they were ready to vote for anyone as long as he/she was not Mugabe. You are right Eddie "the economic situation in the country is again driving the reform and change agenda." Instead of looking closely at why the nation failed to bring about meaningful change these last five years the people are being driven into Tsvangirai's hands again.
Zimbabweans should stop wasting time on historic heroic achievements of no con-sequence whilst glossing over the real important issues. Zimbabwe is not going to get out of this political and economic mess until we implement meaningful democratic reforms. Tsvangirai and MDC did not implement even one reform throughout the five years of the GNU and they will not implement any in the future because they really do not have the foggiest idea what these reforms are about!
"Mugabe cannot provide legitimacy and democracy to this country,” Tsvangirai said to applause by party supporters.
“I am not calling for another government of national unity but am saying Mugabe cannot do anything alone. Mugabe will look for me you shall see, I won't look for him."
Here is the man who had five years to bring democracy to Zimbabwe and failed to do so. All Tsvangirai is interested in is getting back on the gravy train. He will never bring democracy nor does he really care about democracy!
Thirty officials in the justice ministry have been suspended for allegedly stealing $700,000 that was meant for the upkeep of prisoners, State media reports indicate.
Corruption is rampant in Zimbabwe and everyone is into it! What these clowns fail to realise is that there are real human being whose lives are turned completely upside down and sometimes lives are lost as a result of their selfish greed.
What all the victims of corruption and/or the relatives need to do is make sure they keep a very accurate record of what is happening and then sue all those who have authored their suffering and deaths! Change is coming; corruption is on its last legs and those smart enough to see it will have justice.
Post a Comment