To rig the 2013 elections Mugabe chewed and swallowed hippos hide now he is choking on hide of a calf, rigging economic recovery

“The government has yet again deferred pay dates for civil servants, in a sign the country’s exchequer is struggling to raise money to pay the State’s bloated 230,000 workforce,” reported the New Zimbabwe.

 

Throughout the GNU years Mugabe and Zanu PF set out an elaborate plan to rig the coming elections. In the past the tyrant had used brute force to beat, rape and even murder his political opponents and the ordinary people to retain political power. After the wanton violence in the run-off presidential elections and with SADC and the whole world watching, the tyrant knew violence was out of the question.

 

 If he was going to rig the next elections he was going to bribe and cheat - no violence. And that is exactly what he did.

 

Mugabe allowed Tsvangirai and his MDC friends to join the Zanu PF ruling elite on the gravy train and they were to be denied nothing. Tsvangirai got a $4 million mansion and with all the glob-trotting he did, he lived out of his suitcase. He took to this life like a duckling to water for he was often seen playing golf or frolicking in the pool of Cruise Ships with women of ill repute.

 

Mugabe wanted Tsvangirai and MDC distracted so they do not implement the democratic reforms which foil his plan to rig the elections. He paid a premium price for this but it worked. Not even one reform was implemented; not one.

 

Mugabe paid $13 million to the Israeli company NIKUV who help him corrupt the voters roll by inflating the number of voters and thus facilitate the multiple voting by Zanu PF youths. NIKUV also deliberately moved names of suspected MDC supporters from their local Polling Station to one they did not expect.

 

NIKUV's dirty voters roll work was not rocket science, which is why the regime has stubbornly refused to release the voters roll, and certainly not worth the princely price Mugabe paid; but he did pay.

 

Mugabe paid millions of dollars to PR companies in UK and USA to spruce up his image.

 

Mugabe paid the hired crowds bussed in to attend party rallies, bought all the party regalia, paid the youths bussed from one polling station to the next casting the multiple votes, paid the hundreds of thousands of individual who manned the additional polling stations no one else knew about until two days before the elections, paid all those CIOs who implemented the plan, etc. Total all this up and one is looking at billions of dollars!

 

In the end Mugabe got what he wanted; he was able to blatantly rig the elections and to retain his grip on power. 

 

Ever since his electoral victory Mugabe has grappled with a tougher opponent not so easily bamboozled like Tsvangirai - the national economy. His reckless spending to finance his vote rigging plans only helped to bring the economic reality sharply into focus. The government was broke and therefore the regime would not be able to meet any of its promises made during the elections.

 

Mugabe promised to double the salaries of civil servants so no one would be paid less than $500.00 a month. In the end it settles for a misery increase taking the minimum wage to $320. But even that the regime is struggling to pay.

 

Then there is the regime's flagship $27 billion ZimAsset economic recovery plan; nine month since the July 2013 elections the regime has yet to get even one dollar in the begging bowl. Not even the Chinese have paid a single Yuan.

 

In his desperate effort to reassure would-be investors that their investments were safe, Mugabe has even allowed Chinamasa to publicly denounce his pre-elections indigenisation policy forcing investors to sell 51% of their shares as “nonsense”. No investors took the bait; they know the regime is notorious for reneging on its promised and treats.

 

The regime has now been offering to the nation’s mineral wealth to the Indians and Chinese for a song! They too have hesitated to take the bait because they know no future Zimbabwean government would honour such exploitative deals.

 

Unless Mugabe can rig economic recovery the same way he rig the July 2013 elections then his rig on power is not as strong as he had hoped. All these reports of the regime struggling to pay civil servants much less pay for anything else is proof rigging the economic recovery is proving to be a bridge too far even for the seasoned Robert Gabriel Mugabe with seven rigged national elections under his belt already! 

Mugabe was convinced once he was back in power the whole world would be forced to accept the political reality that there will be no regime change in Zimbabwe and they will all have to do business with him on his terms. To him the real challenged was how to rigging the national elections, especially when he could no longer resort to his tried and trusted method of using brute force; rigging the economic recovery was going to be child’s play.  

“Chidya matovo akazodzipwa medovo remhuru,” so says the Shona saying. After chewing and swallowing the last bit of the thick and tough hippopotamus’ hide – rigging the national elections; Mugabe is now choking on the hide of a calf – rigging the economic recovery.