President Mugabe
denounces the West in his Heroes Day speech, as has become the norm; it is
clear he will not be able to do this for much longer.
"As we mark the
first anniversary of the 31st July 2013 harmonised elections successfully held
under the provisions of a new home grown constitution,” said Mugabe addressing a
Heroes Day gathering.
"We rejoice that
the resounding victory enjoyed by Zanu PF put paid, put paid, put paid once and
for all to the evil machinations of regime change that were being pursued by
our erstwhile colonisers, working in cahoots with local misguided political
charlatans and quislings."
When Mugabe bamboozled the
“local misguided political charlatans and quislings” into doing nothing about
implementing the democratic reforms and into endorsing the rubbish “home grown
constitution” he thought he had it made. He went on to blatantly rig the July
2013 elections to secure his “resounding victory”.
Mugabe got the first inkling
that the vote rigging would come back and haunt him when the USA, Australia and
Canada refused to accept the elections were had been free and fair. The EU soon
followed suit. There was a huge economic price to be paid for his lack of political
credibility!
Mugabe had hoped that
the relative ease with which he had rigged the elections would show he was the
only game in town and the MDC was just a batch of incompetent armatures. Tsvangirai
and his fellow MDC friends’ breath-taking incompetence was indeed so, so inexcusable
that SADC and donors have deserted them in droves. The MDC leaders’ names are
mud! Still that did not get Mugabe off the hook.
Mugabe’s blatant vote
rigging did not earn him any brownie points but did the exact opposite. The
vote rigging showed that Mugabe could not be trusted to up hold the rule of law
and respect property rights. This scared off Western donors and investors alike
from investing in the country. The vote rigging also showed that Mugabe was not
willing to accept change or address the country’s underlying problems such as
corruption. This scared even his traditional allay, the Chinese; no one wanted to
fund Mugabe’s flagship economic recovery programme ZimAsset because it was
clear there would be no economic recovery and being paid back.
Mugabe desperately needed
the $27 billion for the ZimAsset plan to kick start the country’s stagnant economy.
Having both the West and the Chinese refusing to finance the plan is proving to
be the knockout blow of his political career. The mocking empty ZimAsset begging
bowl is doing his head-in; without ZimAsset the national economy is set to
certain economic collapse and it is bound to pull down him with it.
Yes, it is a time honoured Mugabe tradition to denounce the West at such
public occasions just as it had been come the norm for him to rig elections. There
was only going to be the odd occasion when he would not get away with the vote
rigging – this is that odd occasion. It is no political opponent who will claim
Mugabe’s scalp but the begging bowl.
13 comments:
@ Zuda Madhara
MDC were breathtakingly incompetent in failing to implement the reforms but that is no excuse for Mugabe to rig the elections. This is one rigged elections that he is not going to get away with as his failure to raise a dollar for ZimAsset shows.
Mugabe has the grim choice give up the charade of ruling the nation and save the nation from economic meltdown or keep up the pretext and be kicked out of State House by a nation sick and tired of being cheated.
Mugabe is kidding himself to think economic meltdown is going to somehow blow over like a rain storm. Time is running out for him, events will soon step in and blow him away like chaff!
@ John Mukumbo
"Cross tried to tell those who chose to read his article that President Mugabe has destroyed the economy which he inherited from Ian Smith when it was flourishing," you wrote.
I you up in arms against Eddie Cross for saying that because it is not true? If so then you are talking nonsense because it is true.
Or are you up in arms against Eddie Cross for rightly criticising Mugabe because as a white who fought in the "Rhodesian Army" he is not allowed to criticise Mugabe? The whole nation is paying a heavy price for what Mugabe has done to the economy and anyone who says this should be swept under the carpet is being plain stupid. Indeed it is this stupidity that has landed us in this economic mess!
I salute Eddie Cross for saying what most of us have been saying for years but did not out of cowardice and for defying morons like you are seeking to muzzle us as if we are dogs!
China is planning to grant Zimbabwe a part loan and part grant aid of $10 billion following a planned Mugabe visit to China. Zimbabwe is expected to use the nation’s mineral wealth as se-curity. Details of the deal are not going to be released.
Zimbabweans must look into the details with a fine tooth comb at the earliest opportunity. Every-one knows the Mugabe regime is desperate to get some money and the Chinese are certain to take full advantage of that.
The World Bank and others has already warned against deals in which a country, like Zimbabwe, pays in mineral wealth because they are notoriously difficult to value properly. No nation should mortgage its future!
Zimbabwe is already groaning under the present $10 billion national debt and yet the regime is already planning on double the debt, just like that in the next four years!
It is also a well-known fact that the Mugabe regime rigged last year’s elections, which is also why the regime has found it impossible to go on the open market. There will be a thorough investiga-tion to establish the vote rigging, China may well have played a role in the vote rigging too, and thus confirm the regime had no legal authority to sign any legal contracts.
There is no doubt this Deal with China will be to save Mugabe but at a high price to the nation. It is clear that the nation must do its uttermost not to honour this dishonourable deal!
@ Professor Ian Scoones
The article says a lot about MDC but fails to mention the real force now at play in Zimbabwe poli-tics – the economy.
MDC have become irrelevant ever since the rigged elections. In failing to implement the reforms the party have proven to be so incompetent it is hard to see how the few MDC leaders still in parliament would have achieved. The party's bring up has only made them even more ineffective and irrelevant.
The greatest force in Zimbabwe politics today is not Zanu PF but the economy. By failing to raise the money to finance ZimAsset, Zanu PF has should that it cannot this beast. The economic meltdown cannot continue and drag the people deeper and deeper into this hell and expect them to just take the suffering without ever saying enough is enough!
The economic meltdown is forcing Mugabe to either accept that he has failed, step down so the nation can have free and fair elections. Or for him to hang on to power, it is not in the DNA for tyrants to give up power, and be forced by street rioting to give up power.
Mugabe was able to bamboozle MDC with great ease; now the tyrant has met more than his match in the economy, it is impossible to bullshit it!
@ Rovambira
The solution is to have free and fair elections so the nation can finally have a competent govern-ment that will end the mismanagement and corruption and restore the rule of law. The solution is a political one and not an economic one; regime change!
Those MDC idiots were wasting time talking about what they had done to "stabilise the econo-my". They should have addressed the political problems and implemented the reforms because nothing was ever going to be achieved whilst the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship survived.
The MDC idiots did not understand that and the consequence was Mugabe rigged the elections and throw the economy into a worse nose dive than that of 2008!
Whatever stabilising MDC had done during the GNU has all come to nothing!
REGIME CHANGE is the key, the only key to ending Zimbabwe's economic meltdown. Mugabe it trying to resist regime change but he has come to the end of the road. He has nowhere to run or hide; he will have to accept regime change now!
@djose
Your source is not a reliable source because the Zimbabwe economy was already on its knees and hence the need for the first and second 5-year ESAP in 1990 and 1995. The sanctions were only imposed in 2002!
Did you reliable source also tell you why a few have grown filthy rich in the face of the economic meltdown? Most important of all, did your source explain why Zanu PF has repeated rigged the elections denying ordinary Zimbabweans their say in the governance of the country although they had nothing to do with the imposition of the sanctions?
@ Rovambira
I know Mugabe and Zanu PF would want a solution that does not include regime change the truth is they are the problem are it is therefore naive to think we can ever move forward with the tyrannical regime in charge.
Mugabe and his cronies are not untouchable, sacred cows, move and change everything else but not them! Nothing of any meaning can ever be accomplished whilst this lot remains in power; they are therefore the first thing before anything else that must be changed.
So first and far-most we must have REGIME CHANGE and we will.
Mugabe was able to bamboozled the MDC idiots and get away with no regime change; he will not do so this time!
Only the top brass are benefiting from all this looting. Meanwhile the rank and file soldier is being forced to take two days leave every month just to save on the food bill! The rank and file soldier is feeling the effects of the economic meltdown just as the majority of the people are.
300 000 or 80% of children are out of school because the parents can hardly afford to feed them let alone pay the school fees. There is no power and running water in many homes today. Is the President sure none of the rank and file soldiers have all their children in school and they have electricity and water in their homes?
How long does Mugabe think the nation is going to accept living his lie of mass prosperity when the reality on the ground is mass poverty.
Mugabe has failed, he should accept this and step down and not drag this nation into deeper economic misery. The longer Mugabe holds on to power the greater the possibility the nation will be drawn into street rioting or worse to end the economic misery. Mugabe, his cabinet and MPs and all those involved in the rigging of the July 2013 elections will be responsible for whatever happens.
@ Brian Berias
I have said it a hundred thousand times this month alone that MDC were corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent for failing to implement even one democratic reform. Not even one! If the idiots had implemented the reforms then Mugabe would not have rigged the elections and we would not be in this mess.
The fact that Tsvangirai, Biti, Ncube and all the others in the MDC are incompetent does that mean Mugabe was therefore free to rig the elections and once again deny the people their right to free, fair and credible elections? Of course he did not! We will condemn the house owner for failing to secure his house when he had the means to do so and knew there were thieves in the neighbourhood. The thieves will not go scot-free for stealing just because the house was not secured. By rigging the elections, Mugabe committed high treason and will be punished regardless of Tsvangirai’s incompetence!
The immediate consequence of Mugabe’s blatant vote rigging was that local business owners, donors and foreign investors took fright and would not do business with the regime and hence the economic nose dive. They knew the regime will not address the underlying economic problems of corruption, etc. No foreign investors wanted to be forced to take a local partner; everyone knows the latter will be nothing but a blood sucking parasite!
Mugabe rigged the elections only to find he will have to rig economic recovery too be-cause the dangerous economic meltdown will only get worse. So far he has failed to do so as the empty ZimAsset begging bowl shows. The regime is doomed to collapse and is doing so already. It is clear that these Zanu PF members are totally unaware of the economic reality otherwise they would not be fighting like wildcats to lead a party that is on its last legs! But that goes to show just how naïve and incompetent they are.
There is nothing new in Mugabe or his supporters baying for blood and finding a scapegoat whenever things go bad. Mugabe is very good at working the mob, drumming the hornets’ nest driving them blind with rage, before he finally throws the scapegoat at their to gratify their thirsty for blood. It works every time. The truth is it does not work; it is no more than giving someone with cancer a painkiller, it relieves the pain but does not remove the cancer and stop it growing!
For 34 years Zimbabweans have dared blame the ministers for the country’s ills but never Mugabe himself although he is the one who dictates everything and the poor ministers are doing their best to follow his orders, sometimes ridiculous orders. The Zimbabwe economy is in meltdown and yet Mugabe is known for ordering Finance Minister Chinamasa to “find the money” to pay the civil servants the promised pay increase, for example. Last week Mugabe was throwing one of his spoilt brat tantrums at Zanu PF leaders for failing to provide the money to buy food for the Youth League Conference. Of course he knows the party has been struggling to pay its own workers, it is broke!
So instead of addressing the cancer, Mugabe’s ill-conceived and even outrages policies, the nation has contented with painkillers and allowed the cancer to grow and spread.
Zanu PF Youths can have Minister France Nhema replace with the firebrand Saviour Kasukuwere that will not bring back the days of ease bank loans because there is no money. Kasukuwere can stoke up the black empowerment rhetoric but that will not bring in any foreign investors; what is the point of demanding 51% shares of nothing!
Mugabe can replace Finance Minister Chinamasa but whoever the replacement happen to be he or she will not fill that empty ZimAsset begging bowl and stop the economic meltdown. We need to stop taking painkillers and finally address the cancerous tumour.
After 34 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption Zimbabwe’s economic and political mess cannot be solved by a cabinet reshuffle but a lock stock and barrel government reshuffle – a regime change.
@ Sizwe Mda
Only an idiot would talk of African Renaissance and see Robert Mugabe as setting “a trend to repossess what was once our heritage”. The European Renaissance is a period of rapid eco-nomic growth, development and mass enlightenment. In the 34 years of his autocratic rule Mu-gabe has dragged Zimbabwe and the whole SADC region backwards at least 100 years.
Indeed if it was not for outside help the tyrant would have dragged the nation back into the dark ages. 98% of Zimbabwe’s medicines and drugs are bought by donors because the nation is broke. Oh, we have $ 1 million to spend on Mugabe’s birthday, $ 5 million for his daughter’s wedding, $3 million every time he goes to Singapore an eye check-up, etc.
If blatantly rigging elections is enlightenment then we are a very enlightened nation. The tyrant is refusing to release the voters roll because he knows the whole world will know how he rigged the July 2013 elections. He is not very proud of his hand work.
It is now 34 years after independence and we are still talking of people being denying the most basic human rights like the right to a meaningful vote and even the right to life itself. It is none other than Mugabe who is denying the people these rights and holding the nation back. The tyrant you are so foolishly now casting as the champion of African’s Renaissance. You clearly have no sense of direction, we are rapidly moving backwards and you think that is progress!
Mugabe is taking over the leadership of SADC but if you think and SADC leaders would copy his failed policies much less see him as the torch bearing of regional progress; thin again. SADC leaders know Mugabe is a corrupt and murderous tyrant and they would have wanted to see the back of him if Tsvangirai and his MDC friends had not let Zimbabwe and the whole region down by failing to implemented the democratic reforms!
It is most heartening that SA has decided to extend the permits of 250 000 Zimbabweans whose permit were due to expire this year. The prospect of their coming back home to a situation even worse than when they left was a real nightmare.
Next year, that is only four months away, another 250 000 Zimbabweans will be looking at ex-tending their permits too. Of course this cannot go on forever; we need to address our own national economic and political problems so Zimbabweans can return home to a stable and prosperous country. We need to redouble our efforts now and not tomorrow.
Zimbabwe’s economic and political mess is man-made; it is therefore within our powers to sort out the mess. Let us get our backs into it”
@ Ken Yamamoto
“You can argue any way you want, but there is no way someone aged ninety years can have his faculties together competently enough to deal with modern day complexities,” you said. Whilst I agree that Mugabe is a “dinosaur whose mind is so gridlocked in the politics of the 70s,” as you said; still I think one should not over play the card of his advance age for two reasons:
1) If he can completely outwit people like Tsvangirai, who have drummed this age issue to death, then it shows that youth is no guarantee from nibble mind.
2) Mugabe has always been the same incompetent and corrupt tyrant with an insatiable appetite for power even when he first took power 34 years ago. It is wrong to say Mugabe’s “relevance belongs to three decades ago”. We are in this hell-hole because of the path he charted even long before independence.
Mugabe is a clueless, corrupt and murderous tyrant who had the great fortune to have breathtakingly incompetent political opponents both outside and within his own political party, Zanu PF. The years of misrule, more than age, have finally caught up with him; there is nothing he can do to stop the economic meltdown the country is going through and it is just a matter of time before the people finally say enough is enough and kick him out of State House!
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