London Mayor's Mugabe birthday tick-off have become the tyrant's best present!

I have always held London Mayor, Boris Johnson, in high regard. I have found him to be witty and persuasive, what he said made a lot of sense. But in his article “Happy birthday, Mr Mugabe, with special love from Labour” in (UK) Telegraph newspaper and with extracts appearing in many other publications; he lost my respect and high regard.

Of all people Boris Johnson should have known that reputations are like clay pots they are valuable only as long as they remain whole, one slip and they will shutter into fragments of no value to anyone.

Mayor Johnson’s article was full of his usual wit and characteristic Boris Johnson take-no-prisoner thrust but, sadly, lacked substance because the article was not founded of facts. He clearly did not understand the basic facts of Mugabe’s land grab campaign; his desire to have a political “dig” at former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, clouded his thinking and, worst of all, his obnoxious and overbearing British imperialist mentality got the better him.

Boris Johnson was spot on and unsparing, calling a spade a bloody shovel, in his description of the corrupt and murderous tyrant Mugabe, the suffering and destruction his regime has caused and the surrealism of the upcoming celebration of the tyrant’s birthday.

“It promises to be an event of truly spectacular moral ugliness. While his people are starving, the ancient despot will convoke 20,000 cronies at a kind of golf club-cum-safari lodge near the Victoria Falls,” wrote Boris. “In scenes reminiscent of the more disgusting and luxurious behaviour of the emperor Commodus, he will cause various exotic beasts to be slaughtered for the feast.”

“ . . .  Zimbabwe is now the second poorest nation on earth – beaten only by Congo for overall grimness.” Spot on!

“But it is vital to recognise that Zimbabwe was not always like this, and did not have to be like this,” continued the London Mayor. “This Mugabe tyranny is no accident – and Britain played a shameful part in the disaster. Readers will remember the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, by which Margaret Thatcher granted independence to Rhodesia.”

The Mayor went on to give the reader a history lesson on how Zimbabwe in 1980 had a thriving agricultural sector dominated by the white commercial farmers who owned most of the good land. The need for the white farmers to give up some of their farms so that the land can be given to the impoverish peasants in overcrowded rural areas was accepted back then. The British agreed to fund the programme by paying the white farms on a willing seller willing buyer basis.

“Mugabe’s long reign has been characterised by one overwhelming objective: to exterminate the last vestiges of white power, whether political or economic,” continued Boris. This is where he completely lost the plot; in an instant the beautiful bride was transformed into the wicked witch, the bridal dress may be exquisitely beautiful but it is the person and not the dress one marries.

Mugabe appreciated the contribution the white commercial farmers were making to Zimbabwe’s the economic prosperity that was why for the first two decades after independence he did not do anything to disrupt the farming. He creamed off the wealth to finance his sociality inspired mass prosperity policies; free education, free health, hefty wage increases for the workers, artificially low prices for many goods and services, etc. for all and for the Zanu PF ruling elite jobs galore and all the luxuries their hearts desired.

Of course Mugabe’s socialism was not economically sustainable and by 1989 the regime accepted that reality. By then the economy had already lost much of its 1980 vitality and competitiveness. 

In 1990 the regime was forced to accept the first of two IMF and WB sponsored five-year Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP). The Brentwood institutions agreed to provide the regime with the bridging finance and the regime was to abandon all its socialist policies of the past decade.

Whilst the ordinary people were forced to “tighten their belts” in the face of soaring prices and falling wages, the ruling elite were “loosening their belts” as even more resources were made available to feed their seemingly insatiable appetite for wealth and good life.

Mugabe did not implement any of the agreed reforms that affected the ruling elite and it was for this reason that the first and second ESAP failed to delivery any meaningful economic recovery.

The WB and IMF made it very clear that they would not be renewing their financial assistance to Mugabe’s government at the end of the second ESAP in 1999. Many other international financial institutions and governments followed WB’s example and cut all financial assistance to the regime.

It was at this point, with the Zimbabwe economy on its knees and thus unable to generate the wealth Mugabe needed to gratify the insatiable demand for loot of his wasteful Zanu PF cronies. He was facing an election with an electorate that had lost all confidence in his ability to deliver mass prosperity. The only hope for him to win the election is by rigging the vote, he needed his cronies to help him but he would have to bribe them first. The only resource left was the land and it was at this point that he looked at the white owned farms drooling like hyena looking at a piece of meat.  

The country’s economic mess meant he had lost a lot of credibility with the Zimbabwe electorate but what better way to regain his political standing than by assuming his militant and uncompromising stance of the pre-independence years.

Whilst the Lancaster House agreement called for farms to be acquired on a “willing buyer and willing seller” basis; Mugabe discarded that, he would designate which farm he wanted and name the price. The farms bought under the agreement were for resettling the landless peasants; Mugabe threw that out, he was giving the farms to his cronies. The agreement called for a legal acquisition; Mugabe used his Zanu PF party thugs to drive white farmers off the land.

Of course Mugabe knew his dirty tactics would cause disquiet and consternation and they did and that is exactly what he wanted. When Mugabe asked the British to pay him the billions of dollars he knew the British would find the terms unacceptable, he was itching for a fight; and, of course the British refused to pay. 

“And then in 1997, along came Tony Blair and New Labour, and in a fit of avowed anti-colonialist fervour they unilaterally scrapped the arrangement,” said Boris.

To have paid Mugabe would have been an act of appeasement and since when has appeasing a dictator ever worked?

Mugabe unleashing his party thugs on the white farmers, their workers and ordinary Zimbabweans – the political violence was never confined to the white farmers only, it was extended to his political opponent and the electorate denying them all a free vote under the pretext that they all sided with the white farmers. Mayor Boris Johnson was disappointed that the British government did not send the army to stop the thugs.

“The Labour government enlisted this country in all sorts of wars around the world, some more disastrous than others,” argued the London Mayor. “British soldiers went to fight and die in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the Balkans. Here we had people with close relatives in our own country – yes, our own kith and kin – and we did absolutely nothing. We turned our backs on the very people who were actually indispensable to the economic well-being of Zimbabwe, and Labour essentially allowed Mugabe to launch a racist tyranny.”

Mugabe is a corrupt and murderous tyrant, period. All Zimbabweans black and white, young and old regardless of the race and age; we have all suffered and many have died because of his tyrannical rule. Only a hard core racist with cast iron white supremacist mentality would see the suffering only one race and be blind to the suffering of all the other races as if they are not human beings.

Mugabe and his cronies have maintained throughout the years that West demonised him and his regime because he seized the farms from the whites and not because of his bad human rights record. After all the West imposed the target sanctions on Mugabe and his cronies in 2002, the year most white farmers lost their farms. Mugabe committed his worst human rights violations in 1983 to 87, the West said nothing then. Indeed the West even showered Mugabe with praise and money right up to 2000 when the farm seizures started!

Mugabe has missed the opportunity to heap the blame for the country’s problems with the British and their Western allies for destroying the country’s economy with their “illegal and evil sanctions”.

It is not surprising that Mugabe and his propagandists have seized upon the outspoken London Mayor’s ill-advised comments as Papal Bull validation of the Zanu PF’s position.

“We’ve noted his (Boris) views, most of them inaccurate and malicious, and wonder if this admission of guilt is the plea of the Conservative Party or an individual. We’ll let Mr Johnson carry his own cross and deal with his guilt,” was the triumphant response from Mugabe’s chief of propaganda, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo.

“It was Labour’s betrayal of the Lancaster House Agreement – driven by political correctness and cowardice – that gave Mugabe the pretext for the despotic confiscations by which he has rewarded his supporters. And that is why Blair should be there (Mugabe’s birthday party): to mark Labour’s special contribution to the tyrant’s longevity in office,” concluded Mayor Boris Johnson.

Like all tyrannical regimes Mugabe and his brainwashed followers will filter out all the ugly truths of the regime’s greed and of feasting whilst millions are starving in Mayor Johnson’s article and discard them as “inaccurate and malicious”. What will be left is the Boris’ admission of British betrayal! And that is what they will be drinking a toast to at the birthday party.

So it you, London Mayor Boris Johnson, who should attend Mugabe’s macabre Victoria Fall birthday party; they will be talking about your admission and drinking a toast to it; it is you who should be helping Mugabe blow out the candles!

Propagandist Kajau claims Mugabe's land reform was a great success we all know it was a disaster!

Comrade Suitable Kajau has been at it again, trying to tell us black is white and white is black when we can see and name all the colours of the rainbow for ourselves. This time this Mugabe-can-do-no-wrong praise-singer is trying to telling us that Zimbabwe’s political motivated, chaotic, violent and disastrous seizure of white owned farms was “a successful land reform programme”.

“It is against this back-drop (the white owning more land than the blacks) that His Excellence, President Robert Gabriel Mugabe, alongside other nationalists committed their effort and dedication to break the selfish and callous system led by the tyrannical white minorities. Cde Mugabe remained resolute and focused on the need to see blacks enjoying the fruits of their national heritage. 

“To satisfy this Zimbabwean dream, Cde Mugabe and his government led an expeditious and successful Land Reform Programme which was meant to empower the historically disenfranchised blacks, and correct the colonial imbalances which existed unbridled for close to a century when whites ruled Zimbabwe illegally between 1890 and 1979. 

“The Land Reform Programme came to transform lives, and to resuscitate hope for blacks who had stayed for decades in abject poverty under a racially discriminatory system,” wrote Mugabe’s propagandist.

People like Kajau’s refusal to face the facts and deal with the truth is one of the contributory factors to Zimbabwe’s backwardness by deliberately misinforming the public and thus creating very fertile ground for tyrants to do mischief.

Ever since the white-owned farm seizures in 2000 Zimbabwe has struggled to produce enough to feed its own people, this for a country that, until then, was the bread basket of the region. The collapse of the agricultural sector has contributed to the collapse of the national economy and has yet to recovery. These are the facts and reality that no amount of denial or spin can change. 

Mugabe did not institute the white farm invasions until 2000, 20 years after independence, because he appreciated the role the country’s successful agricultural sector played in generating the wealth. But instead of the wealth being put to productive use he doled it out to his greedy and wasteful cronies.

 By 1990 the Zimbabwe economy was in serious trouble and government was forced to adopt the first of two five-year Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes (ESAP). The programmes failed to deliver the economic recovery because government did not implement the agreed reforms. By the end of the second five-year ESAP in 1999 the country’s economy was on its knees and up to its eyes in debt. Mugabe needed a new source of wealth to dole out to his cronies, the white-owned was the only asset of value.

Mugabe was also desperate to hold on to political power, a real big challenge in the face of the country’s economic decline. The violent seizure of the white-owned farms provided the smoke-screen to use violence against his political opponents on the populous and rig elections. Zimbabweans have lost their basic and fundamental rights and freedoms including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country and the right to life itself under the pretext that Zanu PF was doing all this first and foremost to stop the opposition getting into power and reverse the party’s land reform.

So Zimbabweans were being denied their rights and dignities so that a tyrannical regime can impose a nonsensical and damaging land policy.

There is a crying need to resettle people in many overcrowded rural areas, Mugabe has done very little to address this problem.

Commercial farming was always going to be a key component of the country’s agricultural sector; all Mugabe has done is replaced white farmers with his cronies who had no farming skills but, worst of all, most of whom are lazy and have never done a single day’s honest work in their lives.

Mugabe prophesies to be a great admirer of the Chinese “all weather friends” he called them and yet he has completely failed grasp the secret behind China’s Deng Xiaoping Theory; greatest transformative changes in human history, that delivered a 8% minimum GDP growth rate for 25 years running. China pulled millions of Chinese a year out of a life of abject poverty into prosperity.

Xiaoping theory has two key aspects; first one is to implement the principle of emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts. The second aspect is the willingness to adopt and accept new ideas as long as the deliver the end objective, economic development.

“It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice” as Deng Xiaoping famously put it.

Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector will have the peasant farmers and commercial farmers, the latter will be selected on their ability to put land to good use and not the colour of their skin, period! 

Minister Moyo says diamond revenue has "dramatically shrunk" - chefs have all $800 billion to themselves!

“Diamond revenues from alluvial diamond mining have dramatically shrunk. We now need to come terms with this reality,” said Minister of Information Professor Moyo on Twitter in response to a question on where diamond revenue was being channelled.

When the diamonds were first discovered the discovery was valued at $ 800 billion. The Zanu PF has used the diamonds as a source of unparalleled riches for a select few and to finance the party’s own “parallel government” as NGU Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, rightly put it. When Biti started to complain about how little revenue he was getting from Marange; Mugabe and his cronies decided all the mining activities would be pushed under the radar.

In 2013 parliamentary report the late Chindori Chininga said no one in government had any idea who was mining in Marange, how many kilogrammes in uncut diamonds were being shipped out daily, the quality of the diamonds, nothing. The report confirmed that the looting and plunder in Marange was now truly happening and all under the radar. The nation is being robbed clean of its greatest treasure – Marange and Chiadzwa diamonds.

Now Professor Moyo wants the whole nation to accept the fact that Marange and Chiadzwa diamonds are for the exclusive use of Mugabe and his cronies. So as far as Moyo is concerned all the Zimbabwe public need to know is that Chiadzwa and Marange diamonds never even existed.

Last week the Mail and Guardian reported that the Zimbabwe Army/ Police and CIO were muscling out the Ministry of Mines on the $4.8 billion Platinum deal with Russians. The same security sector consortium has been active in Marange and they want the same deal. The Russians have been pushing for the deal with the security sector guys because it will mean paying no tax on any of the platinum mined for the first five years, just as the operators in Marange are not paying any tax.

“The ministry also wants the benefits of the deal to accrue to Zimbabweans and treasury, rather than the army. We don’t want a repeat of the Chiadzwa scenario where the country is not truly benefiting from its diamonds. The army partnered the Chinese in mining diamonds, but the country has nothing to show for the resource,” a ministry of Mines Official told the Mail and Guardian.

No doubt Minister Jonathan Moyo will soon be twittering the nation that all the millions of ounces of platinum worth billions of dollars were all a figment of our imagination.

How is it possible that a nation of 12 million people in this day and age can be cheated of their national inheritance worth billions of dollars every year and do nothing about it? How can Zimbabweans be so indifferent to matters affecting their own lives?

USA Think tank confirm the West "abandoned" the horse Tsvangirai - pointless betting on a three and half legged horse!

In an interview, senior policy analyst Marion Tupy of the Washington-based Cato Institute for Global Liberty and Prosperity said in Tsvangirai the West was betting on a wrong horse. The West have since learnt the lesson and they now expect Zimbabweans too to have learnt the lesson and look for an alternative opposition leader.

"It's true that the West has abandoned Morgan Tsvangirai its very sad but it's very true. It's like putting your money on a horse in a race hoping that he wins and then if he fails you may do it a couple of times but ultimately you decide that that person was not worth the investment," he said.

Frankly Marion Tupy was being much too kind because this was much more than a horse losing a race; this horse was paid and it went out of its way to ensure it lost the race from start to finish.

Tsvangirai was supposed to implement the democratic reforms agreed in the Global Political Agreement (GPA). The reforms were designed to dismantle the Zanu PF vote rigging machinery and deliver free, fair and credible elections. MDC had everything the party needed to ensure all the reforms were implemented;  they had the majority in parliament, had five-years of the GNU and they had the backing of SADC, the West and the whole international community. In the end MDC failed to get even one reform implemented. Not even one.

Without the reforms, Mugabe and Zanu PF were bound to rig the elections and they did just that, blatantly rigged the July 2013 elections. To go into the elections with not even one reform implemented was to plan to fail.

The only two obvious reasons MDC did not get even one reform implemented are, first of all, that the party’s leaders are corrupt. Mugabe saw to it that Tsvangirai and his colleagues enjoyed all the trapping of being power and gravy train life. Tsvangirai got a $4 million Highlands mansion. And in return Tsvangirai and his MDC friends kicked the reforms into the tall grass because they knew Mugabe did not want any of them implemented.

“MDC vadzidza kudya vanyerere!” (MDC leaders have learnt to enjoy the gravy train pleasures and not rock the boat!) Was the pithy retort from Mugabe cronies mocking at MDC’s new indifference to public desperate demands for them to implement the reforms!

The second reason is that MDC leaders are incompetent. Of course Tsvangirai and his MDC friends wanted to remain in government and retain their seats on the gravy train; the very fact that they expected to do so regardless of all the vote rigging by Mugabe shows just how naïve and breathtakingly incompetent they really are.

Some Zimbabweans have remained faithful to Tsvangirai and the other MDC leaders but that is only because they have never understood what the reforms are about let alone why implementing them is still of such critical importance to bringing about meaningful democratic change in Zimbabwe.  The day the penny finally drops; they too will understand why SADC and the West deserted Tsvangirai and MDC in droves, they too will finally desert MDC. On that day the search for competent political leaders will finally start in earnest.  

Being corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent are shortcomings that can be overcome by education or training; they are serious flaws in one’s character that will lead the individual to repeat the same mistake again and again. If Tsvangirai was a horse then he is one with a serious physical deformity he might just as well be a three and half legged horse. He has lost three races already and the way he has blundered from pillar to post it self-evident he never had a chance. Only an idiot would still bet good money on him winning the fourth race.

Marion Tupy is right, the West made the mistake of betting on Tsvangirai, “a wrong horse”; they are certainly not going to wasting a cent backing Tsvangirai ever again, they are not idiots! 

76% Zim now living on less than $200 a month - this is unsustainable we need and must have regime change!

“Following recent revelations by economists that average incomes in Zimbabwe are now at their lowest levels in 60 years, it has now emerged that more than 76 percent of the country’s adult population has to make do with less than $200 a month,” reported the Daily News.

“This, economists said yesterday means that poverty levels have reached “numbing levels”, amid indications that the situation will worsen in 2015 and beyond, as President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF government continue to demonstrate their inability to fix Zimbabwe.”

Mugabe has remained in power for 35 years because he was able to outwit and bamboozle his political opponent both inside his own party, Zanu PF and outside with easy. But the decades of mismanagement and corruption under his watch have taken their toll on the nation’s economy and now it is in total meltdown.

Mugabe has since the July 2013 rigged election found he cannot rig economic recovery. And it is the economy that is going, one way or the other, force him to finally give up political power.

It is the “Economy stupid!” to borrow from former US President Bill Clinton, that is going to force regime change – the phrase Mugabe has dreaded and vowed will never ever happen in Zimbabwe in his life time.

Mugabe was sure that his ZimAsset economic recovery plan would delivery economic recovery, he was cock sure. But after a year since the July 2013 rigged elections of grovelling and begging he still had nothing to show for it; the empty ZimAsset begging bowl was beginning to mock him, it was doing his head in.

So just to get some funding in the begging bowl Mugabe offered the Chinese and Russians deals they could not refuse. The details of the Chinese $4 billion power generation projects deals are not known but Chinese has also kept its major player position in the looting and plunder of Marange diamonds.

The Marange diamonds have been valued at $ 800 billion. Partnership Africa Canada said Mugabe got a staggering $ 2 billion for his share of the loot in 2012 alone. The GNU collected $ 400 million in taxes from Marange in 2013 when more than twice was expected. The tax remittances have since dropped to zero.

The Russian deal included them getting in on the action in Marange. They also signed a $4.8 billion platinum mining deal and it has since emerged that they too will be paying not a dollar in taxes for the first five years, at least, of operation.

What is happening in Marange is looting plain and simple and now the same is going to happen with the platinum mining in this Russian deal. This is state sanctioned looting and criminal waste!

 If Mugabe thought the Chinese and Russian deals would open the floodgate to more investors, he has been disappointed. Not even the Chinese and Russians have offered another dollar. What Mugabe wanted most was for the $27 billion ZimAsset to be paid as budgetary support. He has failed to get a single dollar for that; the Chinese told him to his face they would not offer even a dollar because he “is a bad debtor”!

With budgetary support Mugabe knows that his ZimAsset plan is dead in the water. Mugabe has nothing else to stop Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown and hence all the company closures and mounting unemployment figures. The few remaining companies will close and soon even the vendors will not be able to eke a living because vendors sell mostly to those in formal employment and not fellow vendors.

What Mugabe will have to accept is that he has nothing to offer to stop the total economic collapse and therefore he should step down now. The economic situation has reached the point when social unrest could happen with devastating consequences of which one thing will be certain, he will be swept aside Muammar Gaddafi style or worse!

Like it or not Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is economically, socially and politically unsustainable! We will have change the only question is whether it is going to be orderly evolutionary change, and time is fast running out for this; or else a revolutionary violent change. But change is as certain now as the sun rising tomorrow! 

Grace Mugabe's rock-star welcome is to divert attention from dead ZimAsset but no one was fooled.

“Grace Mugabe demonstrated the immense power she now wields in Zanu PF when Cabinet ministers, service chiefs and Zanu PF bigwigs scrambled to Harare International Airport to welcome her back to the country on Sunday after she had been away in the Far East for more than two months,” reported the Daily News.

Was this really a welcome of a real rock-star or was it a welcome of a phony rock-star to divert the people’s attention away from the nation’s real big issue – the economic meltdown. Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is now beginning to bite and Mugabe and Zanu PF’s are at sixes and sevens as what to do.

Before the 2013 elections Mugabe had given the excuse of “illegal sanctions imposed by the British and the West” for the country’s economic failures. It was an excuse for the easily fooled since Mugabe was free to trade with the rest of the world, especially with the East as he himself admitted in his “Look East” policy.

In the 2013 elections Mugabe promised the nation economic recovery through his ZimAsset plan and 2.2 million new jobs regardless of whether the West imposed sanctions were lifted or remained. The success or failure of the plan depended on Mugabe getting the $27 billion funding for it.

It took over a year of grovelling and begging for Mugabe to finally get $4 billion and $3 billion of post-dated cheques from the Chinese and Russians respectively. The two Eastern bloc giants agreed to fund ZimAsset projects but flatly refused to provide the regime with the much needed budgetary support because Zimbabwe was “a bad debtor” the Chinese told Mugabe to his face.

Mugabe had hoped that other nations would follow the Chinese and Russians’ example of ZimAsset funding support and provide the critical budgetary component of his ZimAsset plan. The floodgate of donors Mugabe was sure was coming never happened. It is now nearly two years into the five-year plan and he has not delivered any new jobs out of the 2.2 million new jobs promised. Indeed in the period the country has lost thousands of jobs pushing unemployment level to 90% plus!

The regime has grudgingly accepted that without the budgetary support and the two post-dated Chinese and Russian cheques (spending on projections has yet started) its ZimAsset plan is all but dead in the water. All talk of implementing ZimAsset has stopped; one cannot implement a plan that is dead.

With ZimAsset dead, the economic meltdown has now taken centre stage. The headline news have been about companies closing, someone or other not being paid, soldiers being forced to take a month holiday every other month to save on food bill, new government taxes, etc.; all spelling the worsening economic situation.

So to draw the nation’s attention away from the worsening economic hardship and the fact that the regime’s own ZimAsset plan is dead in the water; the Zanu PF propaganda machine has gone into overdrive manufacturing its own headline news.

When Mugabe returned from Ethiopia two weeks ago Zanu PF propaganda machine wanted his election as AU chairman trumpeted from the hilltop. Mugabe played his part by giving a vitriolic anti-western acceptance speech. On his return he got a hero’s welcome at the airport complete with the usual bussed in Zanu PF supporters. The propagandists were pleased with themselves until Mugabe tripped and fell.

People laughed at Mugabe’s fall to vent out their anger at being forced into this Mugabe praise singing charade when pressing national issues are being ignored. The fall became a serious PR disaster for Zanu PF.

Zanu PF needed to stage a big show on Grace Mugabe’s return to show that Mugabe and the party are still popular and hence Sunday’s rock-star welcome for her. Everyone in Zanu PF and government turned up at the airport because in these days of political turbulence and party purges, they are all keen to be seen to be very supportive of Grace for fear they might be “dumped” next. She is the one who master minded the dumping of Mujuru and many others list year.

As for the ordinary Zimbabweans they could not be bothered going to the airport to welcome Grace, still they are relieved that she back purely for financial reasons. They were rightly worried about how much more her extended stay in Singapore was going to cost the nation. She is a woman of little intellect but very expensive and extravagant tastes; the sooner she returned the better for us, the Zimbabwe public, who will be expected to pay the bill. After three months we can expect the bill of $12 million, at least!

“You need to be strong as women, not just to sit back,” said Zimbabwe’s answer to Madona and Evita rolled into one to her adoring fans at the airport. “Despite not feeling well, I have remained strong, I have energy. This is the third operation that I have undergone in my life so I cannot say I am a complete human being. In 1986, I had my tonsils removed. They did tonsillectomy on me because I had problems with my throat which was always sore. In 1996, I also had my gall bladder removed because it caused severe abdominal pains owing to too many acids… so severe were the pains that at one point I suspected that my cooks had poisoned my food.”

“You get to think along those lines when you are in pain. That is the reason why I am particular about what I eat. I cannot eat food like meat now because I must not take fat and even the whole family including baba (Mugabe) now follow my diet.”

So Zanu PF members came from every corner of the country to listen to that! You can take a man out of the ghetto but cannot take the ghetto out of some people; well that is especially true with phony rock-stars! Grace is no Madonna!

No amount of stage manages heroic or rock-star glorification can change the fact that Mugabe’s ZimAsset plan is dead in the water or make reality of soaring 90% plus unemployment rate, of the 16% or 2 million Zimbabweans already living in abject poverty, of the regime struggling to pay civil servants, etc. The economic meltdown is getting worse and not better and instead of wasting time and money staging these gimmicks Mugabe and Zanu PF must step down now to allow for fresh elections and implementation of a workable economic recovery plan. 

"Grace is a private citizen," says Charamba not when public pays for her extravagant lifestyle.

"She is not a civil servant; she is not a constitutional officer. Why do you pry into the life of a private citizen in the name of news?” – Charamba

Because Grace Mugabe is NOT “private citizen”, you moron! Not in the normal sense; the Zimbabwe public pay for everything she has and they are entitled to have a say in what is costing them everything including their very lives!

How many private individuals have a $5 million wedding bash paid for by the taxpayers? She went on an extended Christmas holiday with her extended family that will cost the nation as much as $12 million.

She has decided to extend the extended holiday by another month already on the pretext she is having an appendix operation. This is a simple procedure she could have had back here and would be out of hospital within a week at the most. So what the fcuk is she still doing in Singapore! Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, is failing to pay civil servant wages let alone pay for other basic necessities as soap and books for our hospitals and schools. And yet he will be expected to pay the additional $3 to 4 million her extended stay to shop will cost us.

Mr George Charamba you can get the usual suspects to issue a statement claiming they will pay for Grace’s extended stay in the Far East just as they claimed to pay Grace’s expenses when she went on the rampage in her “baby dumping” campaign against the then VP Mujuru last year. No one was fooled; we all know the Zimbabwe taxpayer directly or indirectly paid the bill.

The Zimbabwe public are not asking why Grace has not returned because they are concerned about her health; we know she is well. Unlike her husband who claimed to be “as fit as a fiddle” only to end up in a heap at the airport; at least that has settled the lie that he is physically and mentally fit to continue as president. The only thing that would bring Grace to her knees is the shopping because she is one who would shop until she dropped, literally. Zimbabweans are asking what the devil she is still doing in Singapore because they know the shopping bill is mounting!

Grace Mugabe is one private citizen that has costed the nation an arm and leg to keep and all the nation has ever got back from her is trouble and nauseating nonsense each time she opened her foul mouth!

Striking University Lecturer met Minister Chinamasa but did they demand an end to corruption.

In the mid-1990s  I had the opportunity to meet a leading Trade Union leader (it will not be necessary to name him). Gone were the ease years of the 1980s when the then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe announced hefty pay increases for the all the workers across the board and have price controls on many goods and services. All that ended when the Zanu PF government accepted its first World Bank/ International Monetary Fund (WB/IMF) sponsored five-year Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP); price controls ended and workers were instructed to negotiate with the employers wage increases.

I spend an evening trying to explain to the Trade Union Leader why it was important to take into consideration the rate of inflation, amongst other factors, in deciding what wage increase to ask for.  He did not understand what I was talking about. It does not matter how much one may try to gloss over this, knowledge is important; those whose actions are guided by knowledge have prospered whilst those who have blundered from pillar to post have suffered.

Two related stories occurred to illustrate the critical importance of knowledge. The first story was about lecturers in Zimbabwe’s State Universities going on strike to demand payment of their January salary and 2014 bonus. Whilst all the other civil servant had finally been paid their January wages and the bonus they had been singled out with no explanation from the employer, government.

The second story was on how the national army had reportedly muscled in on a $4.8 billion platinum mining project.

“The ministry also wants the benefits of the deal to accrue to Zimbabweans and treasury, rather than the army. We don’t want a repeat of the Chiadzwa scenario where the country is not truly benefiting from its diamonds. The army partnered the Chinese in mining diamonds, but the country has nothing to show for the resource,” a source in the Ministry of Mines told the Mail and Guardian newspaper.

It is a matter of record that former finance minister Tendai Biti and the current incumbent, Patrick Chinamasa, have complained about the diamond revenue not being properly accounted for. The late Zanu PF MP Chindori Chininga went even further and said in a parliamentary report in 2013 that the diamond mining in Chiadzwa and Marange was going on 24/7, the gems were shipped out of the country as quickly as they are extracted and that no one in the Zimbabwe government knew anything about diamonds; their size, quality, value, who was buying and selling them, etc.

In a rare moment of concern for the nation interest, the then Vice President Joice Mujuru complained of how in India a who city had sprung up to cut, make jewellery, diamond tools, etc. from diamonds imported from Zimbabwe.

Some people have valued Chiadzwa and Marange diamonds at a staggering $800 billion.  Partnership Africa Canada, a Canadian NGO, estimated that Mugabe earned a staggering $2 billion from his share of the diamond looting in 2012 alone! The looting and plunder going on there is absolutely shocking.

According to the Mail and Guardian report Mugabe was set to approve the Army muscling in on the platinum mining deal. The upshot of that Russian and Zimbabwe National Army consortium would not pay any taxes for the first five years of the project. Not content with the looting and plunder of the diamonds the country’s ruling elite want to loot and plunder the platinum mines too.

International organisation have flatly refused to classify Zimbabwe as a poor country and write off it’s $10 billion debt because Zimbabwe is NOT a poor country. If the country’s wealth and riches were managed properly there is no reason why Zimbabwe should not be one of the richest and most prosperous nations on earth.

One expected the Trade Union Leader to know what inflation is all about. I expected the State University to know what inflation is about and more significantly to know of Zimbabwe’s true economic potential and the criminal waste of resources such as diamonds through corruption and looting.

A delegation of the striking State University lecturers was scheduled to meet a high powered government team headed by Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa and the deputy Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Dr Godfrey Gandawa, to ensure their salaries are paid on time in future. Whilst I would have not expected my Trade Union friend to raise the matter of the criminal waste of the national mineral wealth through corruption and looting, I would expect the lecturers to raise it as a matter of cause because it is the root cause of government’s financial problems.

The Lecturer and government official meeting was chalked to take place on Monday 18th February 2015 I had not seen report on what was discussed; still I am cock sure the lecturers did not raise the issue of corruption and looting. This begs the questions; if University Lecturers do not know that corruption and looting are the root causes behind Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown what hope is there that my aunt in the rural back waters will know that?

 If University Lecturers know that corruption and looting are indeed the root causes behind Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown, in which they too have been not been spared of the economic hardships, but are too cowardly to raise these critical issues with government officials; who do they expect to do so? 

Zanu PF decisions are "no subject to higher court" says Mugabe - what a load of bull!

Mugabe has remained as the leader of his Zanu PF party and head of government for the last 35 years in spite his pathetic and ruinous economic performance and tyrannical and murderous political record. One of the reasons why he has managed to do so is he is a master of double talk; if he does not dazzle you with brilliance he baffle you with bull.  He was clearly at his baffling- with-bull best at the party’s politburo meeting.

Addressing journalists in Harare after a Zanu-PF politburo meeting, the party's national spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo said Mugabe emphasised that internal party disputes should be resolved internally.

“He (Mugabe) said the party has principles, rules and values that are not subjected to higher courts as some believe and if you are a party member, there are structures you must use to get your concerns addressed, but not through the High Court or other institutions outside the party,” Moyo added.

Private parties are encourage to settle their disputes without recourse to the country’s courts but if one of the parties should feel they will not get justice they have a right to ask the courts to hear the dispute and to pronounce judgement. It is totally unacceptable that one party should then unilaterally decide that the nation’s courts have no jurisdiction over the matter and therefore they will not appear before the courts.

“His Excellency, the President, opened the meeting with a clear message that every member of the politburo must be thoroughly familiar with the provisions of the party constitution,” Moyo told the journalist.

It is great Mugabe remembered there was something called the party’s constitution and, better still, he directed every member of the politburo to be “thoroughly familiar with the provisions of the party constitution”. But he would have done best by quoting to all and sentry the exact provision(s) in the Zanu PF constitution that said any internal disputes must be resolved internally and NOT “through the High Court or other institutions outside the party”!

If there is such a provision – there is none of course, it is just Mugabe baffling his gullible and idiotic politburo members – but for the sake of completeness we will say there is a provision in the Zanu PF constitution barring members from seeking redress outside the party; then surely that provision violates the country’s constitution and common sense which created the courts as the supreme arbiter and dispenser of justice.

Of course it is nonsensical that anyone should abrogate unto themselves the powers to judge what matters the courts should and should not hear; that is bulls***t!

When Mugabe returned on one of his many out of the country trip he asked the rhetorical question “Whose Courts and whose judges?” Mutasa would be taking his legal challenge.  It was rhetorical because everyone knows Zimbabwe’s judiciary system is in all but name just another Zanu PF department; there to do Mugabe’s bidding. Still Mutasa should take his case to the courts.

In the 2008 SADC and AU election observer teams for the first time ever, as far as I know, refused to rubber stamp Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections free and fair although they have given their thumbs up to some dodgy elections in Zimbabwe and other countries before and since. The wanton violence in Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections was out of this world, the teams had no choice but to condemn them. Mugabe must be fearing that his court and his judges may be similarly compelled to disregard his wishes and judge in Mutasa’s favour. The speed with which Mugabe changed the party’s constitutional to give himself the power to appoint the two party secretaries who would go on to be the two Vice Presidents in government, for example, blatantly failed to allow for the consultative period called for in the party’s constitution.

Is it not bad enough that Mugabe has corrupted the country’s judiciary but his insistence that his own Zanu PF disciplinary committee, kangaroo court, is now the supreme court of the land must be dismissed with the contempt it rightly deserves. No nation can ever allow that kind of tyrannical arrogance and absolutism.

There is no doubt that the conduct of Zanu PF’s electoral process last year defied all accepted norms in the conduct of democratic elections; this is something Mugabe has become expert in given he has routinely rig national elections for the last 35 years! Mutasa should not allow himself to be bamboozled by Mugabe’s rhetorical bull into accepting that Zanu PF disciplinary committee is the supreme arbiter in this matter and just take his case to the normal court!