27 March by-elections were not free and fair - need free elections to end economic crisis!

The two by-elections, the Chirumhanzu-Zibagwe and Mt Darwin, have shown that Zimbabwe will never ever hold free, fair and credible elections until we implement the democratic reforms agreed in 2008 Global Political Agreement. There was no real pressure for Zanu PF to “win” the two seat and yet there was still all the signs the party would have blatantly rig these by-elections just as it rigged the July 2013 elections if it wished! 

In the 27 March 2015 by-elections, some people were allowed to use voter registration slip issued in 2013 to vote. The immediate question is why has the voters roll not been up dated for more than two years?

Back in July 2013 many people had complained about the large number of voters who had these registration slips particularly given the equally large numbers of voters bussed in to vote. The potential of bussing in voters from one constituency to the next and one polling station to another casting multiple votes each time cannot be discounted. Indeed this becomes perfectly logical given that no one knew how many voters are in each constituency because no voters roll was ever produced. The law demands that a voters roll must be produced but even to this day no voters roll was ever released for the 2013 elections.

A voters roll was produced for the 27 March by-elections but even then Nikuv, the Israeli company employed to tamper with the voters roll in the 2013 elections, replaced an initial voters roll just days before voting started. No explanation was given.

There were reports of voters being “frog matched” to polling stations and Mnangagwa himself has boosted during the by-election campaigning that Zanu PF may not know when one dies but it will know how the individual voted.

“We know that each polling station has its own results, we will want to know from each polling station where the people would have come from and how did they get in. What we might fail to know is how death will come, but anyone who is voting we can trace the pattern because they have one,” he said.

It is standard practice for villagers to “frog matched” to the polling station by a Zanu PF headman and instructed to vote for Zanu PF. Those the party suspect may not vote for the party are instructed to pretend they cannot read and write so a party official will then see to it that they put the X in the right box. Even school teachers have been known to make such claims.

As stated above, there was no real pressure for Zanu PF to “win” back these two by-elections seats since the party has a clear majority in parliament already and yet the elections still had all the hallmarks of voter intimidation and clear opportunities to rig the vote.

There four things the people of Zimbabwe must understand here:

a)      Zimbabwe‘s economic meltdown cannot be separated from the country’s political system; they two are the two sides of the same coin. The nation has failed to do anything to end the gross mismanagement, the rampant corruption and the lawlessness and obnoxious indigenisation laws – root causes behind the economic meltdown and failure to attract foreign investors and donors – because Mugabe and Zanu PF simply refused to accept these were the root causes and therefore would not accept any policy changes.

In a healthy and functional democracy Mugabe and Zanu PF’s refusal to deal with mismanagement, etc. would not have mattered because the nation would have replaced the regime at the next elections. Zimbabwe is not a healthy and functional democracy, there are no free, fair and credible elections; there is no regime change. No regime change has meant being stuck with whatever economic policy the regime in power imposed; this is why only end the economic meltdown is by first ending the political system stopping regime change.   

b)      We need to implement ALL the democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement as necessary for free, fair and credible elections. These reforms should have been implemented by Zanu PF and the MDC factions, the partners in the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Sadly not even one reform was ever implemented.

c)       Mugabe and Zanu PF were able to blatantly rig the 2013 election and the party was able to do so again in the just ended by-elections although the party was not under any real pressure to “win”. Except for one or two Zanu PF member like former Minister Fortune Chisa who have admitted to elections “irregularities” the rest will stick to the line the elections are free, fair and credible.

If we want free, fair and credible elections we will have to fight Zanu PF to get the democratic reforms implemented.

d)      MDC have been calling for “electoral reforms” to be implemented including “aligning existing electoral laws to the country‘s new constitution” without giving any more details. The nation must reject this proposal out right because Zanu PF would want to go down this route knowing fully well that without implementing the reforms the new constitution is too weak to deliver free, fair and credible elections.

After the wasted five years of the NGU the nation will be have another chance to get the critical reforms for free and fair elections implemented; we cannot afford to get it wrong again!

  

Kasukuwere say Tsvangirai is a Zanu PF commissar - his incompetence makes him MDC's worst leader!

Zanu PF Political Commissar, Savour Kasukuwere, said Tsvangirai is a Zanu PF political commissar.

"He is our commissar. He has been since his days in Bindura and now he did exactly what commissars do. That is what PCs do. He gave us 21 (14) seats recently and we now want to readmit him in the party," said Kasukuwere.

Whatever good Tsvangirai has done for Zanu PF during his Zanu PF card carrying member years is nothing compared to what he has done ever since he became MDC leader. Mugabe could not have asked for a more incompetent challenger guaranteed to shoot himself in the leg at the most critical point every time.

When King David had his back against the wall and his son Absalom, his challenger who had both his hands firmly on his crown; Absalom had the chance to deliver the killer punch and he would be king.

“Now let me choose twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue David tonight,” Ahithophel advised the young Absalom. “I will come upon him while he is weary and weak, and make him afraid. And all the people who are with him will flee, and I will strike only the king.”

Morgan Tsvangirai has the Absalom’s losing streak!

After two decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption Mugabe and Zanu PF has left the Zimbabwe economy is ruins; he promised mass prosperity but delivered mass poverty. Mugabe and Zanu PF have been unelectable since 2000 and yet for the last 15 years Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have completely failed to unseat Mugabe.

During the GNU all Tsvingirai had to do was to implement the raft of democratic reforms already agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement. God knows Tsvangirai had the best advisers in the SADC leaders who advised him to follow the GPA roadmap – implement the democratic reforms! God knows Tsvangirai had all the time he needed to implement the reforms – five years! And yet Tsvangirai failed to get even one reforms implemented! Not one!

Before the GNU Tsvangirai had specialized in shooting himself in the foot but by failing to implement the reforms he shot himself in the head. Since the July 2013 rigged elections, SADC heads have ignored him completely and, more significantly, all MDC donors have deserted the party in droves.

In the July 2013 elections MDC had not have the funds to run an effective campaign. The party is so broke it does not have the money to take part in any other elections but rather than admit that, the party’s official position is that they will not take party in any elections until “electoral reforms are implemented”.

The party had five years to implement the reforms but failed but now MDC expects Mugabe and Zanu PF to implement the reforms as if by magic.

Having decided that MDC would not contest any elections be they national or by-elections; it therefore made no sense whatsoever for Tsvangirai to recall the 21 breakaway MDC-Renewal. Of course Kasukuwere is right, Tsvangirai has given these seats away to Zanu PF; an early Christmas present for Mugabe.

As long as Tsvangirai or some such incompetent individual remains the leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition then Zanu PF’s hold on power is assured; it is impossible to lose a race in which the challenger is guaranteed to shoot themselves in the leg before every race! 

Herald is a desperate bid to save MDC so Zanu PF can rule "until donkeys have horns!"

"The Herald Editor Caesar Zvayi has assured Zanu PF that it will govern until donkeys grow horns as the only opposition political party that claim to have massive support, the MDC-T take detrimental decisions."

This is an expression of wishful thinking than a statement of fact because the exact opposite is if fact true. As long as MDC-T or any like-minded politicians remain the only political challengers to Zanu PF then, yes, Zanu PF dictatorship will never be dismantled and thus the party's continued hold on power is assured. 

What Zvayi has failed to appreciate is the fact that Zanu PF has completely lost the popular support of ordinary Zimbabweans because the party has completely failed to deliver on its promise of mass prosperity and delivered instead mass poverty. In a country where unemployment has soared to Mount Everest heights of 90%, 16% of the population are now living in abject poverty, incomes have dropped to their lowest in 60 years, life expectancy has dropped from 68 years in 1980 to 34 years in 2004, etc., etc.; one does not have to be a rocket scientist to realize that they are economically worse of today than they were in the past.

What is worse, the Zimbabwe economy is set to get even worse not better. Zanu PF’s own recovery plan, ZimAsset, is dead in the water for lack of donors to bankroll it. For the first time since independence the regime has now accepted the need to make savage cuts in its bloated civil servant and no doubt similar savage cuts will happen in local government, parastatals and all the other quasi - public institutions.

All those axed from their positions are destined for the unemployed-mountain and abject poverty. Not that this sacrifice would result in any meaningful economic recovery; it is too little too late. Yes the bloated public sector has been a burden to the nation but so too has been mismanagement and corruption. It is the gross mismanagement and rampant corruption that are the main causes behind the country’s economic meltdown.

Mugabe and Zanu PF have pointedly refused to deal with mismanagement and corruption all these last 35 years because they are at the very heart of the party’s political patronage system that has kept Mugabe and the party in power. So for 35 years mismanagement and corruption have been allowed to grow and spread like cancerous cells. Today they are tumours the size of tennis balls and they are everywhere!

Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is now so serious the situation is not socially and politically sustainable. Zanu PF is under ever increasing pressure to accept regime change. What MDC has failed to deliver in 15 years will now happen as the result of Zanu PF’s failure to rig economic recovery.

Still the need to get rid of the MDC party going forward is important because the country still need to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship regards what forced the regime to accept change. 

By the end of Zimbabwe’s second five-year Economic Structural Adjustment Programme, 1995 to 1999, it was clear the nation’s economy was in serious trouble and Zanu PF regime had ran out of ideas of what to do to fix it. From there on Zanu PF was unelectable the only reason the party has still stayed in power to this day is simple; in Tsvangirai and his MDC outfit Mugabe had the most corruptible – it did not take much to bribe MDC leaders – and breathtakingly incompetent – MDC leaders actually believed they would still win the 2013 elections even with not even one democratic reform implemented.

As long as Zanu PF’s main political opponents are corrupt and incompetent leaders like Morgan Tsvangirai and the other MDC leaders then, yes, Zanu PF will misrule the country forever! Our Herald Editor knows that and what he is doing is a bit of reverse psychology, by warning MDC’s naïve and gullible supporters that Zanu PF will rule forever if MDC breaks up the editor is scaring the supporters in a panic and thus secure MDC’s continued opposition dominance. 

“You seem to hate Tsvangirai and his MDC friends more than you hate President Mugabe and Zanu PF,” wrote Patrick Guramatunhu, commenting on my demand for MDC leaders to resign. “What you fail to understand is for the majority of ordinary Zimbabweans it is the other way round. Although you have condemned Zanu PF in the strongest language still when you attach MDC and demand that the leaders resigned you might just as well ask the people to hug Zanu PF. The people will not do that and hence the reason most people agree with what you say but they will not follow you and stick to MDC instead.”

Of course Patrick is right, Zimbabweans hate Mugabe and Zanu PF with a burning passion so much so they “would vote for a donkey rather than Robert Mugabe”, as Professor Jonathan Moyo once said. The trouble with hatred, especially burning hatred, is that it can cloud the mind making it impermeable to reason.

People hate Mugabe because he has failed to deliver economic prosperity; they want an end to the grinding poverty and despair. The only way that will happen is stopping Mugabe rig the elections by implementing the democratic reforms, changes, designed to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship. Tsvangirai has had many chances to deliver those all-important democratic changes in the last 15 years with the best chances being during the GNU. He has failed to get even one reform implemented in the five years of the GNU because he and his fellow MDC village idiots are corrupt and incompetent.

If we want to end the Zanu PF dictatorship we must get all the democratic reforms implemented, period. If Tsvangirai and his MDC village idiots failed to get even one reform implemented during the GNU when they had all the trump cards it is naïve to think they would do so now when Zanu PF has all the trump cards; that is a fact.

Ever since Tsvangirai and MDC decided to take part in rigged July 2013 elections against repeated advice from SADC leaders, the party’s donors and millions of others not to do so without the reforms; MDC have been deserted by all the above as a lost cause. All the MDC factions are broke and they have struggled to remain politically relevant.

MDC-T shot themselves in the foot by recalling the MDC-renewal MPs at a time when both factions have no money to contest the by-elections. Forget the nonsense of not taking part because they want reforms implemented, they have not said what reforms because they have no clue what they are.

The political demise of MDC is now a certainty, it has been painful slow in coming but we are finally getting there. The hope is the demise of MDC will force the electorate to open up their minds and be more receptive to reason. If the nation wants democratic changes the people themselves must do their homework and understand what these changes are because only then can they be sure to elect competent leaders who understand the reforms and will get them implemented and not be so easily bribed by Zanu PF tyrants.  

Nikuv swap by-election voters roll days before voting - rigging is that easy!

Information given to The Zimbabwean shows that an Israeli called Lior Hazan, who sources said worked for Nikuv International Projects, modified electronic data on the constituency rolls for the by-elections on March 14.

This modification occurred well after the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission had compiled the constituency rolls for the by-elections, but the sources said it indicated that he must have been the one who also sent an earlier version of the electronic roll samples for use in the pilot voter registration exercise for the two constituencies.

Apparently to make it difficult to follow the data, the files that were given for the by-election rolls are not ordinarily searchable as required by the constitution.

Said one of the sources, an expert on electoral matters: “The files have been presented in macro ‘filters’ that allow certain filtering within the file, but not across constituencies. In this case a comprehensive search is not possible in the format supplied by ZEC.”

So here we have a foreign company, Nikuv, with a dubious vote rigging reputation issuing a voters roll that is deliberated block so that no one can search and extract information from. The law says it should be searchable but Nikuv deliberately issue the roll in the format that no one can search it.

And literally hours before voting is due to start the same Nikuv, willy-nilly, replaces the voters roll!

MDC factions have been calling for “alignment of electoral laws to the new Copac constitution” and the replacement of some of the people involved in the elections like ZEC chairperson Justice Rita Makarau. How would the firing of Justice Makarau stop Nikuv tampering with the voters roll? Even if ZEC assumed responsibility of the managing the voters roll, taking it away from the Registrar General’s Office, how would ZEC stop Nikuv doing what it is doing right now?

The 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) called for the Government of National Unity (GNU) to implement a whole raft of democratic reforms design to end the overarching political influence of the Executive over the Police, ZEC, etc. None of these reforms were ever implemented. Not even one.

The GNU was also tasked to produce a new democratic constitution but failed to do so because the Copac constitution avoiding all the contentious issues that would have been addressed by the reforms if any had been implemented.

If we are serious about having free, fair and credible elections then we must go back to the democratic reforms agreed in the GPA and get them ALL properly implemented. We must disregard this piece-meal and rather confused MDC’s approach of calling for electoral reforms knowing from the word-go these reforms will never ever deliver free and fair elections.

MDC have pointedly refused to call for the implementation of the democratic reforms agreed in the GPA because that they would, tacitly, acknowledge that they made a fatal politic mistake by failing to implemented even one reform. MDC betrayed the nation by failing to implement the reforms; we must not allow them to compound that betrayal by wasting time and resources messing around with the weak and feeble Copac constitution under the pretext that it alone still deliver free and fair elections.

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Mugabe dared the judge to judge and Chidyausiku has done just that!

 Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku has ruled that former presidential affairs minister Didymus Mutasa’s application challenging his recent expulsion from Parliament should be heard on an urgent basis.

Well by ruling that the case will be heard and Mutasa will have his day in Court, Chief Justice has delivered a body blow to Mugabe who was cock sure no judge would dare hear the case.

For decades Mugabe has done as he pleased getting more and more bold and more and more confident he can do anything and get away with it. It is sometimes when one is at their most bold and arrogant that they will become unstuck.

“Chidya matovo akazodzipwa nedovo remhuru!” so goes the Shona saying. (Dog who prided himself in chewing through the toughest hide, choked on the hide of a calf!)

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." - Winston Churchill.

I would like to believe that by blatantly defying Mugabe Chief Justice Chidyausiku has inadvertly marked the end of the beginning of Mugabe’s tyrannical rule! Not that the Chief Justice had any choice, Mugabe presented the judge with conundrum – Mugabe appointed Chidyausiku Judge and dared him to judge. While Chidyausiku has judged and now Mugabe can question himself why he ever appointed him judge! 

Tsvangirai's superficial understanding of human rights makes him bargain them like mangoes!

Tsvangirai is back on the campaign trail again, he is asking Americans to lift the targeted sanctions against Mugabe and his cronies so they will have no “excuse” for failing to resolve the country’s problems!

"There are two approaches. The United States maintains a hard-line position. The European Union has relaxed it (sanctions), but they have said that the travel ban will still retain on the president and his wife. But everyone else has been removed.  So, as far as I am concerned, sanctions must never be used as an excuse for the failure of economic and political policies in the country. And that's why for us, removing these things (sanctions) will actually create condition where Zanu-PF has no excuse forever," Tsvangirai said.

At least Tsvangirai accepts this was a feeble excuse for Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown but since when has Mugabe ran out of feeble excuses for his failures! By campaigning for the sanctions to be lifted Tsvangirai is, unwittingly, giving credence to Mugabe’s claim that the sanctions had destroyed the Zimbabwe economy and, worst of all, that sanctions were imposed because of Mugabe’s serious human rights violations was a fallacious claim!

The trouble with someone like Tsvangirai is that their understanding of such matters is so superficial they always find it so difficult to defend their position at any given time and more often than not will say one thing today and the exact opposite tomorrow.

Before the formation of the GNU in 2009, MDC supported the imposition of the targeted sanctions against Mugabe and his inner circle. The sanctions were imposed in 2002 after Mugabe had once again failed to hold free and fair elections and for his regime’s bad human rights record.

Of course Mugabe has his own explanation why the West imposed the sanctions insisting that the elections were free and fair. No thinking Zimbabwean or anyone who has followed Zimbabwe politics could cross their hearts and say any of the Zimbabwe’s elections were free and fair. The 2008 elections had been such an abomination that not even SADC and AU election observer teams, known for their turning a blind eye to rigged elections, condemned the Zimbabwe elections.

The root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic and political mess can be traced to the country’s failure to hold free and fair elections and thus to effect regime change. Zimbabweans have been stuck with a corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical regime resulting in the economic ruin and serious human rights violations. The only way out of the mess is to restore the individual right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country. Imposing sanctions on those who were denying the people their free and democratic vote made good sense!

As soon as Tsvangirai was sworn in as Prime Minister in 2009 he started campaigning for the sanctions against Mugabe and his cronies to be lifted. He told the world Mugabe had changed and dropped his tyrannical streak to become a democratic. There was no evidence of this as Zanu PF continued to invade farms, beat up the opposition and, most significantly, not one of the agreed democratic reforms had been implemented by the GNU.

PM Tsvangirai complete failed to appreciate that Mugabe could not be considered a democratic and yet still retain the Zanu PF dictatorship. It was also for MDC to dismantle the dictatorship by implementing the reforms. And so for Tsvangirai to be calling for the lifting of the sanction when he had done nothing to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship showed just how little he understood the reasoning behind their imposition.

The July 2013 elections have settled the question of whether Mugabe and Zanu PF had indeed changed because they went on to blatantly rig the elections.

Mugabe and Zanu PF have blamed Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown on the “illegal sanctions imposed by the evil British and their allies”. But have completely failed to explain how this was so given that the sanctions were on a select few and that the country was free to do business with everyone else. But most important of all, after the 2008 elections whose results were condemn by all the internal and external observers Mugabe could no longer deny that he had failed to hold free and fair elections. He could no longer claim that it was the West who wanted regime change when it was clear he had systematically denied the people a meaningful vote.

So during the GNU Tsvangirai campaigned for the sanctions to be lifted because he was convinced Mugabe had changed from the tyrant to a democrat. Events have proven Tsvangirai was hopelessly wrong because Mugabe was the same ruthless tyrant he was before the GNU.

Now Tsvangirai is campaigning for the sanctions to be lifted but from a changed position. He accepts Mugabe is a tyrant, he accepts the regime has failed to hold free and fair elections, etc. and, most significantly, he also accept the regime has used the sanctions as an “excuse”, the smoke screen to hide behind for its economic and political failure.

What is certain to happen here is that Mugabe will take the lifting of the sanction as proof that he had been right all along! Yes without any significant change of direction on his part nothing on the economic and political front will change but he will have the ready excuse that the damage caused was so far reaching it would take time for the nation to recover.

Indeed he could even play hard ball by refusing to pay back IMF and WF debt, for example, knowing this would force the two institutions to stop all credit lines. Mugabe can then insist this cuts have nothing to do with the country’s failure to pay its debt but rather the West back on its “regime change” agenda.

The democratic right of the people of Zimbabwe to free, fair and credible is their birth right and their ticket to end this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule. The willingness of people like Tsvangirai to trade in this right at every turn shows how little he really understand that there some things that can be traded in the people’s basic democratic rights and freedoms are not one of these things.

Throughout the GNU MDC appeased the tyrant by failing to implement even one democratic reforms and Mugabe has since thanked you, Tsvangirai, and your fellow MDC friend by kicking off the gravy train. Now you want to appease the tyrant by campaigning for the lifting of the sanctions and tacitly accept that there have not been serious human rights violations including failure to hold free and fair elections.

You have cross a double red-line there because basic human rights and freedoms are not mangoes or tomatoes that you or anyone give away or bargain with to appease a tyrant like Mugabe! 

Smith accepted change when the game was up but not so with Mugabe!

Ian Smith’s racist regime was doom to collapse because it was not economically and militarily sustainable. Mugabe’s wasteful and oppressive Zanu PF dictatorship too was doomed to collapse because it was not economically and socially sustainable. Both regimes have cause the loss of over 30 000 human lives; whilst Smith finally saw the “Dead End” sign and finally agreed to accept change, Robert Mugabe has already gone beyond that as he has completely destroyed the nation’s economy too and still he hang on to power.

The Mugabe regime deployed the Riot Police to stop last week’s protest by the Students and University Lecturers over the country’s worsening economic situation. The regime has being threatening even more Police clamp down in the face of the growing unease in the nation.

After 35 years of mismanagement, corrupt and criminal waste of the country's human and material resources which has result in the distraction of the country's once prosperous economy to the point where unemployment has soared 90%, 16% of the people are now living in soul crashing abject poverty, etc.

The people realized soon enough that Mugabe and Zanu PF would never deliver “gutsa ruzhinji” (mass prosperity) but were on route to deliver the exact opposite, mass poverty. Income has been dropping ever since Mugabe took office in 1980 and today they have dropped to the lowest in 60 years. As noted above 16% are already living in soul crashing abject poverty and the numbers are set to grow in the coming month for all the signs are that the economic meltdown is going to get worse and not better.

Mugabe’s economic recovery plan, ZimAsset, is dead in the water. The massive $27 billion plan has only managed to get $7 billion in post-dated project funding (both the Chinese and Russians have yet spent a dollar on the grounds) and not a single dollar in budgetary support, which is what Mugabe wanted. Meanwhile the regime has done nothing to address the primary causes of the country’s economic meltdown – the gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and the institutionalized lawlessness behind the white owned farm seizures and the indigenisation laws.

It is the lawlessness that has forced donors and investors alike to shy away from investing in Zimbabwe. The only foreign players, the Chinese, Indians, Israelis and more recently the Russians, have come to join in the looting and plunder especially of the country’s $800 billion Marange diamonds. The diamond windfall has the potential of lifting the country out of poverty into prosperity but the corruption is so, so bad that the country is not even getting a single dollar in revenue from the sale of diamonds. Not a penny!

Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, tired of giving feeble excuses why the government was failing to collect the tax from the diamond mining said the alluvial diamonds from Marange were “finished”.

Since the regime does not have the political will to address the root causes of the economic meltdown and its own, ZimAsset, economic recovery plan – which was essentially meant to rig economic recovery by throwing loads of money at the economic meltdown without addressing the root causes – is dead in the water the only way to end the economic crisis is therefore for the regime to step aside so that someone else with the political will and vision can take the country forward.

Ever since the nation realised that Mugabe and Zanu PF will never deliver economic prosperity the people have sort democratic means to remove the regime but only to be confronted with a regime determined to resist regime change by all means.

Mugabe and Zanu PF were at the forefront in the fight to end the exploitation and oppression of the blacks by the whites. They said they were fighting for freedom, justice, one-man-one-vote and all the other human freedoms and basic rights. But most important of all what they were fighting for was absolute power and they never hesitated even for a moment to disregard all those values and ideals of freedom, justice, etc. in pursuit of their goal of establishing a one-party dictatorship and absolute power.

The blacks in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia were denied a fair share of the country’s economic wealth and they had no political say in the governance of the country but at least the whites had the economic common sense to grow the economy. The racist regime was unsustainable. Smith realised that the economy, although still very strong, was beginning to suffer because of the increasing political isolation and through the even increasing extra burden of fighting the civil war. The civil war had caused so such human suffering and loss property and human of lives and the situation was set to get worse and not better.

Ian Smith had the good sense to see the “Dead End” sign and accept the dreaded regime change, black majority rule, he had boosted would not happen “in a thousand years”.

Zimbabwe’s economic situation in which 90% are out of work and 16% are living in abject poverty and the numbers are increasing every day is not sustainable. The “Dead End” sign has been there for Mugabe and Zanu PF to see for years. They should have accepted that regime change was unavoidable years ago before dragging the nation this deep in the economic and political mess with the country up to its eyes in debt, the economic infrastructure in ruins and so many people forced in abject poverty. 

If Mugabe and Mnangagwa think they can continue to use brute force to stop the people demand change forever then they really do not know the meaning of the unsustainable and thus of the sign “Dead End”. Does the regime real think it can use brute force to stop the people voicing their suffering as the numbers of those living in grinding poverty start to climb from the present 16% to 25% to 30% etc.?

What this Zanu PF dictatorship is failing to see and appreciate is that it does not have the power to stop regime change, it never had. It is has done so far is delay regime change just as Ian Smith delay majority rule.

It is a big plus that the nation has held its peace for 35 years of this Zanu PF corrupt and tyrannical rule give the regime the opportunity for peaceful regime change. Now all the signs are this nation going to have violent street protest or worse because the people’s patience is running out.

Mugabe has enjoyed absolute tyrannical powers for the last 35 years but the two things that are beyond his tyrannical dictate is the economic meltdown – after decades of criminal waste of human and material resources the national economy is now in total meltdown and he has failed to rig recovery – and regime change. Zanu PF is in political turmoil internal because it is rotten to the core. The people have suffering under its corrupt and tyrannical rule they hate Mugabe and all the regime stand for with a consuming passion, no tyrant can rig love where there is hatred. All these three forces are working in unison to ensure the demise of the regime; regime change is as certain as the sun rising tomorrow! 

Mujuru says Mugabe "used and dumped" her - now she wants to stage a come back!

Former Vice President Mujuru told The Independent that she is bitter about the way Mugabe has “used and dumped” her.

“Former  vice-president Joice Mujuru says she bitterly feels President Robert Mugabe used and dumped her from her senior positions in Zanu PF and government after loyally serving for 42 years, having started working for the ruling party in the middle of a fierce liberation war at a tender age of 17,” reported The Independent.

After 34 years in power with all the traps of tyrannical absolute power brings she has the cheek to be bitter!  How much more bitter should the millions of Zimbabweans whose lives have been a hell-on-earth all these years because of the misery brought on by Zanu PF betrayal of the values and principles of freedom, liberty and justice the nation had fought the bitter war against white racist regime to achieve and thousands lost their lives for!

Mai Mujuru is bitter that her pampered life was cut short after 34 years and she has ambitions of restarting from where she left off after she was unceremoniously booted out of Zanu PF last years by possibly standing as a presidential candidate in 2018. She is completely oblivious of the misery the Zanu PF dictatorship had inflicted on millions of ordinary Zimbabweans. 

Throughout the whole interview Mai Mujuru talked about the fight for power in Zanu PF before independence and the role she and her late husband played in helping Mugabe takeover the leadership of the party, Zanu PF. She never once referred to the ordinary freedom fighters and povo and their aspirations for freedom, justice, liberty and human rights and dignity and a meaningful share in the nation's economic wealth. It has not registered in her fist-size brain that Zanu PF has denied the overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans the dreams and aspirations to gratify the insatiable appetites for absolute power and wealth of the few ruling elite. 

“Only God knows. I am not losing any sleep over that. Even President Mugabe always says that leaders come from the people,” was a coy reply when she was asked if she planned to stand as a presidential candidate in 2018.

She knows that she has remained in offices all these years only because Zanu PF rigged the elections and now since she was kicked out of the party, she would have to win free, fair and credible elections. No doubt, the fist-size brain has not yet realized that she will not be on the vote rigging side this time – even after her own first-hand experience as victim of rigged electoral process after last year’s party elections!

So she really thinks the nation would be so stupid to elect her in free, fair and credible elections; the same individual who has sat in the Zanu PF government for 34 years and never spoke a word against all the mismanagement and corruption that has destroyed the nation’s economy leaving millions out of work and destitute.

Mai Mujuru and her late husband are amongst some of the wealthiest individuals in the country. Both had no known talents other than being some of the most corrupt individuals in the country.

She expects the nation to vote for the same individual who sat like a cabbage and said nothing against all the political oppression, the beatings and rapes, the vote rigging and the murder of over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans.

In a country where 16% or 2 million people are already living in abject poverty as a result of 35 years of criminal waste of the nation’s material and human resources by a corrupt and tyrannical regime of whom she was a very senior member of until a few months ago; she believes the 2 million would be itching for more of the corruption and brutal oppression.

If no democratic reforms are implemented then the Mugabe faction will once again rig the vote and “win” the 2018 elections. If the reforms are implemented and the elections are free, fair and credible then neither the Mujuru faction nor the Mugabe faction of Zanu PF will win the election. So either way Mai Mujuru can dream of returning back into office but in practise that will never ever happen!  

Germany offers way out of Zim crisis - offer Mugabe will be mad to refuse!

Ambassador Georg Schmidt, Germany’s Regional Director for Sub-Saharan Africa offers Zimbabwe the way out of the country’s economic meltdown and debt trap by offering to assist in repayment of our debt in return for Zimbabwe implementing the economic and political reforms.

“Should the positive signals in the process of constitutional alignment and economic reform prove to be sustainable Germany is prepared to enter into an open dialogue with the Zimbabwean Government on ways out of the economic crisis, including the burdensome debt problem.”

“I came to Harare in this spirit,” Ambassador Schmidt gave the assurance.

Mugabe and his cronies do not deserve this help and thus the more reason they must grab it and be thankful. It is not every day that someone will offer to help pay another person’s bad debts particularly when the said debt is a self-inflicted wound from decades of criminal waste of resources through gross mismanagement, rampant corruption to all out looting and plunder.

Zimbabwe is a very rich country and would not need any helping hand if the country’s vast resources and wealth were managed properly and for the good of all and not wasted to gratify the insatiable greed of the few. In 2005/2006 Zimbabwe’s Marange and Chiadzwa diamonds were valued at a staggering $800 billion, for example. The exploitation of this bounty is now in full swing and yet the country has only collected mere pittance in tax revenue. A few weeks ago the nation learnt that will not receive even the pittance!

The Minister of Information, Professor Jonathan Moyo, twittered two months ago that there was going to be a “dramatic reduction in tax” from sale of Marange diamonds. His colleague, the Minister of Finance, Patrick Chinamasa, confirmed the bad news a few weeks later when he told parliament that “alluvial diamonds are finished”.

Government has been struggling to pay the wages of the bloated civil servants let alone pay for anything else. What Minister Chinamasa was failing to explain was why the government was not getting anything from in tax revenue from Marange diamond mining. By telling the nations there were no more diamonds the Minister was saving himself from having to give any more feeble excuses by giving one blatant lie.

Of course Chinamasa was lying that the diamonds were finished because the regime had just signed a deal with the Russians to mine for diamonds in Marange in September 2014.  When Mugabe signed the $4.8 billion deal with the Russian to mine Platinum in Darwendale; he also signed a hush-hush deal with them to mine diamonds in Marange with the Zimbabwe Military as their local partner. The two shared the proceeds without having to pay any tax; that is why it was hush-hush.

 Apparently this is in fact the norm; the foreign company provide the mining expertise and then share the proceeds from the sale of the diamond with their local partner without having to pay a penny in tax. The late Zanu PF MP Chindori Chininga confirmed this was indeed the practice in his parliamentary report in 2013. The report said the mining was a hectic 24 hours  a day and 7 days a week operation and yet no one on the Zimbabwean side had any record of the quantity, quality and value of the diamonds the foreign partners were extracting and shipped out of the country.

The rich and powerful in the Zanu PF ruling elite are all in on the looting and plunder of Marange, including the Army, the Police and Zanu PF leaders including Mugabe himself. According to Partnership Africa Canada’s report, Mugabe made a mouth-watering $2 billion in 2012 alone from his share of the Marange diamonds.

In calling for “economic reforms” Ambassador Schmidt must have meant an end to Zimbabwe’s rampant corrupt but he could not have realized the extent and depth of the rot. How can Mugabe tell his cronies the tax free windfall concessions have all been terminated, especially when he has been so heavily involved himself and took the lion’s share all these years and has amassed unbelievable wealth for himself and his family. The cronies feel they are only playing catch-up!

The firing of former Vice President Joice Mujuru and 16 senior party and government leaders has made everyone in Zanu PF very jumpy. All these years Mugabe has kept the peace in the party by dishing out jobs in the bloated civil service, lucrative contracts, seized former white owned, tax-free diamond mining concessions, etc., etc. to his ever demanding but wasteful party loyalists just to keep them sweet. In the face of the country’s economic meltdown these patronage perks are all that is stopping many of these party loyalists sinking into abject poverty as has already happen to 16% of the country’s population.

If Mugabe was to end the system of political patronage now Zanu PF loyalists affected will never see it as a necessity for economic recovery but rather as the on-going political purge in the party. Purging Mujuru and those close to her is one thing but to purge the whole Zanu PF body-politic is political suicide.

Mugabe will never ever address the problem of mismanagement and corruption at the heart of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown because he would have to end his political patronage system of rewarding corrupt and wasteful party loyalists. He needs their blind loyalty to stay in power now more than ever because the regime’s failed economic policies and political repression has made Zanu PF unelectable without vote rigging.

The European Union has already promised Harare $1.28 million to fund the process of aligning Zimbabwe’s existing laws to the 2013 Copac constitution.  Ambassador, this is a waste of time and money because the Copac constitution alone will never delivered free and fair elections, restore law and order, restore property rights, etc. as the 2013 elections have already shown.

What Zimbabwe need to have ALL the democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement necessary for free and fair election and the restoration of all the freedoms and basic humans implemented. Since Zanu PF and MDC were the parties in the GNU who failed to get even one of the reform implemented it would be naïve not believe that with Zanu PF on its own can ever be trusted to implement any of these reforms.

Mugabe and Zanu PF must step down so that a body can be appointed to implement ALL the democratic reforms.

What Mugabe and his cronies have to realize is that the current economic system that has pushed unemployment rate to nauseating height of 90%, has forced 16% of the people into a life of abject poverty, etc. is socially, morally and politically unsustainable. Zimbabwe is sitting on a social time-bomb because no people can be expected to endure economic hardships that have denying them their humanity and hope forever without protesting. The limit of what Zimbabweans will endured has now been reached as can be seen by the growing public unrest.

Germany is offering Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies a way out of the economic nightmare of the economic meltdown by helping organise and fund economic recovery and Zimbabwe ballooning national debt. Germany has the technical know-how and experience given that it was in total economic ruins after the Second World War but soon emerged as Europe’s economic power house it is today. This is an offer only a madman would refuse; all Mugabe has to do now is step down. But by refusing to step down, Mugabe will per se have elected that he will be forced out power the Muammar Gaddafi way!