Dear Patrick Guramatunhu, you have
accused me of “killing the democratic spirit” in asking the failed MDC leaders
to apologize and leave politics (Opinion column).You have the wrong end of the
stick, I am the one blazing the true democratic values and principles and
holding these failed leaders to account – in this case their betrayal is so
serious they should have resigned on mass and left. I am here to make sure that
they never get to hold public office ever again.
I glad that you agree with me that in
failing to implement the democratic reforms MDC leaders showed that they are
corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent; that is a very good starting point
because many of the MDC wildebeest herd has completely failed to reach that
point. I will deal with these MDC supporters first.
They are hard wired to follow blindly
like sheep to the slaughter. They continue to consider leaders like Tsvangirai
as infallible regardless the mountain of evidence of his blunders, regardless
the grim reality that Mugabe is still lording over the nation contrary to the
MDC promise to end his tyrannical rule and no amount of reasoning can get
though those hermetically sealed MDC supporters’ heads that Mugabe is still
there because Tsvangirai is not to the task to remove him.
Man is a creature of reason but you
would not think so to look at that sea of MDC supporters in their regalia of
red, orange and green for each of the three main factions – changing from one
colour to the other and then back again like leaves with the changing seasons.
A healthy and functioning democracy
demands a thinking electorate who understand issues and receptive to reason.
Democracy give the people the right to vote but like all rights this one comes
with the duty and responsibility – the duty and responsibility to use the vote
wisely and to hold the elected officials to account at all time. This is only
possible when the voter understands the issues at stake are receptive to reason
and will therefore not be bamboozled with bull.
What is the point of being given a
choice if the options are incomprehensible to the voter they might just as well
be in Chinese?
So our MDC supporter who has yet
completely failed to comprehend that MDC leaders are corrupt even now with all
the benefit of hindsight we can safely classify as the wildebeest voter who has
failed to take the duty and responsibility as a voter with the seriousness it
deserves. They are incompetent to be trusted with the responsibility to hold
anyone, including their MDC leaders to account
“Still it is for the electorate and not for Mukori or anyone
else to decide whether MDC leaders like Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Welshman
Ncube, etc. should "walk into the political sunset", you argued. So
the section of the electorate that can make such a judgement must exclude the
wildebeest herd.
Now I will turn on those voters like you Patrick who agree that
MDC leaders are indeed “corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent”. I would like
them to revisit this important point; was MDC leaders’ failure to implement the
reform a genuine mistake out of failure understand the reforms or what they
were expected to do to implement the reforms. Or was it a deliberate and
calculated act of betrayal.
The evidence on the ground shows that MDC leaders did not even
try to implement any reforms. Even when SADC heads of government literally
begged them to implement the reforms as MP Sipape Nkomo has since admitted.
There is no doubt that MDC leaders were enjoying the trappings of power that
Mugabe granted them, the same gravy train lifestyle the tyrant gave his own
Zanu PF cronies. The politicians from both sides of the political divide have
all enjoyed the gravy train lifestyles and have gone out of their ways to
ensure they did nothing to upset their chief benefactor – Mugabe. Zanu PF
cronies have turned a blind eye to the corruption, vote rigging, human rights
abuses including the murder of over 30 000 by Mugabe and for MDC, they ditched
the reforms.
The little assertiveness Tsvangirai had shown in the first few
months of the GNU completed disappeared when Mugabe gave him the keys to the $4
million Highlands mansion.
SADC heads accused Tsvangirai and his friends of “enjoying
themselves in government and forgetting why they were there”, in sheer
frustration at MDC’s failure to implement even one democratic reform.
There is no doubt that MDC leaders’ failure to implement even
one reform was a deliberate act of betrayal born out of greed.
The other point that must be considered is the seriousness of
the consequences of MDC’s failure to implement the reforms. The nation is still
stuck with this corrupt and tyrannical regime which has cause the economic
meltdown forcing unemployment to soar to 90% plus, two million Zimbabweans are
already living in abject poverty, etc.
This need not have happened if MDC leaders had not been so
corrupt and sold the whole nation, not just a few thousand people but a whole
nation, for what has to be the modern day slave price of a piece of calico
cloth and a handful of beads!
Tell these corrupt, breathtakingly incompetent and treasonous
MDC leaders to apologize for selling the nation out to the tyrant and then walk
into the political sunset is the very least anyone who really understand what
they have done and the tragic suffering it brings would say.
No Patrick, I am not “killing the democratic spirit” but rather
setting up the bench mark of true democratic accountability; if you are a
public official and you are found to be corrupt and/or breathtakingly and/or
murderer and/or treasonous, you will be punished and/or banished from holding
public office ever again.
After what Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have done it would be
sheer folly for the nation to entrust them with the task of delivering the
democratic changes the nation has been dying for when they failed to do so
during the GNU, when the task was a hell lot easier to accomplish!
“In any case MDC are the only opposition on the ground at
present; Zimbabweans would be very foolish to listen to people like Mukori to
ditch the only politically active opposition the country has,” you argued.
I would expect to hear that from those who have yet to get the
heads round the fact that MDC is a party led by some of the most corrupt and
incompetent individuals in human history. It is totally irrational for some
would have accepted this basic fact to say such a thing because no thinking
person would want to be led someone who has already proven beyond doubt that
they are incompetent.
16 comments:
Two cases of cholera have been reported in Beitbridge.
One of these days Zimbabwe will pay dearly for having allowed its clean water systems right across the country to fall apart; let us hope this is not the day!
@ Patrick
If I was to present to the nation the Albert Einstein of democratic governance and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai whom do you think the nation would elect to be the leader? The later of course and I will tell you why I am sure of it.
Whilst our Albert Einstein would tell the voters that they will have to work hard and make great sacrifices because the Zimbabwe economy is like a large tanker ship that will take time to slow down, turn round and then slowly build up speed in the right direction. All the voters will hear is hard work and greater sacrifice and they will switch off.
They cannot deal with the truth and hard work and those are the facts and realities Einstein can deal with and will not deal with anything else.
Tsvangirai on the other hand would be telling the voters that he will deliver democratic reforms, economic recovery and jobs galore. He will never deliver most of the things, even those within his power to, because he is corrupt and incompetent. But when one is dealing with a naïve and gullible electorate whose understanding of anything is at better superficial the more outrageous the electoral promises the more electable the speaker!
At the end of the day it is the voters who decide what kind of government a given nation will have. After 35 years of independences Zimbabweans had many opportunities to end this Zanu PF dictatorship and replace it with one of their liking; the opportunities were all wasted because the electorate failed to produce a leader up to the task.
It is the electorate who planted the lemon tree because they could not be bothered searching for an orange or mango tree. In the case of Mugabe and Tsvangirai the nation has a corrupt and murderous tyrant and a corrupt and incompetent idiot respectively.
Mugabe is a very cunning fox and he has outwitted Tsvangirai three times already, during the GNU the odds were stacked high in Tsvangirai’s favour and yet still he was outwitted. It is Muga-be who now has the Aces come the next elections and to expect Tsvangirai to outwit the fox this time is naïve.
This is not a case of picking the lesser of two evils but mere acknowledging a basic fact that Mu-gabe is too cunning to ever be beaten by Tsvangirai.
It is in Zanu PF’s interest to ensure MDC remains the country’s dominant opposition party be-cause with corrupt and incompetent opponent they know none of the democratic reforms will ever be implemented. As long as elections are not free and fair then Zanu PF will continue to hold all the trump cards.
The West has abandoned MDC following the party's pathetic performance in the 2013 elections. They believe MDC will never bring change to Zimbabwe.
If Zimbabweans are serious about ending the country’s corrupt and oppressive political system then they must look at getting voters who are smart enough to elect a competent opposition be-cause nothing of any substance will ever come of corrupt and incompetent leaders like Tsvangi-rai, Biti, Ncube, etc.
@Tozvireva
That is an interesting theory but it greatest weak point is the Mugabe want Mnangagwa as VP back in 2004. Why did Mugabe change the Zanu PF constitution to stop Mnangagwa being elected because he had the majority of the party members backing him back then just as Mai Mujuru had the majority in 2014? If Mugabe had died in the period 2004 to 2014 there is no doubt that Mai Mujuru would have succeeded him.
If Mugabe had told Mnangagwa that he would be next president but only after his death, Mnangagwa would have been a lot happier than the uncertainty created by Mugabe publically announcing that the race for his successor is wide open and Mnangagwa may not even be on the starting line-up.
Mugabe may find it impossible to appoint his preferred successor and thus appoint Mnangagwa make no mistake about it he would have tried because Mnangagwa is certainly not his preferred successor.
@ Mabhena
“The struggle for a Just and Fair Zimbabwe requires leaders that will not abandon principle and our leaders have demonstrated such capacity. We therefore make this clarion call to the people of Zimbabwe: Now is the time! Now is the time to build the UMDC into a strong political for-mation.”
What do you mean “leaders that will not abandon principle and our leaders have demonstrated such capacity”? Are these not the same men and women who were in the GNU and failed to im-plement even one reform because they were too busy with their snouts in the feeding trough to remember the reforms? You really must think all Zimbabwe have a very short memory or else they are so stupid these same corrupt and incompetent leaders can con them again.
So you think by changing the shirt from red to green or orange and now to orange and green is enough to confuse the Zimbabwe public; they will see not see the person who abandoned the struggle with his/her snout in the feeding trough during the GNU but a principled person instead. How naïve!
You MDC lot should have apologized to the Zimbabwean people for letting them down so, so badly and then walked into the political sunset. You have never even admitted wrong doing; showing that you really are all as arrogant and contemptuous of the people as Mugabe and Zanu PF! All you care about is getting back on the gravy train and all this show of concern of the suffering masses is just a charade!
You have used the people to get into power and then betrayed them soon thereafter, you will not do so again!
Israel's claim to being the champion of democracy and therefore worthy of support from the West is wearing thin. In Africa it is no secret that Israel remained apartheid South Africa's closest partner right up to the day Mandela was realised from prison. Israel did not care about the oppressed blacks as long as it was making money.
Today Israel is still in Africa working closely with dictators like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe; in the last elections it was an Israel company Nikuv that help Mugabe rig the elections. Nikuv was paid a princely sum of US$ 13 million.
Here there is no doubt that the Israeli Prime Minister is not just interfering with America's own democratic process but undermining it and manipulating it for his own selfish electoral gain.
America has done a lot for Israel ever since the founding of that country after the WW2 and this is how Israel is thanking the Americans by telling them what to do. It is the dog that wags the tail but now we have the tail wag-ging the dog!
@Grumpie
As far as PM Netanyahu is concern God said the Israeli are the chosen people but actually what He meant was that they are the only people.
Israel keeps making a big song and dance about being the only democratic country in the Middle East and yet it has been associated with tyrants in Africa and schooling them on how to rig elections. It was the Israeli company Nikuv that help Mugabe rig the 2013 elections. The Israeli government was warned about Nikuv’s activities but did nothing to stop them.
It would be ironic if it should turn out that the tyrant Mugabe Israel helped keep in power is the one who has been supply Iran with the raw material it needs to make the nuclear bomb!
@tom
And before Obama took office there was peace in the world no one did anything as much as raise their voice in anger, right? Get real!
America has never been a fair broker in the Middle East, it has always sided with Israel even when the later was on the wrong. Europe has tries to be fair. There will never be lasting peace anywhere as long as the long running injustice in the Middle East is allowed to continue.
Obama is at least refusing to allow Israel to dictate American foreign policy particularly, as is the case here, just to suit Netanyahu's domestic election agenda. The same cannot be said about those Republicans politicians who are so gullible they believed everything Netanyahu told them!
@ Sibusiso
Israel has always had powerful lobby groups in America who have campaigned tireless to pro-mote her interests; no American politician has dared not to ignore them if he/she wanted to re-main in power. This has allowed Israel to have undue power over American policy in the Middle East. Indeed one can even say Israel has not just dictate how much financial aid America must give Israel but has seen to it that no one else in the region get any help without Israel’s approval. The tale of the tail that wagging the dog!
No one from his own party Zanu PFor from the opposition has managed to force Mugabe from office but it is clear that the country's economic meltdown will. Mugabe's ZimAsset reconomic recovery plan is dead in the water due to lack of funds. He asked for $27 billion but got $7 billion in post dated cheques for projects and not a penny for the critical area of budgetary support.
Years of misrule has cause the economic meltdown; companies are closing and foreign investment has completely dried up. Unemployment has soared to 90% and 2 million people are already living in abject poverty. The regime is using 80% (as contrast to the norm of 30 or 40%) of collected revenue to pay civil servants and is now talking of cutting the wages. This is socially and politically unsustainable and yet as long as Mugabe remains in power the situation is set to get even worse.
The only to end the economic meltdown is for Mugabe and Zanu PF to step down so the country can hold fresh election and get a new government with a new mandate to deal with the economic and political problems.
Mugabe rigged the 2013 national elections but now he has failed to rig economic recovery and since the rigged elections the country's economy has done nothing else but fall! Mugabe's ZimAsset plan is dead in the water and all Chinamasa's kiya kiya measures have not worked.
It is all very well for IMF to say Zimbabwe must pay her debt arrears but pay them with what? The only way this regime can do that is by ending all the corruption which has seen the government getting nothing in tax revenue from Marange, for example. But that is the one thing Mugabe will never allow to happen!
One thing is clear though the current economic meltdown is socially and politically unsustainable; there will be regime change like Mugabe likes it or not!
@Patrick
I believe you and thousands of other Zimbabweans out there are more competent than these MDC idiots who got us into this mess. As a nation we have been conned first by the whites and then by leaders like Mugabe and Tsvangirai into believing that we are incapable of doing any-thing on our own and hence the reason we need the whites and then the black leaders.
You will be surprised how many black Zimbabweans have slowly come round to accepting that Morgan Tsvangirai, Biti, etc. are indeed corrupt and incompetent and, here is the even bigger surprise, yet they will still want them to lead the nation. It is the deep seated inferiority complex, self-hate and sloth-like think that would lead one to make such self-inflected deracination choice; but there it is.
We do not need rocket scientist to lead us; anyone with common sense and it not too lazy to think will do the job Mugabe and his thugs have failed to do.
90%, at least, of the Zimbabwe economic recovery can be delivery by anyone with common sense and can think. The food shelves in the shops were full again in 2009 because of two common sense decisions, the scrapping of the Z$ and ending price controls. The common sup-ply and demand laws did the rest. MDC leaders have managed to fool the unthinking public into believing it was their doing the shops filled up.
Zanu PF or MDC leaders would have done a lot better than they have done if the electorate had not been such a naïve and gullible lot they believed whatever nonsense the leaders told them. So your obsession with who will lead misses the point really of improving the voters.
Get competent voters and competent leaders will follow; it is nonsense that an incompetent electorate will, somehow, produce a competent government!
USA renews sanctions against Mugabe and his inner circle.
If Mugabe 's nonsense that it is the sanctions that has and continue to cause Zimbabwe’s eco-nomic meltdown then the EU might just as well have maintained the sanctions because nothing has changed economically since the relationship between EU – Zimbabwe thawed 2 years ago. The EU stubbornly refused to bankroll Mugabe's ZimAsset.
There have been countless high powered EU delegation visit to Zimbabwe but none of the visits have so far resulted in any EU country investing a dollar or giving a dollar in budgetary support the regime needs desperately.
Indeed the Chinese too must have since last August imposed sanctions on Mugabe because they too have refused to give Mugabe a dollar in budgetary support.
Mugabe’s ZimAsset economic recovery plan in dead in the water and the economic meltdown is getting worse by the day; unemployment has soared to 90%, the regime is now talking of cutting civil servant wages, etc. How long does Mugabe think this is going to last? Sooner or later Mu-gabe will have to step down or he will be forced out of office because this cannot go on like this for much longer!
@Isu zvedu
SADC heads also accused MDC leaders of "enjoying themselves and forgetting why they were in the GNU".
Western donors too have given up on MDC leaders because they have proven beyond all doubt that they are corrupt and incompetent and they will never deliver any democratic change.
You have never understood what the reforms were and even now, with benefit of hindsight, you still do not have a clue; that is why you still follow these MDC leaders.
Zimbabwe is in this mess because we have more than our fair share of men and women whose minds are impermeable to logic and reason. You are just one of them.
@Dr Tapiwa Shumba
“It could be true that only a fool will do the same thing over and over again but still expect a dif-ferent result. After 15 years of the same strategy, it is high time opposition political parties accept that the old strategy has not worked and might never work.
“The opposition, specifically the MDC adopted and pursued a very difficult, tactically costly and historically incomprehensible approach towards fighting for change. Although the idea of change is noble and resonates with the aspirations of the general populace, it is the strategy of confrontation that has destroyed any hope for that change.
“When pursuing confrontational politics, everything ZANU-PF and Mugabe says or does has to be branded and opposed as evil,” you said.
You just assumed that MDC was confrontational and that is why they failed to deliver the chang-es they had promised. That is not true; MDC failed to implement even one democratic reform during the five years of the GNU because the leaders are corrupt and breathtakingly incompe-tent.
Mugabe laid the honey trap of the gravy train lifestyle when MDC leaders joined Zanu PF in the GNU. The ministerial limo, the honour and respect afforded to all ministers, the globe-trotting, etc. When Tsvangirai got the keys to the $4 million Highlands mansion; that was it all reforms were kicked into the tall grass and forgotten.
“Vanhu veMDC vadzidza kudya vanyerere!” (MDC people have learnt to enjoy the gravy train life and not rock the boat!) Was the pithy remark of a Mugabe crony as to why MDC was doing nothing about implementing the reforms.
Of course the MDC leaders did not want their time on the gravy train to end as their desperate scrambling to get back on shows. They believed they will still win the elections regardless of whatever Mugabe tried to do to rig the elections. By 12.00 noon on the day of the elections they finally realised they had made a big mistake but it was too late of course. The failure to under-stand why the reforms were important not just for the coming elections but for all times showed just how naïve and breathtakingly incompetent MDC leaders are.
If Zimbabweans are ever going to enjoy freedom, justice and have a democratic government then they have to ensure the elect competent leaders. To follow the same corrupt and incompe-tent leaders is an act of folly; to elect an idiot once is stupid to elect him/her again and again only proves what an idiot you are!
@Information Minister J Moyo
“While Zimbabwe has over the years held pole position with the highest literacy rate in Africa - which is currently at 90.70% - this commendable achievement that the country remarkably main-tained even during the harsh hyperinflationary years, translates to no better than Grade 7 litera-cy,” you said.
I can relate to that for I had the chance to interview some “O” and “A” level school leavers and was shocked at how little they knew for one with such qualifications. I asked some of them what a verb is and they did not know!
So we pay good money for 11 or 13 years’ worth of education for our children only for them to finish with 7 years’ worth of learning.
The deputy minister of tertiary education last month admitted that our University graduates are “half-baked”. Even if one was to assume that the quality of education offered at our Universities is high (which is itself doubtful given the mediocrity shown by many of our University Lecturers and Professor – including the author of this article) one has to question how someone who does not know what a verb is can be taught anything.
It is not at University level that we need to carry out the rethink, as you suggest, but rather go back to grade one!
Having come out of the education system “half baked”; the poor individuals are then subjected to a life time of propaganda and brainwashing from the country’s media. No need to name who is the regime’s chief of propaganda! Is it any wonder that the country is in a mess; we have become a nation of degenerates!
@ Patrick
On the contrary Patrick, when I said you are the kind of individual the nation needs as leader; I knew what I was talking about and meant every word. It was not meant to flatter you.
You fought in the war of independence because you believe in ending the oppressive racist regime of Ian Smith and wanted a Zimbabwe where there is justice, freedom, equality and human dignity for all. Mugabe never tire of telling us that too is what he and his Zanu PF stood for the subtle and yet very important difference between you and Mugabe and his cronies is that you believed in these things and cared and they did not.
You were a freedom fighter in every sense of the word who believed in the cause – freedom, liberty and human dignity. By contrast, Mugabe and his cronies were mercenaries fought the war for the sake of the reward – they wanted power and all the influence and wealth it brought and they showed they would do anything including denying the people all those things the prophesied to have been fighting for, freedom, liberty, the right to a meaningful vote and even the right to life.
You may have remained a member of Zanu PF all these years but you have never really belonged because you have never approved what Mugabe and his cronies were doing. Whatever you have become I believe you could have held an even more senior position in the Army, government or whatever if you had accepted to be part of the Zanu PF dictatorship. I can say so because you and clever, articulate and a hell lot cleverer than some of the individuals who have occupied high offices in the regime.
Whatever you have achieved in life, you have earned through hard work and not through corruption and looting.
You are not like the Mutasas and Rugare Gumbos of this world who have only started to see what a corrupt and ruthless tyrant Mugabe is now that they have been kicked out of the party. You saw Mugabe for the murderous tyrant he is and kept you distance from the tyrant.
Patrick you are honest, hard-working, and principled and have the courage to stand up for what you believe in. You are the competent leader this nation needs.
I agree that competent leaders have been hard to find in Zimbabwe these last 35 years but that is because of the country’s politically stifling Zanu PF dictatorship; end it and you will be surprised. This is why implementing the democratic reforms designed to dismantle the dictatorship was so, so important. This is why MDC’s failure to implement the reforms was such a serious political setback for the nation and why the nation can never for the MDC leaders.
Implementing the reforms still remains a critical first step to ending the Zanu PF dictatorship. We need competent leaders like you Patrick to ensure that these reforms are implemented properly and as soon as possible. Corrupt and incompetent leaders like Tsvangirai will never get the job done because they are just that – corrupt and incompetent.
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