In this life, we all have our own yoke to carry be it as an
individual, family or nation. And life itself is like a game of snakes and
ladders with a definite beginning, the day we are born, and a definite end, the
day we die; and in between we will be rewarded with breaks and uplifting
moments or dragged down and punished depending on how we are preforming.
Zimbabwe is a very rich country with rich lands and wonderful
weather; we should be growing enough food to meet all our people’s needs and
yet for the last fifteen years the nation has relied on important food aid. The
country has a great abundance of minerals and other resources; our nation
should be one of the wealthiest nations on earth and yet 76% of our people now
live in abject poverty and prospects are things are set to get even worse.
Each generation has its own trials and tribulations to deal
with, its yoke to bear. For the post-independence Zimbabwe generation our task
was to deliver the freedom, justice, human rights and economic prosperity the
nation had risked life and limb to attain. The task was simple enough to state
but, as the facts on the ground now show, clearly not so easy to accomplish.
Zimbabwe is in a political and economic mess, the facts on
the ground speak for themselves. Mugabe and Zanu PF will give you an earful of
excuses why this has happened. But to rephrase the set challenge of the
post-independence generation; it was to ensure the nation delivered freedom,
justice, etc. to all and no excuses.
After 35 years of relentless match deeper and deeper into
this political and economic hell whatever Mugabe has to say to explain why the
country is in such a mess is both pathetic and irrelevant. His usual excuse
that it the sanctions imposed by the West that have cause the country’s
economic woes, for example, are just noise. Because if Mugabe has failed to
come up with ways round these sanctions, after 35 years with the country is
such a mess it is self-evident that he has indeed failed; then the people
reserve the democratic right to find someone else able to find a way out.
It is deeply regrettable that the people themselves have
allowed the nation to be dragged into such depths of hopelessness and despair
for all these 35 years.
When the country attained her independences all those 35
years ago the people were given the greatest gift, which used wisely would have
guaranteed all their other desires, freedom, justice, etc., the right to vote.
Sadly the people have allowed Mugabe and Zanu PF to cheat them and deny them a
meaningful democratic vote.
At the very heart of Zimbabwe’s political and economic mess
is the Mugabe mantra of “no regime change”. The country has held regular
elections but Mugabe has done everything; undermined democratic institutions,
disregarded the law, rigged elections, intimidated and beat the voters and even
murdered thousands to ensure there was no regime change.
The mistake the people of Zimbabwe have made is to make it
easy for Mugabe to deny them their right to a meaningful vote. In the last 35
years the people have had many opportunities to reclaim their right to a
meaningful vote, the best chance being during the GNU, but they have wasted all
the chances.
During the GNU the people made fundamental mistake of
electing the corrupt and incompetent MDC to implement the democratic reforms;
not even one reform was ever implemented. The people themselves did not
understand what the required reforms were and, not surprisingly, they elected
politicians who too did not know what the reforms were.
It was US President Abraham Lincoln who said “democracy is
government by the people for the people.”
It is clearly that the people of Zimbabwe are not ready for
democratic rule and thus per se elect to have the corrupt and oppressive Zanu
PF dictatorship. After 35 years one would have thought that the people had
suffered enough to want change but clearly they have not.
In this world we are rewarded for making the right decision
and punished for making the wrong ones. For the last 35 years Zimbabweans has
done nothing to ensure the country had good government and have paid dearly for
and we will continue to pay dearly for this until we take the challenge of good
governance with the seriousness it deserves!
It last month’s by-elections the voter turnout was as low as
5% showing that the 1985 to 1999 days of voter apathy are back again. Voter
apathy changed nothing then it will not change anything now. When the voters
have suffered enough they will re-engage, hopefully, this time they will
hopefully pay full attention on the democratic reforms and whatever else the
country needs for a healthy and functional democracy.
5 comments:
@Patrick
Let me say it up front, yes fear has played a major role in getting us into this political and eco-nomic mess. Having said that, I would like to add that whatever role fear played in our troubles he was nothing more than the devil’s messenger, the imp, the devil himself in all this was igno-rance.
Even the bravest of the hunters will tell you their heart will be pounding and their body will be awash with adrenaline when they come face to face with a lion. But the hunter’s fear will soar to nauseating heights if he/she was to wake up to the thunderous roar of a lion a leap away. The hunter was ignorant of the lion stacking him/her and fear born of ignorance has not only turns the table making the hunter the hunted but, worse still, instead of the adrenaline heighten the fight or flight instinct it paralyses the mind, the brain freezes, and with it the body!
The lion knows if it can surprise its prey, more often than not, it will have a kill! If it fails to sur-prise then it will have to try the difficult way of running down its prey.
Yes when you are looking up the business end of an AK47 rifle, it will be most unwise to argue with the bandit carrying the rifle. Yes the use of violence including murder itself to intimidate the electorate has helped Mugabe and Zanu PF establish the de facto Zanu PF dictatorship but that was the lion killer-bite. It was ignorance that has stopped the people fighting back to end the dictatorship or, the odd occasion the people have staged what one may call a spirited fight-back, it has all ended up as nothing more than the spasmodic last-kick of the dying buck with the lion nowhere near that leg.
In the July 2013 elections the people of Zimbabwe were completely surprised with the ease with which Zanu PF rigged the elections, for example. The people knew Zanu PF has been rigging elections but instead of asking for the democratic reform of ZEC, for example, so that the com-mission carried out its task of producing a clean voters roll, they did nothing.
The people had elected MDC to champion their democratic change agenda and the latter did not even have the common sense to demand that a complete voters roll should be released at least a month before the elections. Zanu PF has never release the voters roll to this day.
The real surprise of the July 2013 elections if that the people and MDC leaders were surprised the elections were rigged. MDC had failed to get even one democratic reform implemented and it was so one has to be really stupid to have expected the elections to be free and fair when everyone back in 2008 had agreed the reforms were necessary to ensure free and fair elections!
The people of Zimbabwe had the golden opportunity to end the Zanu PF dictatorship by imple-menting the democratic reforms during the GNU. It was not fear of Mugabe’s use of violence that stopped the nation implementing even one reform in five years of the GNU; it was mind blogging stupidity, first and foremost on the part of the MDC leaders who failed to implement the reforms and secondly on the part of the electorate themselves for having entrusted this task to such nincompoops!
People will have good cause fear if there is a marauding lion on the lose but outsiders will start to question the sanity of the affected community if day after day the beast continue to kill people and nothing is done about it. Human beings are supposed to be smart enough and not allow a marauding lion lord over them. After 35 years, of course there is a lot more than the people’s fear of Mugabe’s violent nature as to why they have failed to end his corrupt and tyrannical rule – the people are naïve, gullible and even downright stupid.
Hate as I to have to admit it to myself much less publicly; we are stuck in this hell-hole because we have a naïve, gullible and downright stupid electorate in Zimbabwe. Worst of all, we will never ever get out of this hell as long as we continue to have a largely naïve, gullible and downright stupid electorate!
It is fair to say that none of the ZUNDE leaders had anything to do with the MDC's failure to implement any democratic reforms necessary for free and fair elections but, as an aspiring challenger to Zanu PF hegemony, ZUNDE will have to deal withal the issues necessary to ensure the next elections are free and fair.
Come end of this month it will be a maximum period of three years to go before the next. The Zimbabwe electorate was shocked at the relative ease with which Zanu PF rigged the elections after all the repeated assurance by MDC leaders the elections will be free and fair. As few as 5% of the voters voted in some constituencies in the 10 June 2015 by-elections. It is clear the people have lost confidence in the opposition’s ability to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections.
If ZUNDE is going to make any difference in the political discourse and, ultimately, hope to win power then the party will have to convince the disillusioned electorate that they will deliver all the democratic reforms so the people will finally have a meaningful role in the governance of the country. This is a massive challenge and three years will fly by very quickly.
Whilst I agree with you on many things I do not agree with the direction your argument has taken us to.
To start with, people have risked life and limb to support and vote for Tsvangirai and MDC from 2000 to 2013 when they were totally disillusioned. There were a few arm chair critics, whom you clear listen to with one ear and promptly dismiss, who said again and again that MDC should im-plement the reforms during the GNU years, for example, but were ignored. Instead of listening to the critics and weight what they have said you dismissed them with the usual "form your own party".
If MDC had implemented the reforms then the nation would not be in this mess. So if there was a lesson to be learned it is that the people and opposition parties must not behave like Mr Know It All, Robert Mugabe and his thugs, who have stifled all meaning debate and has haunted all arm chair critics.
Now, hoping that the above lesson has sunk in, read Patrick's article again and you will see that he criticism was not the rumbling of a confused man. Calling Zanu PF "rabid dogs" who should respect the constitutional provision stating that Chiefs not be apolitical is not going to stop the rabid dogs using the Chiefs as party thugs.
We are dealing with a ruthless tyrannical regime that beaten, raped and even murdered thou-sands of people to stay in power. Do you seriously think these tyrants with all their degrees in violence feel guilty about using Chiefs to threaten people; particularly when the said Chiefs have all been bribed?
If ZUNDE and all the other opposition parties are serious about delivering free, fair and credible elections; which should be the primary objective of all thinking Zimbabweans out there regardless of whether they are arm chair critics, opposition members or supporters or whatever; then they need to think outside the box!
Patrick did offer a solution, again you would have seen it if you were paying attention, he did ask a number of key questions which if answered fully will point the way out of this mess.
Please read with an open mind and stop behaving like Mr Know It All!
@ Tabonga Mbanje
You seem to have something against intellectuals well there were no real intellectuals in MDC because if there had been any then they would have seen to it that MDC implemented all the democratic reforms. Only first class village idiots would have sat there like cabbages for five years and allowed themselves and the nation into this hopeless mess.
If by “taking Mnangagwa head-on” you mean people going out in the street in protest or worse then that is the solution that will appeal to those who will not think.
In 2008 the people took Zanu PF head-on, risking life and limb, by voting for MDC in droves and they succeeded in getting MDC to hold the balance of power. MDC were voted on a ticket to bring democratic change and, although they had all the opportunity to do so, the failed to get even one reform implemented.
If the people had thought carefully about what kind of democratic changes they wanted then they would have also realized that Tsvangirai et al were too corrupt and incompetent to deliver any of those changes.
Zimbabwe is in this political and economic hell because the country’s leaders and people alike have never taken the time to think through where they wanted to go and how they will get there!
It was the Zanu PF propaganda machine that has come up with all this anti-intellectual bullshit to silence the regime’s critics. The critics pointed out that Zimbabwe was subject to the same laws of economics as the rest of the world and the voodoo-economic policies the regime was pursuing will be disastrous for the nation, for example. The regime could not deny its policies were voodoo-economics and so, in its twisted logic, the regime defended its policies by attacking the messenger, dismissing him/her as a petty bourgeois and intellectual.
Sadly the populous were naïve and gullible enough to buy that argument and hence for the last 35 years to be seen as an intellectual has been more curse than a blessing.
"Wherever they burn books, in the end will also burn human beings," wrote Christian Johann Heinrich Heine, a German essayist, journalist and poet. His words became a grim reality in Nazi German; they did start by burning books and ended by burning human beings!
Mugabe and his corrupt and murderous thugs did not burn books but they did the next worse thing they made the disregard of intellectual thinking cool! The regime’s misrule has forced mil-lions of our people into a life of abject poverty and hundreds of thousands are dying unnecessarily of curable diseases; the regime did not shoot or gas these people as the Nazi did but the end result has been the same.
First, you should not be fooled by the likes of Professor Ncube, Dr Alex Magaisa, Lawyer Tendai Biti and many others’ babbling and mistake that for intellectual thinking. These individual have a lot to say but there is very little substance in it. All the above were involved in MDC’s failure to implement the reforms, that was the holy grill, by failing to comprehend the importance of the reforms they have proven beyond doubt that they are breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent.
Second, Zimbabwe is governed by the same laws of thermodynamics as it is government the same laws of economics and political science. Our task is to learn these laws; they are there al-ready, we do not need to reinvent the wheel; and apply them diligently.
@ MaraMechaivo
The country is in a real mess millions are out of work and millions are living in abject poverty.
Poverty has now reached the inner circle of the ruling elite and they are all fighting a losing battle to keep away poverty. The party is imploding as the chefs fight over the ever shrinking national cake. Even those who have survived the savage purges cannot escape the other economic hardship of the collapsed health services, no clean running water, etc.
Everything in Zimbabwe is collapsing, the present political system is socially, economically and politically unsustainable and only a moron would fail to see this now! "Tichingotonga!" Indeed, in the middle of all this chaos, confusion and tragic failure you think you are ruling?! You clearly do not have any idea what it real means to govern!
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