Economic meltdown is the force behind Grace's dogged resolve to be next president

Grace Mugabe is not just as keen as mustard, she is desperate, to succeed her husband as the next president!

"All the rallies and meet-the-people campaigns, and her so-called donations are meant to create a certain image and prepare people for the inevitable announcement of her grand political ambitions,” said Dewa Mavhinga.

"Whoever says there is no bigger plan behind Grace's whirlwind campaigns across the country is lying with a straight face. This could very well be the establishment of a Mugabe dynasty, if the people of Zimbabwe allow it." Mavhinga is spot on there.

As Zimbabwe’s First Lady, Grace has enjoyed a privileged style for decades now and therefore giving it up would not be easy for her. So she will be keen as mustard to step up on the political ladder to become president and not down and because just another minister or worse! But it is the economic consequence of her stepping down the ladder that has fired her to fight for the top job!

Zimbabwe’s very turbulent economic situation has her worried sick; she knows that she and her family will need all the help they can get to survive let alone thrive and the only sure way to get that help is for her to be president. She is absolutely desperate to be president.

Zimbabwe's economic meltdown is real and even from the comfort of the presidential limo or helicopter it is impossible not to see the rot and decay everywhere and jaded look everywhere of years of stress, poverty, hunger, hopelessness and despair. Stress, poverty, etc. used to be povo’s problems but not anymore; the ruling elite are suffering too.

It was in the papers the other day that Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri's property will be auctioned to pay off her debts. She is not the only Zanu PF Chef in financial trouble. The days of cheap bank loans, generous salaries and allowances, etc. are over and the Chefs are feeling the ill effects.

Grace Mugabe may be naive but not that naive not to know that her business interests have benefited from all direct and indirect help she has been getting because she is Mugabe's wife. In the present economic climate when the government is failing to pay PSMAS the money it has collected from members there is no doubt all the monetary subsidies to her will stop that day she seizes to be First Lady. She will well and truly on the slippery slope of stress, poverty, etc.

Even if she has money and business interests outside Zimbabwe in countries with very stable economies; she cannot be sure of holding on to her wealth in the face of the country’s deepening economic crisis. In a country that is failing to supply something as basic as clean it impossible to justify why someone should be allowed to keep their ill-got wealth whilst the people from whom the wealth was looted are forced to drink dirty water!

The only way Grace Mugabe can be sure of at least keeping a semblance of her privileged lifestyle in Zimbabwe’s chaotic and ever deepening economic crisis is by keeping Mugabe in power as long as possible and taking over from him at the next opportune moment. She has no other option.

To accomplish her objective of keeping the presidency in the family Grace has had no choice but to throw all caution to the wind and go for it, proof of just how desperate she is too be president.

Her first challenge was to muscle everyone in Zanu PF with presidential ambitions out of the way. The front runner last year was Joice Mujuru and Grace did not mess around but went straight for the jugular vein! As soon as Mujuru was booted out of the party Grace set her sight on VP Mnangagwa.

In her effort to get rid of her challengers for the presidency, Grace has forced Zanu PF papered over cracks to develop into gapping chasms. Many people have argued, with good supporting evidence, that the booting out of Mujuru has fatally damaged Zanu PF’s electoral chances of successfully rigging the next elections. Mujuru still has too many supporters, some of whom are still Zanu PF card carrying members, who are familiar with Mugabe’s vote rigging tactics for him to get away with it.

Grace has no choice but go after VP Mnangagwa too but she is only weakening Zanu PF even further.

Grace’s second challenge is winning the national vote. Even if she managed to emerge as the Zanu PF top dog, with the party unified behind her she will not be out of the wood yet. The country's worsening economic situation has brought back echoes of 2008. The people then were so desperate for change Zanu PF was forced to use wanton violence to force them to vote for Mugabe. Zanu PF will be forced to use similar extreme measures again.

History has the habit of repeating itself; if Zanu PF uses wanton violence in the next elections the whole world will, as happened in 2008, refused to accept the result as a true reflection of the democratic wishes of the people. Instead of being given the option of the GNU soft-landing Zanu PF will be forced to implement the democratic reforms followed by fresh free and fair elections.

Zimbabweans will go out of their way to make sure they vote in the fresh elections just to be absolutely sure Zanu PF is trounced!

Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is the driving force behind Grace’s desperate efforts to ensure she becomes president after Mugabe. The irony is it was the 35 years of gross mismanagement, of rampant corruption and lawlessness and greed that has triggered the economic meltdown. If economic meltdown has made Grace is desperate to be president it has made the people even more desperate to see an end to Zanu PF dictatorship.

Grace and her husband can scheme all they want, there is no way either of them will win the next elections! People will never be fooled by Grace’s political gimmick of missing her chocolate soufflé desert “in sympathy with the starving millions”; mocked sympathy will not fill an empty belly! People do not want these rally hand-outs where only a tiny number get enough for a day and starve the rest of the year. People want jobs and a future!

Manheru latch on to liberation war credential bull to give Mugabe electoral victory!

Nathaniel Manheru cum George Charamba has latched on, like binnacle to a rock, to Alexander Noyes’ erroneous assertion that having liberation war credentials will be the game changer in Zimbabwe’s next elections. Mr Noyes is the Oxford University scholar who claimed that Joice Mujuru’s war credentials will help her win the next elections.

“And if liberation war credentials impart a forte to Mujuru, how do infinitely better liberation war credentials residing in Mugabe who joins nationalist politics in the 1950s, and Mnangagwa who joins the ranks of combatants in the early-to-mid 1960s, stand them negatively in the same race?” demanded Manheru.

Alexander Noyes’s article appeared in the New York Times. The article was trash; devoid of any intellectual merit. Noyes assumed that the people of Zimbabwe hold their liberation war heroes and heroines in such revered regard they have completely failed to see the transformative change from liberator to corrupt and murderous tyrant. After 35 years of Zanu PF misrule, there a mountain of evidence that the freedom, liberty and human rights and dignity the nation had dreamt of have remained a pipe dream as millions have been forced into a life of abject poverty and despair. The people would have to be mentally blind not to see the reality of political and economic mess Zanu PF has dragged them into.

In fact it is our Oxford scholar who ignoring the mountain of evidence that the people Zimbabwe are not been blinded by the war hero rhetoric, they are not naïve and gullible as evidence by their rejection of Mugabe and his thugs. The whole world knows, except Noyes, that Mugabe and his cronies have stayed in power all these years not because they flaunted their war credentials, hypnotizing the electorate. They have stayed in power because they have used every dirty vote rigging trick there is; breaking the law, bribing officials, harassment and beating voters, they have murdered over 30 000, etc.

Manheru was only too pleased to take up Noyes’ theme of liberation war credential as the game changer only to further his own propaganda message that Mugabe is invincible. Mugabe has been harping none stop about his war credentials and not allowed the nation to talk about anything else.

If Mujuru and her People First should “win” the next elections it would be because she was able to counter Mugabe’s dirty tricks; after all she was in the tyrant’s camp for 34 years, even a simpleton like her would have learned a few of his dirty tricks. As long as the next elections are NOT free, fair and credible, it is possible that Mugabe will lose regardless his “infinitely better liberation war credentials”; it all depends on whether he is able to rig the elections, war credentials have nothing to do with it.

  

Oxford scholar says Mujuru's "war credential" are essential for a Mugabe beating coalition!

Zimbabwe had a really golden opportunity to end the corrupt and tyrannical Mugabe dictatorship during the GNU. All Tsvangirai and his MDC friends had to do was implement the democratic reforms already agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed by Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara on behalf of their political parties and SA President Thabo Mbeki on behalf of SADC, the guarantor of the agreement.

Sadly Tsvangirai and his MDC friends did not just waste this golden opportunity end the Mugabe dictatorship; they did so in a specular fashion. In the five years of the GNU they failed to get even one of the raft of GPA reforms implemented. The reforms were meant to be implemented in 18 months the GNU lasted for 60 months and still not even one reform was implemented. Not one!

Of course Tsvangirai et al showed the whole world how breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent they are. Sadly the whole nation has been painted with the same brush; now all Zimbabweans are considered breathtakingly naïve, corrupt, incompetent and, more significantly, do not have a clue how to end the Mugabe dictatorship. And so the flood gates have been opened for everyone else to tell us how to end the Mugabe dictatorship.

“To beat Mugabe, Zimbabwe needs a united opposition,” wrote Alexander Noyes, a doctorate student at Oxford University in the New York Times. Joice Mujuru and Morgan Tsvangirai are to be the backbone of this coalition.

“Ms. Mujuru matters because she is a veteran of Zimbabwe’s liberation war, has belonged to the ruling party for over three decades and was for many years a close associate of Mr. Mugabe’s,” wrote Noyes. “She was sacked from her position in December 2014 for allegedly planning to topple Mr. Mugabe.”

The liberation war is not relevant in post-independence Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans are painfully aware of how yesteryear’s liberation heroes have become today’s corrupt and murderous oppressors.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power,” said President Abraham Lincoln.

Ms Mujuru was given power; she was right at the very heart of government for 34 years. She has never lifted a finger to stop the mismanagement, corruption and lawlessness that has landed this nation into this mess.  Indeed if anything she has played a full role is landing us into the mess; she is incompetent and is certainly one of the most corrupt individuals in Zimbabwe.

The only reason one’s liberation war credentials have remained important in Zimbabwe is because Mugabe and his cronies are milking their role in that war to justify their no regime change agenda. One of the key objectives of the said war was that the blacks must be granted a meaningful say in the governance of the country. Zimbabwe has held frequent elections every five years in the last 35 years the result were engineered to ensure there was no regime change.

Mugabe has stubbornly enforced his no regime change ethos and yet claims all past nation’s elections have been free, fair and credible. No-regime-change cannot sit side by side with free democratic elections; you can have one but not both.

Mugabe has appointed his cronies especially in the security sectors, Police, Army, CIO and the very influential war veterans and encouraged them to pedal the notion that only those with liberation war credentials could be trusted to rule the nation. But even wanton violence from these security organs in 2008 failed to stop the people, determined to end the Zanu PF dictatorship, voting for changed.

The 2008 elections showed that if the elections are free, fair and credible, Zimbabweans will vote for anyone they believe will deliver real democratic change and good governance regardless of whether they have any liberation war credentials or not.

The emphasis must surely be on Zimbabwe hunting for the changes necessary for free, fair and credible elections to end Mugabe’s tyrannical rule. So why is Mr Noyes dragging us back to the bad old Mugabe propaganda that only those with liberation war history can rule!

Mr Noyes’ choice of Ms Mujuru’s possible coalition partner(s), Morgan Tsvangirai and/or Tendai Biti, is equally baffling.  

“My own research in Zimbabwe found that splits in the opposition and a lack of sound political strategies hurt the chances for democratic reform during Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government, in office from 2008 to 2013,” Mr Noyes tell us. “The opposition must learn from these mistakes and come together.

“The benefits of a coalition in Zimbabwe are clear. Given Ms. Mujuru’s nationalist credentials and Mr. Tsvangirai’s broad support base, a cohesive opposition alliance between the two stands a real chance against ZANU-PF in 2018, with or without Mr. Mugabe.”

Mr Noyes must not rewrite history, our history, to suit his own ill-informed doctorate theories! It was not the “split in the opposition and lack of sound political strategies” that stopped Tsvangirai and his MDC friends from implementing even one democratic reform in the five years of the GNU. Mugabe bribed them to forget the reforms with all the good life trappings of the gravy train, the tyrant thrown in the $4 million Highlands mansion for Tsvangirai.

MDC leaders have never been more united than they were throughout the GNU especially in their resolve to kick the reforms into the tall grass. They did not want to implement any of the reforms because they know that would upset Mugabe; they were united in their common desire to do nothing to upset Mugabe.  

At the end of the GNU with not even one reform implemented despite SADC leaders’ best efforts throughout the five years to get MDC to do something; it was not surprising that the regional leaders were disgusted with Tsvangirai and company. They complained of MDC leaders “were busy enjoying themselves during the GNU and forgot why they were there”.

There is nothing both Tsvangirai and Mujuru have said or done to show they are committed to ensuring the next elections are free, fair and credible. The former is insisting that Zanu PF must re-align electoral laws to the 2013 constitution although everyone else has shown that this would do nothing to ensure free elections. As for Mujuru, she cherishes the prospect of taking on her former Zanu PF colleagues in the tense political atmosphere of vote rigging and wanton violence; she is used to hunting in these muddy political waters.

If the opposition coalition was to win the next elections under the present undemocratic conditions, it is very naïve to even think the new regime would implement any meaningful reforms and give away the electoral advantage! If we are serious about democratic change we must demand it now and forget the idea of the coalition forming a half-way stop gap measure.

We must demand the full implementation of all the 2008 GPA reforms and then the holding of free and fair elections as the way out of this mess. The only way out!

As a Zimbabwean I would be the first one to admit that Zimbabwe wasted a golden opportunity to end Mugabe’s tyrannical rule during the GNU thanks to Tsvangirai et al’s breath-taking incompetence. But not only is Alexander Noyes’ analysis of our situation factually inaccurate there is real no intellectual merit in suggesting that the same corrupt and incompetent leaders, united to form a coalition, will get us out of this mess.

It was foolish of us to have entrusted corrupt and incompetent individuals like Morgan Tsvangirai or Joice Mujuru with the important task of removing a devilishly cunning tyrant like Mugabe from office. It would be unforgivable folly to elect the same failed individuals again to do the same task and, somehow, expect a different result!

Zimbabwe had a really golden opportunity to end the corrupt and tyrannical Mugabe dictatorship during the GNU. All Tsvangirai and his MDC friends had to do was implement the democratic reforms already agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed by Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara on behalf of their political parties and SA President Thabo Mbeki on behalf of SADC, the guarantor of the agreement.

Sadly Tsvangirai and his MDC friends did not just waste this golden opportunity end the Mugabe dictatorship; they did so in a specular fashion. In the five years of the GNU they failed to get even one of the raft of GPA reforms implemented. The reforms were meant to be implemented in 18 months the GNU lasted for 60 months and still not even one reform was implemented. Not one!

Of course Tsvangirai et al showed the whole world how breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent they are. Sadly the whole nation has been painted with the same brush; now all Zimbabweans are considered breathtakingly naïve, corrupt, incompetent and, more significantly, do not have a clue how to end the Mugabe dictatorship. And so the flood gates have been opened for everyone else to tell us how to end the Mugabe dictatorship.

“To beat Mugabe, Zimbabwe needs a united opposition,” wrote Alexander Noyes, a doctorate student at Oxford University. Joice Mujuru and Morgan Tsvangirai are to be the backbone of this coalition.

“Ms. Mujuru matters because she is a veteran of Zimbabwe’s liberation war, has belonged to the ruling party for over three decades and was for many years a close associate of Mr. Mugabe’s,” wrote Noyes. “She was sacked from her position in December 2014 for allegedly planning to topple Mr. Mugabe.”

The liberation war is not relevant in post-independence Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans are painfully aware of how yesteryear’s liberation heroes have become today’s corrupt and murderous oppressors.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power,” said President Abraham Lincoln.

Ms Mujuru was given power; she was right at the very heart of government for 34 years. She has never lifted a finger to stop the mismanagement, corruption and lawlessness that has landed this nation into this mess.  Indeed if anything she has played a full role is landing us into the mess; she is incompetent and is certainly one of the most corrupt individuals in Zimbabwe.

The only reason one’s liberation war credentials have remained important in Zimbabwe is because Mugabe and his cronies are milking their role in that war to justify their no regime change agenda. One of the key objectives of the said war was that the blacks must be granted a meaningful say in the governance of the country. Zimbabwe has held frequent elections every five years in the last 35 years the result were engineered to ensure there was no regime change.

Mugabe has stubbornly enforced his no regime change ethos and yet claims all past nation’s elections have been free, fair and credible. No-regime-change cannot sit side by side with free democratic elections; you can have one but not both.

Mugabe has appointed his cronies especially in the security sectors, Police, Army, CIO and the very influential war veterans and encouraged them to pedal the notion that only those with liberation war credentials could be trusted to rule the nation. But even wanton violence from these security organs in 2008 failed to stop the people, determined to end the Zanu PF dictatorship, voting for changed.

The 2008 elections showed that if the elections are free, fair and credible, Zimbabweans will vote for anyone they believe will deliver real democratic change and good governance regardless of whether they have any liberation war credentials or not.

The emphasis must surely be on Zimbabwe hunting for the changes necessary for free, fair and credible elections to end Mugabe’s tyrannical rule. So why is Mr Noyes dragging us back to the bad old Mugabe propaganda that only those with liberation war history can rule!

Mr Noyes’ choice of Ms Mujuru’s possible coalition partner(s), Morgan Tsvangirai and/or Tendai Biti, is equally baffling.  

“My own research in Zimbabwe found that splits in the opposition and a lack of sound political strategies hurt the chances for democratic reform during Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government, in office from 2008 to 2013,” Mr Noyes tell us. “The opposition must learn from these mistakes and come together.

“The benefits of a coalition in Zimbabwe are clear. Given Ms. Mujuru’s nationalist credentials and Mr. Tsvangirai’s broad support base, a cohesive opposition alliance between the two stands a real chance against ZANU-PF in 2018, with or without Mr. Mugabe.”

Mr Noyes must not rewrite history, our history, to suit his own ill-informed doctorate theories! It was not the “split in the opposition and lack of sound political strategies” that stopped Tsvangirai and his MDC friends from implementing even one democratic reform in the five years of the GNU. Mugabe bribed them to forget the reforms with all the good life trappings of the gravy train, the tyrant thrown in the $4 million Highlands mansion for Tsvangirai.

MDC leaders have never been more united than they were throughout the GNU especially in their resolve to kick the reforms into the tall grass. They did not want to implement any of the reforms because they know that would upset Mugabe; they were united in their common desire to do nothing to upset Mugabe.  

At the end of the GNU with not even one reform implemented despite SADC leaders’ best efforts throughout the five years to get MDC to do something; it was not surprising that the regional leaders were disgusted with Tsvangirai and company. They complained of MDC leaders “were busy enjoying themselves during the GNU and forgot why they were there”.

There is nothing both Tsvangirai and Mujuru have said or done to show they are committed to ensuring the next elections are free, fair and credible. The former is insisting that Zanu PF must re-align electoral laws to the 2013 constitution although everyone else has shown that this would do nothing to ensure free elections. As for Mujuru, she cherishes the prospect of taking on her former Zanu PF colleagues in the tense political atmosphere of vote rigging and wanton violence; she is used to hunting in these muddy political waters.

If the opposition coalition was to win the next elections under the present undemocratic conditions, it is very naïve to even think the new regime would implement any meaningful reforms and give away the electoral advantage! If we are serious about democratic change we must demand it now and forget the idea of the coalition forming a half-way stop gap measure.

We must demand the full implementation of all the 2008 GPA reforms and then the holding of free and fair elections as the way out of this mess. The only way out!

As a Zimbabwean I would be the first one to admit that Zimbabwe wasted a golden opportunity to end Mugabe’s tyrannical rule during the GNU thanks to Tsvangirai et al’s breath-taking incompetence. But not only is Alexander Noyes’ analysis of our situation factually inaccurate there is real no intellectual merit in suggesting that the same corrupt and incompetent leaders, united to form a coalition, will get us out of this mess.

It was foolish of us to have entrusted corrupt and incompetent individuals like Morgan Tsvangirai or Joice Mujuru with the important task of removing a devilishly cunning tyrant like Mugabe from office. It would be unforgivable folly to elect the same failed individuals again to do the same task and, somehow, expect a different result!

Zimbabwe's salvation will not come out of uniting a corrupt opposition but from the awakening of a laid-back people!

Zimbabweans “are resilient” Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi told SADC leaders last August in Victoria Falls. He was explaining why Zimbabweans had never protested against the regime in the face of all the suffering, trial and tribulations the ordinary people have had to endure with even worse to come. Resilient my foot!

Zimbabweans have never protested because we a very laissez-faire, laid-back and light-out people. Things that would outrage and steer other people into action demanding answers from those responsible do not make even a ripple in our glass surface of tranquillity; to us they are all water off a duck’s back!

Where else in the world would unemployment be allowed to soar to 80% plus and stay there for over decade and a half now and yet no one has really said anything about it. Even on Labour's Day, only a handful of people turned up to show they are concerned.

Zanu PF went crazy with its money-making project, printing more and more paper money of higher and higher denominator. Zimbabwe became the only nation in the whole world where everyone was not a millionaire but multi trillionaire and yet we were all as poor as church mouse. It was all worthless paper money; inflation peaked at 500 billion per cent, a world record, wiping out people's life savings and businesses. And yet, other than the odd scuffle at the bank when a few people vented their frustration at being told they could not withdraw more than 20 US cents or so a day which was a very common practice, no one ever protested.

After the discovery of diamonds in 2006 in Marange and Chiadzwa valued at $800 billion, where Saudi Arabia has oil we have diamonds, the nation’s economy should have picked up considerably and with it people’s standard of living. Instead of the diamonds being a blessing they have become a curse.

President Mugabe and his cronies are pocketing all the profits from Marange and Chiadzwa diamonds. During the GNU the nation got $400 million, even then it was half of what the then Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti, expected. Since the rigged July 2013 elections which saw President Mugabe and his Zanu PF return to power with a very comfortable majority; the revenue from Marange and Chiadzwa has since dried up completely. The looting and plunder has gone into overdrive, in September last years the Russians joined in the looting; the ruling elite and their foreign partners are making fortunes it is just that the ordinary Zimbabweans are getting none of it.

In 2012 President Mugabe reportedly pocketed $2 billion according to Partnership Africa, Canada. No doubt some of the looted wealth was used to bribe MDC leaders so they would kick the GPA democratic reforms into the tall grass, to pay Nikuv to corrupt the voters roll, to pay the cost for bussing the hired crowd to Zanu PF rallies and multiple voters on voting day, etc.

So instead of the diamond bounty giving the people the economic leg up it has instead given Mugabe and Zanu PF the source of funds to pay for their no regime change agenda.

Of course there is no Zimbabwean out there who can swear they do not know corrupt is a serious problem, the nation is being rob blind in broad day light, especially in Marange and Chiadzwa and yet many people pretend they do not know. It is easier to pretend not to have noticed, it makes it easier to justify why one has said or done nothing about all this looting and plunder!

There is odd occasion when the Zimbabwean people have been rouse out of their comatose slumber in 2008, for example, when the economic hardship forced the people to go and vote. They wanted democratic change but instead of staying awake and make sure that man, Tsvangirai, they had given the electoral mandate to deliver the change carried out the task; they switched-off just days after the elections.

With no one supervising them, Tsvangirai and his MDC friends soon forgot where they were in the GNU and so not even one reform was implemented and the golden opportunity to end the Zanu PF dictatorship was lost.

Not even the worsening economic meltdown of the last two years, the by-product of three and half decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruptions, has raffled the feathers of the laid-back Zimbabweans. With unemployment 80% plus for over 16 years now many people have used up all their fat reserves they have none left; millions now live in abject poverty, they are so poor they cannot afford even one decent meal a day.

Where there is poverty and hunger, disease and death are there too! People are dying like flies. Zimbabweans are showing just how “resilient” they are by quietly burying their died, go back home and continue to suffer in silence whilst they wait for their turn to die!

One of the favourite pass-time occupations of the laissez-faire, laid-back and lights-out Zimbabwe electorate is complaining why the country’s fragmented corrupt and incompetent opposition has failed to unity. They are just doing what they do best; pretend they cannot see that the opposition is not just fragmented but, worse than that, they are corrupt and incompetent. If they stopped pretending they will be forced to do something about getting quality opposition leaders; they are too lazy to do that, they will be breaking tradition with their laissez-faire disposition and that is sacrilege.

Zimbabweans have done nothing to protest the complete collapse of the nation’s economy, they are starving in the Garden of Eden, not because they love suffering or they are resilient; on the contrary they are suffering and feel the pain like anyone else and they are now dying of poverty and hunger. They have never protested about the criminal waste of the nation’s human and material resources because they are a laid-back people who would rather suffer and die in silence than protest against this man-made tragedy.

Unless the people snap out of this comatose slumber Zimbabwe will never get out of the hell-on-earth mess Mugabe’s misrule has landed us in. A healthy and functioning democracy, a government by the people, demands an attentive electorate with the courage to hold the leaders to account and not a laid-back one who will habitually let the evils of incompetence, corruption and downright betrayal go unnoticed.

Zimbabwe’s salvation is not going to come out of uniting a corrupt and incompetent opposition but from a populous awakened from their laissez-faire slumber!  

Zimbabwe Social Democrats Press Statement June 2015

Zimbabwe Social Democrats Press release 15 June 2015
The Zimbabwe Social Democratic is a political party formed by a group of Zimbabweans alarmed that this Zanu PF dictatorship is frog-matching the nation into a political and economic hell-on earth. If this nation is to walk into this hell then it must do so with its eyes wide open and not sleep walk.
Our primary objective is to do everything possible to alert every one of the dangers of the economic meltdown and political paralysis that have taken the last 34 years to unfold and have now reached dangerous and really alarming level. Zimbabwe is now standing on the very edge of the abyss and could easily tumble over into the chaos now gripping other nations like Syria, Libya, Egypt and nearer home, South Sudan.
The tragic, tragic human suffering this nation has endured over the years is real and cannot go on for much longer; but since the people have no peaceful meanings to expresses their suffering, anger and frustrations this raise the spectre of violent civil strife in the form of riots or worse. No it is not inconceivable for Zimbabwe to the next South Sudan
We are alarmed at this Zanu PF regime’s response to the worsen economic situation; instead of addressing the root causes of mismanagement, corruption and the ill-advised policies and lawlessness the regime is beefing up its repression machinery by recruiting 650 and 11 000 more Police Officers and Prison Guards respectively and building a $ 200 million Spy University for the much feared CIO!
We in the Zimbabwe Social Democrats believe that even now, at the eleventh hour, with concerted effort this nation can be save from tumbling over the edge into the abyss. If we should, God forbid, tumble over going back is torturous as the Egyptians or Syrians would now tell you.
There is an urgent need to end the Zanu PF dictatorship, implement the democratic reforms necessary for free and fair elections and have a democratic government before it is too late. Zimbabwe Social Democrats’ overriding commitment is to see this is done properly and not fudged as happened during the GNU!
The Zimbabwe Social Democrats will direct its message to the following groups:
a)   To the long suffering ordinary people of Zimbabwe, the masses, povo
When the nation attained its independence in 1980 it was the duty of us, the people to elect competent leaders to govern the country and to hold them to account. This was a sacred duty and it was beholden on us and no one else to ensure that the nation was well governed. There can be no doubt that this nation is in a real mess because of the 34 years of bad government. We can proffer many excuses why this
happened but after 34 years there can be no doubt that we had many, many opportunities to get change our system of government but wasted them all. We did not even recognise many of these opportunities.
 During the GNU, for example, the nation had a real chance to end the Zanu PF dictatorship if the democratic reforms were implemented. Yes it was MDC’s fault that not even one reform was implemented but it was also our fault not to have
demanded it of MDC. Even to this day many people still do not have the foggiest idea what these reforms were.
The vote is a power and very effective tool but, like every other tool, in the wrong hands it is totally useless. What is the point of being given a democratic choice and vote, if one does not have a clue of the subject matter before them much less the difference of one from the other.
As a nation Zimbabweans got the government and opposition parties the nation deserved and we have all paid dearly for it. If we really want to end this Zanu PF dictatorship and have real democratic change then we the people must take up our sacred duty to elect competent leaders and hold them to account with the seriousness it deserves!
If this nation is to have any hope of ever getting out of this mess then we, the people, must open our eyes to the tragedy reality before us. Open our minds to the simple and inescapable logic that this madness cannot and must not be allowed to go on.
Only a competent electorate can elect a competent government; so far the Zimbabwe electorate has been ignorant, naïve and gullible, sheepishly following tyrants and then blindly followed breathtakingly incompetent leaders. We, the people, must change and become savvier; and for this nation time is fast running out.
Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have died for us to have the vote, tens of thousands were murdered by this Zanu PF regime because they dared demand that right; the very least we can do to honour their courage and sacrifice is use that vote but wisely!
b)  To Mugabe and his Zanu PF dictatorship
Mugabe and his Zanu PF regime claims that they liberated the nation and yet since
1980 they have ridden roughshod of the very people they say they liberated denying them freedom, liberty, justice and human dignity and hope – the very things the nation went to war for and so many died for.
Zanu PF has remained in power for 34 years only because the only elections result the party permitted was that reaffirming continued Zanu PF political dominance. Elections are, ultimately, about change and so the Zanu PF mantra that elections must not produce regime change is per se an oxymoron.
 Mugabe and a select few of his cronies have grown filthy rich selling the nation’s wealth dreams and hopes for the equivalent of calico cloth and a handful of beads. You have dragged this nation to the very edge of the abyss and you dare not push this nation over the edge.
You are not the nations’ liberating heroes but its corrupt, murderous and tyrannical
oppressor.  Je crache sur vous!
c)   To the splintering MDC factions
During the GNU the nation had its golden chance to end the Zanu PF dictatorship if only the MDC had implemented the democratic reforms necessary for free and fair elections. The party had five years to do this but failed to get not even one reform implemented. The only reason this happened is that all the MDC leaders were distracted by the trapping of power and that they are breathtakingly incompetent.
Since the rigged 2013 elections all MDC leaders been concerned about is how they can get back on the gravy train. The infernal chattering is a distraction at a time when the people need peace to hear themselves think.
d)  To the international community
There are nations who are propping up this Mugabe regime some have even played an active role in helping the tyrant rig the elections; are you going to be there too to clean up the mess Mugabe is making?
As for those nation who want to see an end to the criminal waste of material resources and the tragic human suffering in Zimbabwe; we call upon you to help build a barrier at the top of the cliff now rather than provide the ambulance service to cater for the broken lives at the bottom of cliff later.
Conclusion
Mugabe and the Zanu PF dictatorship have dragged Zimbabwe right up to the gates of hell and unless they are stopped now will take this nation beyond the point of no returns leading to serious social unrest and worse. 34 years of absolute power and lives of unparalleled have blinded the tyrant and his cronies to grinding poverty, hopelessness and despair of the millions of ordinary Zimbabwean. Greed has made their minds impermeable to reason.
The single most important task here is to force this tyrannical Mugabe regime out of office because whilst Mugabe remains in State House nothing of any value can ever be accomplished. Nothing!
Signed. Wilbert Mukori
Secretary General
Zimbabwe Social Democrats   zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.com

Zim is a mess because of our laissez-faire mentality - we foolishly gave Mugabe a blank cheque!

“Young educated Zimbabweans, some who have come back to the country, are disconnected from politics because it is failing to address their aspirations. They are hardly excited about anything politicians might have to say. They are tired of lies and false promises as they see and experience the rot,” wrote brother Vince Musewe, in his latest commentary on Zimbabwe’s worsening human tragedy.

Brother Vince you clearly move around in the same circles as I do because what you said in your article is what I have heard for decades. I have learnt to read between the line and thus know the students too are lying.

Young Zimbabweans say they “are tired of lies and false promises” but that is nonsense. What do they know about the false promises?

Many of our young people have never shown any interest in politics or current affairs. Talk of football, movies, Holy Wood gossip, sex, etc. and their ears prick up and swivel round like a deer’s; they can listen to five conversations and will not miss a thing. Talk of things affecting their own lives like indigenisation law and they switch off; their brains which had lit like NYC a moment ago will suddenly be Harare with ZESA load shedding in full swing.

I spoke to a Bindura University of Science and Technology (BUST) graduate recently. I have visited the campus before and was disappointed at sorry state of the place; everything in varying stages of rot and decay. I was not surprised to hear things are even worse now. No doubt the quality of education provided has suffered; but that is another story.

The backdrop of my discussion with the BUST graduate was a report saying as few as 2% of the tens of thousands graduates Mugabe has caped in the last few months will have a formal job in the next year - a daunting prospect for all the graduates and their families and friends. After all the years of hard work on the part of the graduate and the sacrifice by the family in resources and time; it is disheartening to then end up on the street selling air time cards and trinkets!

I asked, my niece, the graduate whether she had heard of government’s indigenisation laws. She had heard the bit forcing new foreign businesses to sell 51% of their shares to a local partner as a condition for them being allowed to set shop in Zimbabwe. The locals who buy the shares would be economically empowered.  

I asked if ordinary graduates like her would ever buy these shares. She had not thought about that one but in the end admitted that was highly unlikely. The ruling elite and those with political connections are the only one who would be empowered by indigenisation law, she concluded.

The economic empowerment graduates like her would get is in the form of employment opportunities by new businesses setting up and that was the one thing the indigenisation law had stopped happening. Would be new investors were shying away from Zimbabwe because selling the controlling share of their business to a local partner they did not ask for present an unacceptable additional business risk!

Zanu PF promised the nation 2.2 million new jobs in five years the party’s 2013 election manifesto and, two and half years later, it clear the regime will not keep its promise. But if a few minutes of judicious enquiry established that the indigenisation law would empower the ruling elite and impoverish the ordinary people; a similar exercise would have left the student and the nation at large in no doubt Zanu PF would never create 2.2 million new jobs.

So it is rich for the young people to say they are “are tired of lies and false promises” of 2.2 million new jobs, for example, when they could have easily established that this was a false promised. Only a fool would believe in a false promise knowing or had every opportunity to establish that it is a false promise!  

“The older generation of Zimbabweans are watching in resignation as they wait and hope that the young will gather the courage to challenge the status quo as they did during their time,” wrote Vince.

By “the older generation”, I take it you mean those who fought to end white colonial oppression. How many times has the nation been reminded of the heroism and self-sacrifice of those involved in liberation struggle? Mugabe alone has reminded us of his heroism a thousand times and a thousand times again, this year alone! But if the truth be told, and it must now be said, we are in this mess because our yesteryear liberators are today our new corrupt and murderous oppressors.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power,” said President Abraham Lincoln.

If the liberation war generation had been diligent, courageous and farsighted then they should have realized ending white colonial rule was only half the job and making sure the freedom, liberty, justice, etc. so many had risked life and limp for were delivered was the other half. We are in this hell-hole because the liberation war generation failed to realize that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely!

“Those in the diaspora are also waiting and hoping that something gives because they can't do much but write in protest from where they are. As a result nothing much is happening as we see the likes of Grace Mugabe become the centre of attention for the wrong reasons,” continued Vince.

Zimvigil people have been protesting outside the Zimbabwe Embassy for 13 years now; that is protesting. A few people like to let off steam by cursing at Mugabe, his wife and his cronies in the papers but that is not really protesting. Besides how can these people protest when they do not have a clue what is going on in Zimbabwe?

How many people in the diaspora protested at Tsvangirai and his MDC friends’ failure to implement even one of the democratic reforms in five years of the GNU, for example? SADC Heads complained about it and so too did the foreign media like BBC and CNN. There was not a squeak was from Zimbabweans both in the country and outside. Why? Because very few Zimbabweans were even aware of the critical importance of implementing the reforms as the prerequisite for free, fair and credible elections.

Indeed even to this day, two and half years since the rigged July 2013 elections, many people know Mugabe blatantly rigged the elections but have no idea this would have never happened if MDC leaders implemented the reforms. If anything, many of those in the diaspora have been defending MDC’s betrayal, offering some of the feeblest excuses which only showed just how ignorant they are.

When the nation attained her independence in 1980 many Zimbabweans believed they would enjoy freedom, liberty, economic prosperity, etc. without doing as much as lift a finger! The same laissez-faire mentality has been passed from father to son to grandson. It is therefore no surprise that my niece and her fellow graduates should now believe that now they have their university degree or whatever they will get a job, etc. without having to do anything else.

It was all nonsense of course; attaining independence did not mean giving Mugabe a blank cheque just as having a degree does not necessarily equate to a good job.

We should have never abandoned our civic duty of understanding the nation’s post-independence challenges and held the leaders to account. A good education should help my niece understand government policies and thus not so easily brainwashed. What is the point of spending all the years and money educating someone if they cannot make use of what they learnt to improve their own lives!

I do agree with you Vince 100% that we are the masters of our own destiny; if we want to end this nightmare this Zanu PF dictatorship then we will have to do ourselves. We are the masters of our own destiny.

“I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.”

As the poet William Ernest Henley so aptly put.

Being captain of our own destiny is one thing but knowing where we are going is another! So far we have allowed Mugabe to frog match us deeper and deeper into this hell-on-earth. We will have to get off our backsides and understand where we are, where we want to be and chart a roadmap out of here. The long we sit and do nothing the deeper we will descent into this hell and the harder and longer it will take us to dig ourselves out, if we ever get out!

MP Cross warns Zim "to pray for rain" because we lack capacity to import 2m tonnes of food!

According to MDC MP Eddie Cross if the rains fail this coming season then Zimbabwe will need to import 1.2 to 2 million tonnes of maize and maize meal for which the country does not have the money to buy the grain, the region does not have port capacity to handle the imports, NRZ does not have the train wagons and locomotive to move the imports and there are no usable silos to store the grain, etc.  

“The last time we faced a basic food shortage of this magnitude was 2008 when the collapse of the agricultural industry, like the whole economy, was at an all-time low driven onto the rocks by massive inflation. There was no money to import our basic needs and our shops were completely empty,” wrote Eddie Cross.

“That year we were saved from a real calamity by the G20 Summit in 2007 where the President of South Africa persuaded the international community to support the process of political reform and change that he was instituting and which would lead to the Government of National Unity in February 2009.”

Tragically the “process of political reform” failed to bring about any political change as at the end of the GNU Zimbabwe did not have the democratic system of government but the same corrupt, vote-rigging and tyrannical Mugabe dictatorship the whole process had promised to end.

"Hit the metal whilst it is hot!" or "Make hay whilst the sun shines!" whites say. You should know these adages; you are a “white African”, as you prefer to call yourself. If the rainfall fails as you and others have said then you will be forced to remember that you and your MDC friends got us into this nightmare.

You are right that Zimbabwe will not be prepared to deal with the food crisis and many lives will be lost because of this corrupt and incompetent Mugabe regime. But there is no point in mourning about this corrupt regime because we had a golden opportunity to end the dictatorship during the GNU by implementing the GPA reforms. We failed to get even one reform implemented because some village idiots failed to hit the metal whilst it was hot, failed to make the hay whilst the sun was shining. We both know who those village idiots are!

As time goes and the true cost of the continue Zanu PF dictatorship mount in human suffering and lost human lives MDC leaders will be asked again and again whether the thirty pieces of silver they received from Mugabe to betray the nation was worth it?

“We better all go to Church this Sunday and pray for rain,” concluded Eddie Cross.

Mr Cross, Zimbabwe has had to import food almost every year without exception since the violent and chaotic farm seizures started in 2000. This is happening in a country with some of the best land and great weather for growing crops and farming animals. Until 2000 we not only produced enough to meet our needs but had surplus to keep our silos full and still had plenty left over for exported.

If we were going to have a poor growing season but started with full silos then we would not need to import as much. It is the decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption that have destroyed the country’s railway network, silos, etc. Are you going to ask the nation to pray for train wagons and silos too?

We had starving in the Garden of Eden because of decades of misrule by Mugabe. Are you going to ask God to implement the GPA reforms necessary to end this Zanu PF dictatorship too?

“By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground,” commanded the Lord to the retreating figures of the fig-tree leaf clad lovers, Adam and Eve. It was within MDC leaders’ powers to end the Mugabe dictatorship during the GNU and it is for us to create another opportunity to force political reform. God does not do what mankind can do for himself!

Grace must not evoke God in Mugabe's stay in power when the Almighty had no part in the vote rigging!

"We must thank God that we have a leader like VaMugabe. He is a strong man and has a vision for his people. That is a leader we want. Leadership is not forced on people. If you are a leader, they will love you," said Grace.

Please like Grace must never evoke the name of God in talking of a corrupt, vote rigging and murderous tyrant like Mugabe. The people of Zimbabwe have tried repeatedly to get rid of Mugabe but have failed because he has denied them free, fair and credible electoral vote. Mugabe has ruthlessly imposed his “no regime change” mantra on the nation.

“What was achieved by the bullet cannot be changed by ballpoint pen!” he boasted in 2008 before unleashing some of the worst wanton election violence the world has ever seen. Not even SADC and AU elections observers, known for bending election rules to allow substandard elections to get the stamp of approval, could pretend the elections were free and fair. 

SADC and AU certainly did not see it as anything but Mugabe forcing himself on the people in 2008. Grace can say what she pleases but she should never think she can rewrite history to suit her political wish that Mugabe should be president for life.

In 2013 Mugabe blatantly rigged the elections; he has refuse to realise the voters roll to this day, although the law of the land demands that the roll must be made public at least one month before voting day. Mugabe bussed voters from one polling station to the next and committed other election irregularities which would have been proven if he had realised the voters roll. The voters roll was the smoking gun in the 2013 rigged elections.

MDC should have implemented the GPA democratic reforms during the GNU sadly Tsvangirai and his friends sold-out and accepted Mugabe’s bribes for them to do nothing regarding the reforms. Mugabe can claim that the 2013 elections were free and fair all he like but the truth of the matter is that he rigged the vote and his used his tyrannical power to hide the voters roll, smoking gun.

This time last year Mugabe blatantly rigged Zanu PF’s own party elections by fraudulently accusing Mai Mujuru of plotting to kill him to justify kicking her out of the party. Grace was involved in this trickery. A year later not even one iota of evidence has been produced to support the charge. Zanu PF members never had the chance to vote for anyone, Mugabe just appointed the people he wanted. If this is not imposing leadership on the people then what is?

When people like Grace thank God “for Mugabe” they insult the millions of people whose basic human right to a meaningful vote Mugabe has systematically denied and, worse still, they insult God Almighty Himself by insinuating that He was a part to the wanton violence and vote rigging!

I challenge Grace or anyone else who dares to put their hand on the Bible and swear that Mugabe has never rigged elections? Even she knows when not to tempt Providence; she knows Mugabe has been rigging national as well as Zanu PF party elections. 

Grace Mugabe's "Mafirakureva" Dr Jekyll mask is off to reveal the greed Mr Hyde

Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace have Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of (the benevolent national liberation hero and the caring mother to the nation) Dr Jekyll (by day roles) and (the corrupt, vote rigging and murderous tyrant and the greedy shrew) Mr Hyde (by night) for far too long. Over the years the domineering Mr Hyde has emerged again and again in broad day light, brushing aside the weakling and feeble Dr Jekyll. It is not surprising that the nation now knows that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one and the same person but, better still, Dr Jekyll is the evil Mr Hyde hiding behind a mask of saintly virtue!

"I am called Mafirakureva, I will die for the truth. People have a problem; they are used to blackmailing others so that whenever you say something, they question why you said it," said Grace at her latest Meet the People rallies in Mbare, Harare.

"When you say something bad that you have observed, they say you don't want war veterans. Let me tell you: You will not get me.”

She is the one who is hopping mad because people have dared to question many of her statements and out and out lies. She is now seeking to silence her critics by claiming to hold the moral high ground of one who speaks the truth and will die for the truth to be heard. What she is standing on is not solid ground but rather some hastily erected platform whose legs are already sinking into the quick sad.

This same Grace, Mafirakureva, one who will die for the truth, told us over a year ago now that Joice Mujuru and a number of her supporters were plotting to assassinate Mugabe, a very serious charge, given the said Mugabe is the State President! Once her passion and she has tasted bile, she was bring up bile in buckets, the Mafirakureva gene in her kicked in and she went up and down the country demanding that Mujuru must be “baby dumped”!

Before any evidence was produced to substantial the assassination plot charges, lo be hold Mai Mujuru and many of her supporters were en masse unceremoniously kicked out of Zanu PF and government.

It has been over a year now and still Grace or her husband who did the “baby dumping” have yet to produce one iota evidence of the assassination plot! Of course they cannot produce any evidence of something that never happened. Mafirakureva was not dying for the truth but rather lying through her teeth!

The truth is it was not Mujuru and her supporters who were guilty of plotting unlawful acts but Mafirakureva, her husband and a few others. When Mugabe realized that Mai Mujuru was set to win the VP position in the upcoming elective party congress they decided to falsely accuse her of plotting to murder Mugabe. This was just a cover to justify them kicking her and her supporters out of the party and rigging the party’s electoral process.

They needed to make their assassination cover as convincing as possible and so Mafirakureva set in; even if she drunk a glass full of bile to rouse her rancour, she still would not fooled many people. She is such a mediocre actress; and casting someone who does not know the truth as the champion who is dying for the truth only made the situation even more comical.

Poor, poor Grace her Dr Jekyll mask has fallen off and still she continues her class act pretending to be someone else she is not. She pretends to be Grace Mafirakureva, who die for the truth, and yet we already she is Grace Mugabe who is dying to be president she will lie through her teeth to achieve this goal!