I agree with Patrick Guramatunhu, Mugabe has a nuclear arsenal with which to
fight off Mai Mujuru and her PF if they should ever become a real serious
political threat to the tyrant (Bulawayo 24 opinion). Mugabe has a warehouse
full of detailed stories of acts of indiscretion, corruption and even murder on
each one of Mai Mujuru and her PF friends; he will relish the chance to use the
stink bombs to create chaos and confusion in the PF camp.
Mugabe has out lived
all of his political challengers; even with the country in a mess and old age
catching up with him, he is still a formidable adversary because he has a
secret weapon – he fights dirty. Whilst everyone else is constrained by such
rules as no hitting below the belt; he go for the family jewels at the first
chance he get be it with his head, fist, elbow, knee, foot, anything. His glove
has a lump of steel for padding, he only has to land one blow anywhere and the
opponent will feel the punch; land one on the head and its lights out!
What Mugabe will not want to do is give the
game away that MDC’s demand for electoral law reforms will not deliver free and
fair election or that PF will not stop him dead on his tracks from rigging the
next elections. Throughout the five years of the GNU he worked hard to make sure
Tsvangirai and his MDC friends never doubted for even a minute they would win
the elections even with not even one GPA reform implemented. Mugabe would want
to string MDC, PF and the whole nation along once again.
The regime has already started trial runs of
the biometric system in which voters will be identified using their unique
finger print and iris. The regime is already using this as proof if its acknowledgement
that the old electoral system did not work well and the regime’s willingness to
reform.
The biometric systems is called for in the new
constitution and MDC will, no doubt, make a big song and dance about this; they would give this as proof they are
forcing Zanu PF “kicking and screaming” to reform, proof NERA is working. All nonsense of course
because MDC know that with no ZEC reforms, Zanu PF can rig the next elections
just as easily as they did the July 2013 elections.
NIKUV, the Israeli company Mugabe hired to
tamper with the voters roll in 2013, deliberately posted suspected opposition
supporters details in the constituencies other than where they expected. So
nearly one million voters (Mugabe’s winning margin was one million votes)
failed to vote because their names were not in the constituent voters roll. NIKUV
was paid a princely $10 million for doing this. No doubt they will do the same
again with the biometric data for another princely fee!
Many Zimbabweans are becoming increasingly
uneasy with Tsvangirai and his reputation for making promises he cannot
deliver. Many people were slowly coming round to the realization that MDC will never
ever deliver free and fair elections; by now many of them would have been
demanding the implementation of the GPA reforms as the only way to end this
Zanu PF dictatorship. So the appearance PF on the political stage has been a blessing
for Mugabe; instead of people demanding the GPA reforms they now believe Mai
Mujuru will remove Mugabe from power even with no reforms implemented.
It is in Mugabe’s interest to encourage the
belief that Mai Mujuru and PF are giving him sleepless nights and he is on the
ropes. He does not want to implement the GPA reforms and he will do anything to
ensure Mai Mujuru, PF and the public are not spooked into realizing the folly
of going into yet another election with not even one GPA reform implemented.
If he manages to hang on, given the pressure he
is under from the worsening economic meltdown and his own party imploding,
without being forced to implement any GPA reforms then he has a fighting chance
of winning the next elections.
If I was a betting man my money would be on
Mugabe winning the next elections as long as no GPA reforms have been
implemented regardless whom his political opponent happens to be, be it Tsvangirai,
Mujuru or a grand coalition of the two with the plethora of all the other wannabe
opposition parties. Mugabe will bamboozle Tsvangirai.
It is true that embedded Mai Mujuru sympathizers
will make difficult for Zanu PF to rig the next elections but Mugabe will
overwhelm PF with information; giving their incompetence, it will take PF forever
to separate the good, the bad and the ugly. Meanwhile he will pick off the PF
leaders one by one, bombarding them with the stink bombs from their dirty.
The only sure way Zimbabwe can ever get out of
the political and economic mess Mugabe has landed the nation is by implementing
the GPA reforms followed by fresh free and fair elections. Vince Musewe is
right it would “political suicide” for Mugabe because he will never win free
and fair elections. Mugabe and his propaganda machine are working flat out to
amplify the voices of those supporting Tsvangirai’s NERA and/or promoting Mai
Mujuru as a real serious contender to defeat Mugabe in the next elections; they
have to drown out the voices of reason warning of the folly of holding yet
another election without implementing the GPA reforms.
4 comments:
Former Botswana President Festus Mogae was clear in an interview with a UN online publication that sovereignty has limits. He made no direct reference to Zimbabwe but his message was un-mistakeable. Here is part of what he had to say:
‘Sovereignty has limits like any other right. A leader cannot kill and harass his people and hide behind sovereignty. A true leader does not kill, but protects his people. We still have leaders in Africa who think they are indispensable, larger than life and more important than their countries. That must stop. If a leader loses control, the world will and should intervene to save the people.’
SADC did try to intervene to save the people during the GNU in asking MDC to implement the reforms but got nowhere. What made the situation worse was that the Zimbabwean people themselves were not interested in getting any reform implemented. Even today with the benefit of hindsight, few Zimbabwe seem to care that MDC sold-out during the GNU.
The world would like to help Zimbabwe out of this political and economic mess but they will only do so when they see that Zimbabweans are doing something to help themselves. So far there are just too few Zimbabweans who seem to even notice what a mess the country is in!
The Zimbabwe government has it is expecting FDI this year to hit the $ 1 billion mark on the back of deals signed with China, Russia and India. Some of these deals were signed in 2014 but on undated cheques – to be dated once a raft of conditions has been met! Zimbabwe failed to meet the conditions and so the deals have remained deals on paper only!
In 2014, Zimbabwe recorded FDI inflows of $545 million, the highest since 2009. Yet the inflows were low compared to South Africa ($5,7 billion), Mozambique ($4,9 billion) and Zambia ($2,4 billion). In other words even if the $1 billion is achieved this year, we will still have a lot of catching up to do.
Government is working on a raft of ease of doing business reforms to lure FDI. This has resulted in the country moving 16 places up the ladder to 155 out of 189 economies on the World Bank 2016 Doing Business index.
We earned our 155 th place or much worse with the passing of such obnoxious laws as the in-digenisation law demanding that foreigner must sell 51% of their equity to Zanu PF cronies. Would be investors gave the regime the two finger salute and left to find other nations who want to do business. The regime has tinkered with this law but would not scrap it; no foreign investors have been fooled with the tinkering!
The question the people of Zimbabwe should be demanding an answer from this regime is: “For how much longer is the regime going the whole nation hostage to a law designed to benefit its cronies only?”
@ Patrick
So far Zimbabweans have made the surprising collective decision that it is better that their hospitals and clinic should have no drugs whilst Mugabe is allowed to spend $1 million on birthday parties, $ 5 million on his daughter's wedding and continue to loot $2 billion a year from Marange. Mugabe has shown his appreciation by using the looted money to rig elections so he can stay in power for even longer so he can loot even more!
Mugabe has praised the people of Zimbabwe for their "resilience" in putting up with so much suffering and deaths without complaining. This is no different from the slave owners' praise of slaves' "physical hardness" so they do not "suffering from the hard labour and harsh conditions!"
Mugabe will start to foam on the mouth when talks about white colonial oppression and exploitation of the blacks. He is exceeding proud of his role as the liberation hero. It has not yet dawned on him that he replace the white colonial oppressors with his own corrupt and tyrannical rule.
Some African countries have been independent for over 50 years now and they have yet to break the vicious circle of removing one corrupt and tyrannical regime only to replace it with another equally corrupt and tyrannical regime! Meanwhile the country has continued to sink deeper and deeper into the economic abyss and political chaos. Most independent African country look back on the colonial days as the nation's golden age!
Although we have the benefit of all the world history to learn from, Africa is still failing to figure out the art of self government! Many have given up as something beyond their reach; many like Zimbabwe never ever bothered, the people never tried stopping Mugabe becoming a tyrant.
This year is set to be real tough year,for Zimbabweans with the double whammy of the economic meltdown and the drought; it will test their "resilience" to the death!
MDC-T has wasted the last two and half years boasting dragging Zanu PF "kicking and screaming" to the reform table but have failed to do so.
MDC should have concentrated on the set task of implementing the GPA reforms during the GNU because nothing of any value will ever be accomplished without implementing these reforms. MDC has since admitted they had underestimated Mugabe's infinite capacity to rig elections, especially since he has a war chest of funds from the looting and plunder going on in Marange. The tyrant is getting a staggering $ 2 billion a year for Pete's sake plus all the public resources.
When it comes to elections, the nation has the choice of demanding the full implementation of all the GPA reforms BEFORE the elections. If the nation decides, as happened in 2013, to have the elections with no reforms implemented then people must not complain afterwards that the vote was rigged because we all know with no reforms Zanu PF will rig the vote!
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