I totally agree with
Former President Thabo Mbeki’s position to oppose the British proposal to
invade Zimbabwe and forceful remove Mugabe from office.
“In the period preceding
the 2002 Zimbabwe Elections, the UK and the US in particular were very keen to
effect this regime change and failing which to impose various conditions to
shorten the period of any Mugabe Presidency,” wrote former President Thabo
Mbeki.
“Our then Minister of Intelligence, Lindiwe Sisulu, had to make a number of trips to London and Washington to engage the UK and US governments on their plans for Zimbabwe, with strict instructions from our Government to resist all plans to impose anything on the people of Zimbabwe, including by military means.” See Bulawayo 24, South Africa's policy towards Zimbabwe - A synopsis by Thabo Mbeki.
Zimbabwe chose the
military solution to end white colonial rule and look what leaders that armed struggle has thrown up; having won the
liberation war they believed they alone know what is best for the nation and
resisted all pressure for democratic accountability. Zimbabwe is stuck in this economic mess
because we cannot remove Mugabe and his cronies from power. They liberated the
country but only to impose this corrupt and oppressive de facto one party
dictatorship.
Beside one must never
reach for the gun until all peaceful means of solving the problem have been
exhausted. The 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) was one such peaceful
solution which would have ended the dictatorial system of government in
Zimbabwe; if only the raft of democratic reforms in the agreement had been
implemented.
In his article above, President
Mbeki put a lot of emphasis on SA’s commitment to let Zimbabweans decide their
own destiny, a prima facie commendable stance; still, as guarantor of the GPA,
SA must shoulder some blame for the fact that not even one reform was implemented
in five years of the GNU and thus the GPA’s failure to deliver free, fair and
credible elections in 2013 and beyond.
If I had to apportion
blame why not even one reform was implemented during the GNU then Tsvangirai
and his MDC friends must take 75% of the blame. There is no doubt that they
sold-out; Mugabe offered them the gravy train lifestyles and they, in return,
kicked the reforms into the tall grass.
MDC leaders were so easily
fooled by Mugabe they were tripping over each other to sing Mugabe praises
calling the tyrant the “unflappable father of the nation”, said Tendai Biti.
Forgetting the brutality the tyrant had subjected MDC members and the nation at
large as recently as 2008! MDC leaders were convinced the tyrant had accepted
them in the exclusive ruling elite club and hence the reason why the kicked
reforms into the tall grass; the dictatorship favoured the ruling elite and now
that they were members they did not see the need to implement the reform.
Some of the MDC leaders
were so convinced of their ruling elite status that even after Zanu PF blatantly
rigged the 2013 elections they still expected Mugabe to give them cushy jobs
according to Dr Misheck Sibanda, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet’s
report.
“Some (MDC leaders after losing the
elections) said, ‘If we are needed, even if it’s a Zanu-PF Government, talk to
the President. Possibly we can come and serve because we want to serve.’ (They
said they wanted roles) in any capacity. You could tell that it was because of
how they had been handled (bribed and bamboozled). To me, it was amusing.”
The people of Zimbabwe,
especially the independent press and the intelligentsia, carry 20% of the blame
of why the 2008 GPA failed to deliver democratic change. There is no excuse why
the people had failed to understand what the reforms and thus appreciate they
critical importance to creating a democratic Zimbabwe. It is the people’s
democratic duty to understand important national issues and to ensure leaders deliver
on these matters and hold them to account when they fail; Zimbabweans have been
found wilfully wanting in this!
SADC and South Africa, it
played the leading role in the Zimbabwe crisis, must should the remaining 5% of
why the 2008 GPA was a total failure.
President Mbeki admitted that
as far back as 2001 SA was already concerned about Mugabe’s undemocratic
tendencies and their negative effects on the country’s ability to deliver on
its objectives of “improving the lives of the people of Zimbabwe, defending the
independence of our countries and advancing Pan Africanist goals …. Zimbabwe
should remain a democratic and peaceful country with a growing economy of
shared wealth.”
The wanton violence and blatant
vote rigging by Mugabe is the March and July 2008 elections showed the whole world
just how far off the democratic path Mugabe had gone.
“What was achieved by the
bullet cannot be undone by the ballot!” boasted Mugabe as his party thugs,
Police, CIO and Army terrorized the nation. What more proof did President Mbeki
need that Mugabe did not care about democracy and good governance!
SA should have rejected Tsvangirai
and Mugabe’s cosy scratch my back and I will scratch yours arrangement and
exerted more pressure on the two to the implement the 2008 GPA democratic
reforms for the good of Zimbabwe and the region.
“This approach (GPA) was
informed by our unwavering determination to respect the right of the people of
Zimbabwe to determine their future, firmly opposed to any foreign, including
South African, intervention to impose solutions on the people of Zimbabwe,”
President Mbeki says.
I do not buy the argument
that bringing pressure to bear on the parties to the GNU to implement the
reforms would count as interfering in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs. Mugabe,
Tsvangirai and Mutambara on behalf of their respect political parties committed
themselves to the GPA reforms and President Mbeki on behalf of SADC the
guarantor of the GPA had a duty to ensure they honoured that commitment.
Besides by ensuring the
GPA reforms were implemented and Zimbabwe was put back on a democratic footing
complete with guaranteed free, fair and credible elections President Mbeki
would have fulfilled the promise that the people of Zimbabwe, as contrast to a
few ruling elite in the dictatorship imposing their will on the nation, are the
masters of their own destiny.
The main purpose of the 2008
GPA was to fix Zimbabwe’s broken political system so that the wanton violence
and vote rigging of 2008 will not be repeated ever again. There was no violence
in 2013 but still there were glaring voting irregularities such as the failure
to release the voters roll, the vote rigging smoking gun.
Since the 2013 elections
there have been reports of political violence; the signs are the next elections
set for 2018 will be marred by the blatant vote rigging and the wanton violence,
a repeat of the 2008 – the very thing the 2008 GPA had set out to stop
happening again!
4 comments:
Government has canceled diamond permits of all the companies to start a new company. Some of the old companies were operating with no permit.
So these companies have been operating illegally for “four to five years”! Extracting 8-12 million carats of diamonds a year which no one can account for! It makes my heart bleed at the billions of dollars
@ Steam
Time has not done much for black Africans; we moved from slavery to white colonial exploitation and not to tyrannical black governments. Zimbabweans are economically and politically worse off now than they were before independence and the same is true for many other African countries.
Many Zimbabweans have had no regular job for 15 years some even longer; they were born in poverty, grew up in poverty and now they are having their own families in poverty. The longer one stays in poverty the harder it is going to be to escape.
Look at countries like the Philippines and Haiti, decades after they finally got rid of their respective dictator they are still suffering under the tyrant's legacy. It is a lot easier to destroy than to rebuild and those who think Zimbabwe can get back to what she was in 1980 in a few years are naive. It will take a generation, at the very earliest, to do that and it will never happen if we seat back and expect "time to heal everything!"
@ Conor
We need to stop this culture of blaming others for our own self-inflicted problems. Mugabe has developed this culture into an art and has got away with many things for the last 36 years but those problems have all come back home to haunt us all.
Years of disregarding the rule of law has allowed Mugabe to overstay in power and created the political instability that is tearing Zanu PF and with it the nation apart. Decades of misrule are the root cause of the economic meltdown. As if we were not in enough trouble, we have the drought!
We are in serious trouble and the next year is going to be really tough for us all!
@ Mandikumba
As long as we continue to have a naive and gullible electorate nothing much is going to change. I contested a by-election in Chirumanzu in 1995 and I learnt from first-hand experience just how naive and gullible the Zimbabwean voters are.
Even if you are the genius politician, the Albert Einstein of politics, contesting in the next elec-tions he/she will lose. To start will no genius would stand on a Zanu PF ticket and since Zanu PF rigs elections our genius will lose. Even if the elections were free, fair and credible; our naive electorate are more likely to believe the Zanu PF type candidate who will promise them 2.2 mil-lion new jobs especially if he provides the voters with meat and beer even if it be a one off thing than our genius with his/her talk of hard work ahead.
No the solution to Zimbabwe's problem is not getting a leader or a handful of leaders leading from the front, back or wherever. The solution is getting Zimbabweans to take their duty to elect good leaders with the seriousness the matter demands. By electing a corrupt and murderous tyrant like Mugabe and then elect a corrupt and incompetent one like Tsvangirai straight after it shows the people are not taking the business of electing leaders with the seriousness the matter demands. They are too naive and gullible.
It you want to build a single story building to last five years mud bricks will do. But if you want a ten story building to last generations then you solid building blocks! If you want a healthy and functional democracy in Zimbabwe then you must get an electorate at least smart enough not to be so easily con by someone as corrupt and incompetent as Tsvangirai not once but again and again!
By electing a corrupt and incompetent leader like Tsvangirai even when they have already prov-en that they are corrupt and incompetent Zimbabweans are telling the world that they are not serious about good governance and ending their problems! The world is listening and they have got the message loud and clear!
I can set up base wherever you wish but that will not change anything because it is not where I am that matters. Change the quality of the electorate and the quality of the leaders will improve too. You will get cream rising to the top if you have a jar of wholesome milk; if you have sewage you will have scum without failure!
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