This is not a joke; Didymus Mutasa is NERA convener - so what CIO reforms has he proposed. By Nomusa Garikai

In 2008 the people of Zimbabwe risked life and limp to elect Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends on the promise that MDC would bring about democratic reforms, restore all our basic freedoms and human rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections. Never at any point since the launching of MDC has Tsvangirai or anyone in the party ever said what the democratic changes the party promised are, how they will be implemented and when. Not that many people asked for the details of the changes but the few who did were ignored!

Tsvangirai and his friends were elected into power and MDC had the majority in the GNU parliament and cabinet. MDC failed to implement even one democratic change, the July 2013 elections were NOT free, fair and credible as Tsvangirai has readily admitted.

MDC has come up with all manner of excuses to explain why they failed to deliver even one single change and the all-important free, fair and credible elections. The one issue that sticks out like the Empire State Building in the Sahara Desert, which they have completely failed to give a laudable excuse, is why in five years MDC had failed to submit even one proposed reform for debate in parliament. The truth is none of the MDC leaders understood the process of implementing the reforms a fact Zanu PF exploited and was quick to point out.

When it became increasingly clear that no meaningful reforms were implemented and therefore the July 2013 elections would not be free and fair; MDC tried to blame Zanu PF and President Mugabe for it. The then Minister of Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, Patrick Chinamasa, reminded Zimbabwe’s Ambassadors, the Press Core and the world at large that Zanu PF has never block any reform proposals in parliament. And President Mugabe never refused to sign into law any proposed reforms approved by Parliament. MDC could not blame Zanu PF for blocking reforms when they never, in the five years of the GNU, submitted even one reform proposal for parliament to consider!

Today MDC-T is doing the same thing again; Tsvangirai and a number of other opposition parties have been calling for electoral reforms for the last three years but each time they asked to give any details of the nature of the reforms, the process of implementing the reforms, who will do what and when, etc.; there is no doubt that they have once again not thought through any of this.

“NERA head of legal affairs Douglas Mwonzora yesterday accused ZEC of working with the State security apparatus to frustrate the implementation of critical electoral reforms,” reported Newsday.

“Mwonzora said electoral reforms were not issues that ZEC would put to vote during meetings with political parties, but were legal matters recognized by the Constitution. NERA convener Didymus Mutasa said NERA would continue to hold regular meetings to strategize.”

Of all people Douglas Mwonzora, who is MDC-T Secretary General and was the co-chairperson of the parliamentary committee that drafted the 2013 Constitution, should know that it is for the Executive President and/or Parliament to initiate reforms and to see to it that they are implemented. ZEC, CIO, Police, etc. are all doing what President Mugabe tells them to do.

Indeed the whole purpose of the reforms is to break this unholy dictatorial control President Mugabe has over ZEC, Police, etc. and give these institutions their independence. To expect ZEC to behave in a none-partisan way without breaking the Mugabe dictatorial struggle over ZEC is putting the cart before the horse; underlined the point that MDC-T leaders still have no clue what they are doing on reforms.  

It is comically ironic that the opposition parties have picked Comrade Didymus Mutasa to be the convener of NERA. What does he know about reforms? If he had played his cards right, Mutasa would still be at the very heart of this Zanu PF regime defending the status quo just as he had done for 34 years until 2014 when he was booted out. Not that President Mugabe has missed Mutasa the last two year; Mutasa is just a blundering ignoramus whose “strategic” contributions will be confusion, President Mugabe would only be pleased to see Mutasa playing a major role in the opposition camp!

Of course Didymus Mutasa, Joice Mujuru, Dzikamai Mavhaire, Munacho Mutezo and all the other Zim PF leaders knew that President Mugabe has been rigging elections, just as Tsvangirai and his lot have done, but none of them, again just like MDC guys, could say how can say how the elections were rigged much less how to stop the rigging. If they did then they would have stopped the tyrant rigging the 2014 Zanu PF congress elections which ended with them being booted out of the party.

When President Mugabe moved to elbow Joice Mujuru and her ZimPF friends in 2014 the latter were as helpless and confused as rabbits caught in the flood lights. We saw the same look of panic and confusion in Tsvangirai and MDC when Zanu PF blatantly rigged the national elections just the year before!

“It is like watching a gangster of the sophistication of Mafia playing cards with a mentally challenged opponent,” remarked a visiting American report at the time. “Both Mujuru and Tsvangirai did not know what hit them!”

Comrade Mutasa has held many very senior cabinet positions in President Mugabe’s governments since independence and his last cabinet post was Minister of State Security, he was the CIO Boss. I challenge him to tell us what NERA reforms are required and how they are to be implemented to ensure the independence of the CIO and thus end their traditional Zanu PF partisan bias! I am not holding my breath!

It was the 2008 GPA that forced President Mugabe to accept the idea of democratic reforms for the first time since our independence in 1980. Sadly MDC failed to make the most of this golden opportunity to end the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship by failing to get even one reform implemented. The limited economic recovery that was achieved during the GNU was quickly lost after the 2013 rigged elections because they were not underpinned by meaningful political reforms.

Zimbabwe is facing a serious economic meltdown today and it is this invisible but irresistible force that is forcing Zanu PF to once again accept political reform. It is the economic hardship, not the love NERA as the opposition leaders want us to believe, that is forcing the public on the street to demand change. It is the fear of the sceptre of grinding poverty knocking at their doors that is fuelling the dog-eat-dog fight for power and tearing Zanu PF apart.

Even President Mugabe must now know that the current economic situation in the country is socially and politically unsustainable and the political change that should have taken place during the GNU must now be implemented! It would be unforgivable if we fail to implement meaningful reforms once again just as happened during the GNU because we assumed that the opposition’s know what reforms we need and how they are to be implemented, particularly when we already know that they do not have a clue.

Whilst opposition leaders will want us to believe NERA reforms will deliver free, fair and credible elections not even one of them has ever given any detail on even one of these reforms and how they are to be implemented because they have no clue what the reforms are. All our opposition leaders are more interested in is getting a seat on the country political gravy train and once on the train the last thing they would want to do is implement meaningful democratic reforms designed to dismantle the gravy train culture.

None of the opposition leaders will tell what reforms are in the NERA box because the box is empty! They are hoping that not many Zimbabweans will ask them for details of the NERA reforms and, once elected into power, it will be too late for us to do anything even if we should establish that the NERA box is indeed empty!