“The classic novelists Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Oscar Wilde and others have written about how people allow themselves to be part of a Chain of Fools who have very dysfunctional values; lying, manipulating, abusing and harming others and eventually they “get enough rope to hang themselves” or in other words they believe their own lies and are very delusional that they end up being their own worst enemy and destroying themselves due to THEIR FALSE SENSE OF POWER, ENTITLEMENT AND REALITY.”
Tsvangirai and his MDC-T friends have become a stereotypical chain of fools and, as expected, they are now hanging themselves!
“The MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai has told his party youth to join Zanu PF in numbers, do slogans, perform activities in order that they benefit from opportunities that are exclusive to ruling party supporters,” reported Zimeye.
“He said youth must not complain that they are being excluded from industrial attachments, training programmes like nursing or even employment. “Don’t tell me you can’t say pamberi neZanu PF. Do it and join them in their activities but know where to vote when the elections come,” said Tsvangirai.
Zanu PF is a party of thugs who have used every dirty trick in the book to rig elections including harassment, intimidation, vote buying, beating, rape and even murder of the innocent. The regime has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans for its selfish political gain. The regime has applied these dirty tactics on everyone it considered a threat to its no-regime-change mantra be they critics, political opponents and their supporters, local civic organisation, charitable foreign donors, foreign governments, etc.
So, if Tsvangirai’s advice to the party youths to join Zanu PF is sound and strategic, it must also be sound and strategic to the rest of the party members to join Zanu PF; especially those in the rural areas who have been denied government food aid, have had their homes burnt and worse.
Most of these MDC-T supporters who outwardly, according to the new Tsvangirai’s strategy, are giving token support to Zanu PF out of fear will NOT overcome their fear and vote for MDC-T.
In a political environment where fear of reprisals is so perverse;
by instructing his supporters to join Zanu PF to avoid being victimised
Tsvangirai is per se acknowledging that the culture of fear in Zimbabwe is indeed
real and perverse; the people will vote to appease the bully they fear the most,
particularly when it is certain the bully will win and the challenger will
never protect them even if the later was to win! This is exactly what happen in
the 2008 Presidential run-off!
In the March 2008 vote Tsvangirai won 73% of the votes, by
Mugabe’s own admission, but MDC was too weak and naïve to claim victory. After
five weeks of recounting the vote ZEC finally announce the result with
Tsvangirai’s lead reduced to 47% to President Mugabe’s 43%.
In the presidential run-off that followed, President Mugabe launched
Operation “Mavhotera papi!” (Whom did you vote for!), a military style reprisal
to punish the electorate for having voted for Tsvangirai in the early vote. Zanu
PF youths and war veterans with the active support of the Army, Police and CIO
were granted carte blanche powers to intimidate, harass, beat, rape and even
kill for the single purpose of forcing the electorate to vote for Mugabe in the
run-off. It worked; President Mugabe overturned Tsvangirai’s earlier 73% into a
comfortable 85% Mugabe landslide victory!
It is a matter of public record that Zanu PF has routinely instructed
traditional leaders like village heads and chiefs to list the names of suspected
opposition supporters in their area. Now that votes of each polling station are
counted separately it is easy to ascertain how people voted in each area. It is
therefore not surprising to hear that some people have willingly allow the
village heads to see how they have voted just to make sure their support of Zanu
PF is never questioned.
Tsvangirai’s cowardly failure to stand up to Zanu PF bullying is
graphically illustrated in his failure to implement even one democratic reform
during the GNU. Yes, President Mugabe bribe Tsvangirai and company to kick the
reforms into the tall grass but there is no doubt that MDC leaders have never
had the confidence they could rule the country alone without Zanu PF approval.
Hence MDC-T’s reluctance to implement the reforms and thus end Zanu PF’s
autocratic dominance.
So, by instructing MDC-T supporters to join Zanu PF, Tsvangirai
has just confirmed MDC-T to be a political weakling always destined to be play
a subservient role to the village bully, Zanu PF. As any victim of playground bully
will tell you, it is foolhardy to side with a weakling against the bully; you
will be punished for backing the wrong horse!
What MDC-T should be doing is accept the political reality that it
is impossible to hold free, fair and credible elections in Zimbabwe’s current political
environment in which the electorate fear their livelihoods, personal safety and
even their very lives. This is totally unacceptable and MDC-T and the rest of
the opposition camp should stop contesting such blatantly flawed elections.
President Mugabe has since learnt that as long as he throws away a
few seats during elections, there will always be some opposition politicians
who will contest the elections to win these bait-seats regardless how flawed
the election process gets. As far as Tsvangirai is concerned winning the few
give-away seats and thus securing a few gravy train seats for MDC-T members and
remaining the country’s main opposition party is now more important than securing
everyone’s freedoms and basic rights including the right to free, fair and
credible elections.
By telling MDC-T supporters to join Zanu PF for their own
protection; Tsvangirai has therefore, unwittingly, confirmed MDC-T will never
stand-up to Zanu PF vote rigging and other bullying tactic. He has hammered the
last nail in MDC-T’s political coffin; if MDC-T cannot bring about any meaningful
political change, then why risk life and limp voting for such a party!
12 comments:
School named after Cecil John Rhodes changes its name to Matopos in hnour of Mugabe.
“Where is Rhodes’ ghost or spirit coming from? If he is today, protrude his head from the grave saying I am arising; I am not going to order the boys to fire one bullet or use an AK. I was going to order them to use a machine gun to crush that head like that of a snake ca;;ed a cobra,” said Mugabe.
This is just cheap politics; the nation has millions who are out of work and starving, these are the big issues the nation should be dealing with and not how to fight imaginary foes of whites who died years ago!
@ Dumo desbo
Nomazulu's suggestion for all those who really want to see Zimbabwe get out of this hell, first, accept that the present system has failed, it is pointless trying to make a flawed system work. Second, people should demand the implementation of reforms. NTA can implement the reforms or any other mechanism the nation agrees up after debate.
@kismore
The question: Who is capable of rescuing Zimbabwe from this mess? Is an important and relevant question but one best answered after the democratic reforms are implemented and there is real democratic competition. Many will enter the race to be elected president of Zimbabwe but many will fall by the way side and, in a health and functioning democracy more often than not the best candidate there is will win.
Zimbabwe's present political atmosphere stifles debate and democratic competition and thus it is impossible to separate the goats from sheep. Indeed, the corrupt system favours the wolves in sheep clothing!
@ Simon Allison
“If our leaders won’t buy the argument that xenophobia is wrong on principle – and this argument seems to hold little weight in the corridors of power these days – then perhaps another argument might sway them: xenophobia is bad for business. Like it or not, South Africa’s future lies on the African continent. The longer xenophobia is allowed to flourish unchecked, the more complicated that future becomes.”
It is a pity that SA is slowly but surely becoming a lawless nation ruled by greed; following in the exact footsteps that many African countries have taken. Many of us had hoped SA will not be another failed state like Zimbabwe but it seems the influence of Mugabe and his cheap populist policies are proving too irresistible!
On the land issue, it is a well known fact - a post Mugabe land audit will confirm the facts - that Mugabe and his cronies were the chief beneficiaries of his land redistribution and, more significantly, they have failed to make productive use of the land. Zimbabwe's economic recovery is dependent on get the agricultural sector back on track a.s.a.p.
No leader worth his salt will allow him/herself to be dictated to by an incompetent, corrupt, vote rigging and murderous tyrant! The new leaders should be looking at how to get the nation back on the recovery path and not even be bothered about upholding Mugabe's legacy of failure and corruption!
Zanu PF members are known for their fanaticism and thuggery especially the party's youths. Having joined Zanu PF, these MDC youths will be pressured to prove they are not just passenger coming along for the ride by behaving like thugs!
I would expect Zanu PF thugs to successfully infiltrate MDC-T and undermine its effectiveness. It is hard to see a successful MDC-T double agent!
Advising MDC-T youths to join Zanu PF was a blunder, Tsvangirai will live to regret!
@ Midze
How many green bombers do you know who have ever voted for the opposition? After a few weeks of brainwashing, smoking weed and beating and raping innocent people at these Border Gazi camps, you too will be a thug!
@ Godfrey
Well we have seen plenty of action from President Mugabe with all the looting and mindless murders to Tsvangirai's five years gallivanting round the world chasing women and doing nothing about reforms. We have seen plenty of action but most of it ill-conceived if any thinking had gone into any of it at all. I think we need people who have some working brain and will not just work but work smarter!
What people like President Mugabe has been doing these last 37 years has set this nation back 50 years at the cost of much sweat, treasure and human misery and over 30 000 in political murders alone. Enough of this mindless action!
People like you do not value ideas and debate because you are out of your comfort zone of chaos and confusion, blundering from pillar to post like our friend Richard Morgan Tsvangirai. Why don't you get yourselves two MDC-T membership cards just to show how much you admire all the confused nonsense he has said these last week alone! He certainly did not think any of it out, which is exactly what a man of action like you want to see!
I registered to vote for the 2013 elections but was denied the vote because Nikuv tampered with the voters' roll and took out my name from the constituency voters roll I expected it to be. Nearly one million other voters were denied the vote for the same reason showing this was not a one-off mistake but a well planned and deliberate act.
Anyone with any common sense would know that in Zimbabwe registering to vote is nowhere near enough to guarantee your right to vote, you will not be harassed or worse to force you to vote for A and all the other things one would expect if the election was free and fair. The only sure way of stopping Zanu PF doing any of this stuff again is by implementing democratic reforms.
Of course I would not expect you Sarah to understand any of this stuff; free and fair elections, democratic reforms, etc. After all, you are not a buffoon!
@ Kudzi Muyangwa
Do you know how many Zimbabweans registered to vote in 2013 but were denied the vote by the simple process of deliberately posting their data in some other constituency than the one they expected? Nearly one million! Do you know that hundreds of thousands of rural voters were frog-marched to the Polling Station and forced to vote for Zanu PF? You must have see the YouTube video of Zanu PF youths bussed from one polling station to the next casting multiple votes. The list of Zanu PF vote rigging options is endless!
It is foolish to keep contesting elections knowing the process is flawed.
What else does Zanu PF have to do to finally convince you that it is foolish to contest the elections?
SADC leaders tried to get Tsvangirai and his MDC friends to implement the democratic reforms designed to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. Sadly MDC leaders sold-out, President Mugabe bribed them all with the trappings of high office and they forgot about the reforms.
SADC warned Tsvangirai & co. not to contest the 2013 elections without implementing the reforms first but Tsvangirai's attention was on his many lady-friends!
Implementing the democratic reforms still remain the only viable option out of the mess we are in. It is a great pity that so many Zimbabweans still continue to waste time, energy and treasure on such hare-brain solution such as opposition coalition, voter registration, etc.; proof they still have no idea what vote rigging means.
We are in this mess because it took the same people 20 years or more to accept Mugabe was a corrupt and murderous dictator. It could take them another 20 years from today to accept Tsvangirai is corrupt and incompetent and his hare-brain schemes to defeat Zanu PF without implementing reforms are a waste of time. We do not have time to waste!
The truth is Zimbabwe is already sitting on a knife edge, the present economic meltdown with 90% out of work and millions living and dying of abject poverty, is socially and politically unsustainable. Another rigged election next year is sure to send the nation tumbling into the abyss. Mark my words!
@ Stanley
I agree with you 100%, asking MDC supporter to join Zanu PF is not going to help end Zanu PF sponsored political violence. This is typical Tsvangirai blundering from pillar to post!
We have institutionalised violence in Zimbabwe, the price of belonging to the wrong political party has been going up and up. To get a place in a public institution of higher learning; you must have a Zanu PF membership card. To get food aid and farming inputs; you must prove you are a Zanu PF supporter. During the elections, to be accused of being an opposition supporter is now a serious crime exposing you to harassment, beatings or even cost you your very life.
Elections in Zimbabwe have become a mockery of democratic elections; the real tragedy is we have done nothing to stop it. By taking part in these flawed processes we are given them a stamp of legitimacy and worse still perpetuating them. Why should Zanu PF stop using violence and rigging elections when these help the party secure its no-regime-change mantra and we are foolish enough to think the party will reform its ways because it is feeling sorry for us.
MDC or any of the other opposition parties cannot take Zanu PF thuggery head-on because the later can always call on State machinery to take up the fight on its behalf. The only way the opposition can end the culture of violence if by forcing the implementation of democratic reforms designed to end Zanu PF's undemocratic controls of the Police, ZEC and other State Institutions.
MDC had the golden opportunity to implement the reform during the GNU but failed to get even one reform implemented because the party is incompetent and corrupt. The truth is MDC will never bring about any democratic change, this is a basic truth Zimbabweans have yet to learn.
What was the point of telling Tsvangirai all these stories when he is not going to do anything about it. How long has he know that Zanu PF uses violence and what has he ever done to stop the violence or to protect the MDC supporters. All he cares about is the chance to win the few seats Zanu PF gives away during the elections so he can continue to boast about being the country's biggest opposition party and get some cash from the Political Party Finance Act!
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