“We are going to vote
them (Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies) out of power and most critically we are
going to fight for our vote which carries our wishes and voices. Young people,
now is the time to organise ourselves. If our elders wish to continue on the
path of frivolity while we are all being dragged to the grave by Mugabe, let
them do so without us!” argued Patson Dzamara.
“It is time we take our collective destiny into our hands. For too long we have been the playthings of the powerful, second-class citizens in our own nation.
“The time has come for us to say 'Enough!' and cross the rubicon. We must not allow ourselves to be Mugabe's death companions.”
“It is time we take our collective destiny into our hands. For too long we have been the playthings of the powerful, second-class citizens in our own nation.
“The time has come for us to say 'Enough!' and cross the rubicon. We must not allow ourselves to be Mugabe's death companions.”
There are number of
key points you have failed to appreciate:
1) Zimbabwe is not a democratic country in which
elections are free, fair and credible and therefore it is nonsense to talk of “voting
them out of power”!
2) You say you “are going to fight for our vote”.
How?
3) Many people have been attending voter
educations workshops, will be mobilizing for voter registration, will attending
opposition rallies and will be hoping to go out and vote in their millions.
This is exactly what Zanu PF would want you to do because it gives the election
process the modicum of credibility.
But
of course, Zanu PF will undermine everything you do; how many millions tried to
register to vote last time and failed to do so! Instead of addressing the root
cause of why so many voters were denied the vote what you are doing is try even
harder to get on the voters’ roll. Zanu PF has already raised the bar of voter
registration even higher, the regime deliberately delayed the voter
registration and many people will never get the chance to do so.
4) If you are serious about voting Zanu PF out of
office then demand the implementation of the democratic reforms designed to
stop the party rigging the vote, then and only then agree to go into elections.
In
his book, Animal Farm, George Orwell, described a horse called Boxer who was very
strong physically but the exact opposite mentally. Boxer struggle to learn the
first four letters of the alphabet; he then struggled to learn the next four letters
and by the time he mastered them he had forgotten the first four.
Boxer
had two mottos:
a) I will work harder
b) Napoleon (the dictator pig) is always right
The
farm faced many problems such shortage of food and many of which were cause by
the mismanagement and corruption of Napoleon and Boxer’s response to all these
problems was to work himself to the bone, literally. Of course, it did not
solve the farm’s problem, if anything it only encourage the wasteful habits.
Zimbabwe
has teething man-made political and economic problems and for the last 37 years
things have got worse and worse and yet most people have worked themselves to
death. The moral of our tragic human story is that problems are not always solved
by working harder but rather by working smarter.
We
are not going to remove Zanu PF from power by standing up on rooftops shouting “Enough
is enough!”, driving all the way from South Africa to vote only to find one’s
name has been deliberately deleted from the voters’ roll, etc. It is insane
contesting an election knowing the vote will be rigged; so, why do it?
“If
you go into elections next month, you are going to lose; the elections are
done!” SADC leaders warned MDC leaders in June 2013; according to Dr Ibbo
Mandaza, who was there.
2 comments:
I do agree with you there my brother, we need to get out of this Boxer the horse mentality of shutting our eyes to the root causes of our problems and pretend it is something else just because the solutions to the real causes are tougher to implement.
Boxer was a stupid horse and his failure to learn the alphabet proves it. But even he could have figured out that the farm’s produce was being wasted if he had bothered to pay attention to what the pigs were doing. By adopting the motto “Napoleon is always right!” the idiot had shut the door in his own face to ever question what the pigs were doing. There is no greater depth of stupidity one can descend to worse than the self-inflected one.
Our friend, Patson Dzamara, is smart enough to know that Zanu PF has been rigging elections for donkey years. Even if one assumed that he is not smart enough to have figured out that the GNU was about, above all else, implementing the democratic reforms designed to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. This has been discussed to death on this forum and others these last four years, he really has no excuse for not knowing what the democratic reforms are about.
Common sense would dictate that there is really no point in contesting elections knowing they will be rigged. MDC leaders have been contesting regardless because they are interested in the few gravy train seats Zanu PF gives away. They are not interested in free and fair elections and democratic change. Why someone like Dzamara would want to join Tsvangirai in this rat race beggars belief!
“We are going to vote them out of power!” Yeah right. Why did you not do so in July 2013? Where you asleep!
People like Patson Dzamara are either as stupid as Boxer the horse; they will continue contesting flawed elections years after year and decade after decade and expect a different result. Or they are smart enough to know this is madness but are encouraging the naïve and gullible in Zimbabwe society to believe the impossible, Zanu PF rigging the vote and losing the elections. Zanu PF pays, and pays well, those who are helping it draw attention away from demands for reforms whilst promoting the nonsense that the nation can still have democratic change with no reforms.
The voter registration exercise should have started soon after the last general elections particularly since the regime knew it was starting a new voters' roll from scratch. The only reason why registration is starting now, with less than a year to voting day, is clear to see - the regime does not want a clean voters' roll.
The whole voter registration process is going to be rushed through so there is no time for would be voters to register, for anyone to see how the exercise is being conducted to suit some whilst denying others, for anyone to uncover the deliberate tampering with data, etc., etc.
ZEC, as presently constituted, are not committed to delivering free, fair and credible elections but rather to delivering a Zanu PF landslide victory by hook or by crook. If we want free, fair and credible elections we must therefore implement the democratic reforms to ensure ZEC and all the other State Institution are freed from the corrupting influence of Zanu PF to carry out their statutory duties professionally and freely. This was why SADC leaders warned MDC leaders not to contest the 2013 elections with no reforms in place. It is common sense, not rocket science.
MDC leaders went on to contest the 2013 elections with no reforms and the reason they did this can be traced back to what they did during the GNU. It was Tsvangirai and his MDC friends who were supposed to implement the democratic reforms during the GNU. They failed to get even one reform implemented in five years because Mugabe bribed them with the trapping of high office and, in return, they kicked reforms into the tall grass.
MDC leaders “were busy enjoying themselves when they were in the GNU, they forgot why they were there,” remarked one SADC leader in sheer exasperation soon after Zanu PF rigged the July 2013 elections.
MDC leaders contested the July 2013 elections knowing fully well that Zanu PF would rig the vote because they were after the few gravy train seats Zanu PF was giving away to those in the opposition who contested, as David Coltart has admitted in his book.
“The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn’t now do the obvious – withdraw from the elections,” explained Senator Coltart.
“The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility.”
Everyone in the opposition camp know that not even one reform was implemented since the July 2013 elections and so Zanu PF is free to rig the vote as before. They know that the rushed voter registration is part and parcel of the vote rigging. The curtained of Zanu PF rigging next year’s elections is not going to stop the opposition politicians contesting they elections because they are they to fight over the few gravy train seat they know Zanu PF will give away.
There is really nothing to be gained for the ordinary Zimbabwean in participate in next year’s elections with no reforms. All they will do by participating is give the process the modicum of democratic credibility and thus giving Zanu PF an excuse for refusing implement reforms and maintaining the status quo.
The people of Zimbabwe need to wake up to the political reality that Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends stopped fighting for democratic change, free and fair elections, etc. a long time ago. They sold-out during the GNU by failing to implement reforms and they are selling-out now by contesting flawed elections for the sake of a few gravy train seats!
If the people of Zimbabwe want free and fair elections, the pre-requisite for competent and accountable government, then it is for them to stand firm alone and demand the implementation of the reforms before elections. They must take no part in the present electoral process because that will be seen as endorsing the flawed process.
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