“Next week there might be some
changes in government. Should we remain with the same team or we make changes
or even discard some. So that exercise I will be doing it and early next week
you will get the results,” President Mugabe told a meeting of his ZANU-PF youth
wing.
With
the country is the economic and political mess it is in a government shakeup is
something many Zimbabweans would say “Is long overdue!” But before anyone gets
carries away, we need to look at the reality on the ground.
Unemployment
has soared to 90% plus, 72.3% of our people now live on US$1.00 or less a day,
our education and health services have all but collapsed, etc., etc. These
things did not happen in the last year or since the last election. Ours has
been a steady decline that can be traced back to our independence in 1980. What
sticks out here like a sore thumb is why have we allowed things to get into
such a mess all these last 37 years? Why have we failed to have a government
shakeup?
Throughout
the last 37 years, President Mugabe, has appointed his cabinet ministers, a
bloated cabinet it must be said, and from time to time has carried out cabinet
reshuffled, discarding some and bringing new face. What matters to the nation
is that things have progressively got worse and not better.
Only
the politically naïve and gullible will expect Zimbabwe’s political and
economic mess to improve after next week’s cabinet reshuffle. Zimbabwe’s
economic meltdown will get worse fuelled by the gross mismanagement and rampant
corruption. Zanu PF’s factional war will heat up. Indeed, the cabinet reshuffle
will be more about the factional war than to address the nation’s worsening
political and economic crisis. Talk of fiddling whilst Rome burn!
If
the truth be told; now, with the nation’s political and economic stability and our
very survival at stake, it must be told; the real reason why all the past
shakeup, reshuffles, etc. have all failed to end the mismanagement and
corruption is because the shakeup pruned the twigs and the odd branch when what
was required was to uproot the whole tree, branches, trunk and roots.
Everyone
in President Mugabe’s cabinet has serviced at his pleasure. Some like Defence
Minister Sydney Sekeramai, have been a permanent fixture of Mugabe’s cabinet
having been there for all the 37 years other has drifted in and out. So, the responsibility
for the lacklustre performance of the Zimbabwe government for the last 37 years
must be laid at President Mugabe’s door and no one else.
We
can be certain of one thing President Mugabe will not be proposing his own
retirement in his next week reshuffle.
The
only opportunity the nation has ever had to force President Mugabe to leave
office was during national elections; he has successful rig the vote and thus
denying the people a meaningful say on who governed the country. The March 2008
elections; when Tsvangirai polled 73% of the vote, by President Mugabe’s own
admission, which ZEC then whittled down to 47% to force the run-off; proved the
futility of contesting elections which Zanu PF has carte blanche powers to rig.
So,
if we are serious about putting an end to the last four decades of misrule then
we should not be looking at President Mugabe carrying out his traditional
pruning of the twigs and branches, whose primary purpose is aid his wife’s G40
factional war. We must cut down the tree trunk, the twigs and branches will not
survive, and then uproot the roots so there is no chance of dictatorship
off-shoot ever emerging again.
President
Mugabe’s cabinet reshuffle is an internal Zanu PF affair in the ongoing
factional war that will have very little effect, if at all, on the teething economic
and political problems of ordinary Zimbabweans. The real political reshuffle of
national interest is the next national elections when people will have the
chance to boot out Mugabe himself out of office but only if the elections are
free, fair and credible.
The
stage is already set for President Mugabe and Zanu PF to rig next year’s
election; there is no way the regime will produce a verifiable voters’ roll in
four months, for example. Producing a verifiable voters’ roll is a legal
requirement. It is nonsensical to even talk of democratic elections with no
verifiable voters’ roll and Tsvangirai and his MDC friends agreed to contest
the July 2013 without one. They know there will be no verifiable voters’ roll
in 2018 and still they want to contest the elections regardless.
The
people of Zimbabwe must refuse to play any part in the current flawed and
illegal electoral process because those who try to register, for example, will
be seen as having approved the process. Whether they fail to register, as the
system is designed to make sure that many do not; etc. is irrelevant; what
matters is they have participated and thus given the process political
credibility.
The
people of Zimbabwe must demand the implementation of the democratic reforms to
ensure the elections are free, fair and credible BEFORE the elections. Next
week President Mugabe can have his cabinet reshuffle; next year Zimbabweans
will have regime reshuffle, with free, fair and credible elections.
20 comments:
After 37 years when things have gone from bad to worse year after year one election after another what is clear is that we need a lot more than President Mugabe's usual pruning of the twigs in cabinet. Mugabe is the root cause of the rot and taking off the twigs and doing nothing about the trunk has changed nothing. We need the whole regime uprooted and discarded.
We need the next elections to be free, fair and credible because without that we have no chance of dislodging President Mugabe and Zanu PF from power!
People must stop listening to the MDC nonsense of winning rigged elections meant to lure them to take part in flawed elections. MDC had their best election results in 2008 when the economic mess the country was in made forced the people seek political change, they were so desperate for change they voted for Tsvangirai in droves even thou they were not sure what he would. Tsvangirai won 73% of the vote but ZEC whittle this down to 47% to force a run-off.
It is nonsensical to keep calling for mass mobilisation to win rigged elections. If 73% failed to unseat Zanu PF in 2008 what will? MDC should be calling for reforms to stop vote rigging and not waste the nation's time contesting any more flawed elections.
Grace Mugabe is turning to SADC to stop the coup plotters forgetting that President Mugabe threaten to leave SADC when he was asked to implement reforms to ensure free and fair elections. If SADC turned a blind eye to another rigged election then they will find it very difficult to stop a military coup especially when the coup plotted should claim the coup was necessary because Mugabe rigged the elections.
President Mugabe's main objective for next week's reshuffle in Zanu PF is to advance his factional war agenda; that has nothing to do with ending the country's political paralysis and/or economic meltdown. If the people of Zimbabwe are serious about ending the political and economic crisis, then we must demand the implementation of the democratic reforms to ensure free and fair elections.
MDC's promise to win rigged elections is pure nonsense because they have tried this all these years and failed. MDC are after the few seats Zanu PF gives away to entice the opposition to contest the flawed elections. We want regime change and will not get it from the opposition winning a few seats!
Zanu Pf to acquire more vehicles at US$ 3.5 million for its party youths and women’s league members.
Early this year, Zanu PF acquired more than 300 vehicles and later during midyear also acquired buses and lorries as well as small vehicles for its party structures to boost mobility.
Zanu PF’s multifaceted vote rigging juggernaut is well funded, well organised and is running like clockwork. Yes, Zanu PF is in the middle of fractious factional war but, so far, there is no evidence that the factional fighting is affecting the vote rigging schemes. ZEC is carrying on with its organised chaos of voter registration. But there is no doubt that the factional war must be concluded soon or the vote rigging will start to suffer.
In 2014 Joice Mujuru was poised to be elected second secretary of Zanu PF and thus in line to be VP. She elevated to that post in 2014 but that was after President Mugabe changed the party constitution to allow her to assume the post ahead of Mnangagwa who was certain to win it. Mugabe did not want elected leaders around me and preferred the ones he appointed or owed their position to him. This is why he booted Mujuru but instead of allowing congress to elect someone else he appointed both Mnangagwa and VP Mphoko. An appointed VP was easier to fire than an elected one who would claim to have popular support.
Within weeks of appointing Mnangagwa as VP, Mugabe was having it known that he was not heir apparent to succeed him, “the race was open for others to join,” said Mugabe.
Grace Mugabe played a key role is stopping Mujuru being elected. She made it abandon clear she too had presidential ambitions. “Am I not a Zimbabwean too?” she demanded of those who dared question her candidature. So, before Mai Mujuru was out of the door, Grace was already campaigning hard to make sure her name was in the hat for next president. Her G40 faction was born to promote her presidential bid. G40 faction has failed to take off even with all Mugabe’s tacit support.
The reshuffle will be about promoting G40 supporters ahead of Mnangagwa supporter. As for Mnangagwa himself, I believe Mugabe will keep him as VP; remove all those around him whilst keeping him on a short leash inside the tent.
“It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in,” said former US President Lyndon Johnson when he found himself in a similar situation.
If Mugabe decide to fire Mnangagwa and all his allies then he will have a lot of firing to do because there are still many Mnangagwa supporters in the party. Mugabe will be going for broke because he can be certain of one thing all Mnangagwa supporters will know he is after them! Unlike Mujuru and her supporters, they will not let Mugabe walk all over them, of that we can be certain. Mugabe is still smarting from his bruising confrontation with the war veterans, there will be a lot more of the same to come.
@ Sam Wezhira
"Our votes must go together with our guns. After all, any vote we shall have, shall have been the product of the gun. The gun which produces the vote should remain its security officer - its guarantor. The people's votes and the people's guns are always inseparable twins," said Mugabe back in 1976 from Mozambique.
When Mugabe said this he meant it and for years after independence the tacit agreement held. Let us just say the bonds tying the two together have been retrained over the years and the Siamese twins have been forcefully separated, there is a real danger neither can survive without the other but it is pointless talking about that one now – the two have been separated there is putting them together again.
The war veterans kept their end of the bargain by agreeing to do Mugabe’s dirty work of denying the people their freedoms and basic human rights including the right to free and fair elections to impose the de facto Zanu PF dictatorship. Mugabe promised them a share of the power and economic wealth. After three decades of living in abject poverty the war veterans have finally woken up to the reality Mugabe’s promise to make them rich “tomorrow” was a mirage – visible in the distance but always moving away as one approached.
The prospect of Grace and her G40 taking over power from Mugabe instead of Mnangagwa, one of the own, has brought home the reality they will never be rich. G40 have openly declared that war veterans are not special and must stop claiming special treatment.
These rogue war veterans betrayed the nation and the values of the revolution for selfish gain, it is just that they have, in turn, been betrayed by Mugabe and his ruling elite cronies. What the people of Zimbabwe must resist is the war veterans’ attempt to remove Mugabe but only to replace him with another imposed dictator. We want the freedoms and basic human rights of every Zimbabwean restored. Everyone will have a vote and no one will have a veto!
“President Mugabe said these people want us to sleep with one eye open. I am not going to do that; I am going to sleep peacefully because I know someone is watching over me,” said Grace.
If Mugabe is sleeping with one open will explain why he has dropped to sleep at the drop of a hat!
One can understand the frustration in Zanu PF circles; as if it was not bad enough Mugabe has made his party cronies wait for the last 37 years for him to pass on the baton of power; now he to bypass them all and give the crown to his scatter-brain wife just to add insult to injury!
Yes, Mugabe has managed to hang on to power for 37 years and counting but this could turn out to be at a very high price to his party Zanu PF, whose grip on power is now tenuous, and to his family who grip on their amass loot is equally tenuous!
Zanu PF is spending $3.6 million on new cars for party youth and women’s league members. The party is loaded and many people the party will spend US$ 10 billion plus bankrolling its party activities and various vote rigging schemes including vote buying, paying NIKUV to corrupt the voters’ roll, etc.
Those who still say next year's election will be free, fair and credible are either political novice who have no clue what they are talking about or else these are individuals after the few seats Zanu FP is offering as bribes to lure opposition members to take part in the elections. MDC leaders sold-out of getting the reforms implemented during the GNU, they know the task of getting the reforms implemented now is a very tough one; it is easier for them to just go for whatever scraps Zanu PF offers then.
If the people of Zimbabwe are serious about democratic change, then it is for them to demand the implementation of the reforms before elections. The people must refuse to play any part in elections whose result is already a clear Zanu PF landslide victory.
“During the briefing, Grace drew parallels between Mnangagwa and Mujuru, accusing the VP of plotting against the President. She accused Mnangagwa of holding a grudge against (Higher Education minister) Jonathan Moyo, arguing he has sought to have him arrested each time he is acting president,” a source said.
“The First Lady actually demanded that Mnangagwa should have been expelled instead of youths and war veterans’ leaders”.
Mnangagwa knows that Mujuru was not expelled from the party because she had done anything wrong other than being the bookie’s favourite to win the December 2014 contest to be Zanu PF’s second secretary. All the talk about her having a faction is plain nonsense. She had canvassed for support for her candidature, what was wrong with that! Mnangagwa, who too wanted the same post, had too canvassed for supporter with little success.
This time Mnangagwa is in pole position in the race to succeed Mugabe and Grace Mugabe, his main challenger, has failed to pause any serious challenge and hence the need to employ the same dirty tactics used to stop Mujuru winning the race – accuse Mnangagwa of factionalism, plotting to remove Mugabe from office, etc. Grace can yell, rant and rave until she turns all colours of the rainbow; Mnangagwa is NOT going to resign. He will dare Mugabe to fire him!
Booting Mujuru was easy, she is a simpleton who had been promoted way above her level of competence. She did not see the boot coming and, more significantly, she is too stupid to ever fight back. Mnangagwa is a totally different kettle of fish, he has traded the blows with Mugabe punch for punch and boot for boot. The only reason Mnangagwa has never gone for Mugabe’s jugular vein is simple – Mugabe, because of his advance age and ill health, on his death bed; why soil one’s hands. He has waited for 37 years to be president, he can wait for a few more months!
Grace is the one who is panicking; if Mugabe dies before she has consolidated her hold on power she and her G40 supporters will be hunted down like rabies infected dogs! If President Mugabe is having sleepless nights because he is fearful of a military coup then Grace is having sleepless nights fearful of him dropping died! He is mortal and not even the regular $3 million per trip Singapore health checks can make him immortal!
National People’s Party leader Joyce Mujuru continues to lose some of her founding members and right-hand personnel, nasty fall outs.
Long-time faithful and loyal party member Joyinani Mulilo this morning announced his departure from the party in a very damming resignation letter which declares Mujuru as undemocratic and a ZANU PF surrogate.
“You pretend to lead an opposition party but behind the scenes you work with the ruling party, Zanu Pf. You are a disgrace to change which everyone is longing for.”
Mai Mujuru may want to go back to Zanu PF by the back door, she can do so but she will be treated like a stray dog, at best!
Zanu PF is keen for next year's elections to go ahead with no democratic reform in place but the party is now seriously concerned that it projected landslide victory will be a short lived one if SADC leaders refuse to accept the result. Whilst Zanu PF wanted the elections to go ahead with no reforms doing so has eroded opposition credibility. No one has bought on to MDC's foolish notion of winning rigged elections.
If Mai Mujuru and her NPP can be seen as a serious opposition this would be the greatest favour she can do to Zanu PF for which the regime will reward her with the stray dog treatment if she pulled it off!
The G40 faction has failed to make inroad in its fight for Grace Mugabe to be Mugabe's successor; the Mnangagwa faction has proven to be a hell lot tougher to unseat than the Mujuru faction. President Mugabe, who is the power behind G40 without whom the faction would not even existed, knows that time is of the essence.
Mnangagwa can afford to wait for Mugabe to die, his advance age and ill health means he will not be around for much longer. Grace needs to seize the crown whilst Mugabe is still alive and consolidate her position and so the current position of having Mnangagwa still in pole position to succeed Mugabe does not suit her.
Poisoning Mnangagwa to hasten his departure off the stage has not worked. The cabinet reshuffle may well be President Mugabe and his wife, who is now nothing but a shrill shrew, last throw of the dice in their attempt to end Mnangagwa’s presidential bid! If Mugabe goes for the jugular and demote Mnangagwa the tyrant will have the toughest fight in his hands.
Firing Mnangagwa would be the equivalent of knocking an African bee-hive several times to make sure they know they are being attacked. Mnangagwa’s supporters in government, in security sectors, war veterans, etc. will all know that G40 has all but won the race for succeeding Mugabe and they will all be hunted down one by one. Mugabe will start to work flat out to ensure many of them do not win the party’s primary in the coming elections! Mnangagwa supporters know they will have to fight for their lives and fight they will.
Mugabe and his youth and women’s league pitted against Mnangagwa and his war veterans, security sector and most of the party’s big wigs. This is going to be an epic battle!
The only way to shuffle President Mugabe out of power is by making sure next year's elections are free, fair and credible. We must demand the implementation of the democratic reforms before elections.
It is madness to keep contesting elections we know are going to be rigged. MDC people admit, with no reforms Zanu PF will rig the vote, and yet they still want the flawed elections to go ahead because they have devised "Winning In Rigged Elections" (WIRE) strategies. They are not saying what these strategies are, they are top drawer secrets. Of course, this is a nonsense, this is like be asked to fight on the front line with no arms on the promise that the powerful and secret weapons will be issue at the front line. The truth is MDC have no WIRE strategies at all.
We want free, fair and credible elections, just like any other nation where they hold democratic elections. We should not allow ourselves be led astray by MDC with their nonsensical promise of winning rigged elections. After 37 years of rigged elections with the same Zanu PF landslide victory; we are being foolish to even listen to this MDC nonsense.
Mugabe has done nothing to address the number one problem for the nation – the economic meltdown. Instead of reducing the bloated cabinet and acknowledge that there is no money to pay for all the dead wood, it looks like he is going to increase the size of cabinet!
@ Reason Wafawarova
“The election result of 2008 led to lengthy negotiations that culminated in an inclusive government in 2009, led by President Mugabe, with Tsvangirai as Prime Minister, and Mr Arthur Mutambara and Ms Thoko Khupe as deputy Prime Ministers. It was a power-sharing agreement that lasted until elections in 2013,” you say.
So, you do not know why “the results of 2008 led to length negotiations that culminated in an inclusive government in 2009”? You had given the result as given the results of both the parliamentary and presidential vote in the paragraphs before.
“The run-off was a disputed process after Mr Tsvangirai belatedly announced his withdrawal from the race. The result saw him only garnering 9.3 percent of the vote, or 433 000 votes. President Mugabe had 85.5 percent of the vote, or 2 150 269 votes,” you told the reader.
“In the parliamentary race the MDC-Tsvangirai had a total of 1 041 176 votes translating to 100 seats, while Zanu-PF led the popular vote by 1 110 649 votes, although that only translated to 99 seats. The splinter MDC then led by Arthur Mutambara had 10 seats, while Zanu-PF renegade Jonathan Moyo won the Tsholotsho seat as an independent. He had at the time coalesced with the MDC-T and was its de facto candidate for that constituency.”
President Mugabe could have gone to form the new government. Indeed, he had started making the necessary preparatory work to do just that. He was told to stop because no one, not even SADC and AU, recognised the election as free, fair and credible. Mugabe was forced to go into the GNU because he had lost legitimacy.
Mugabe forced to sign the Global Political Agreement (GPA) which gave birth to GNU with MDC and, most important, in which it was agreed the GNU would implement a raft of democratic reforms designed to dismantle Zanu PF’s ability to rig elections.
If you are going to write about Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections and forget to say the results were rejected because Zanu PF blatantly rigged the vote by ordering a recount to deny Tsvangirai victory and force a runoff and then used wanton violence to force the electorate to vote for Mugabe. And then fail to underline that the primary task of the GNU was to implement the democratic reforms to stop Zanu PF rigging future elections. Why bother to write?
This whole article was a total waste of time! Of course, we all know why you wrote the piece – to please your paymasters in Zanu PF, they are the only ones who benefit from pedalling trash!
@ David Barber
“If citizens want to live in a working democracy, then every citizen has to take responsibility for protecting it – that is what democracy means,” you wrote.
“If not enough citizens are prepared to fight for a democracy, sooner or later they will end up in a dictatorship. It is inevitable.”
You can tell where the lion has been from those huge paw-prints! This is a master piece!
It is a great pity that you are not Zimbabwe’s minister of education (there a rat in the post, could tell from the urine stain trail). This is the kind of stuff that should be made compulsory reading and no student should be allowed to graduate until they can prove they understood the contents and likewise no adult granted the right to vote!
At present, we have PhD graduates – some after 3-months study – who cannot write a single sentence without making a spelling and/or gramma mistake. Voters who have been brainwashed into voting for the worst leaders one can ever imagine!
I would add to following to your insightful statement.
If citizens want to live in a working democracy, then every citizen has to take responsibility for understanding what democracy is and how it works. It is futile to wish for all the freedoms and rights democracy brings and fail to understand these benefits must be earned. Democracy is like a mango tree it must planted, nurtured, watered and protected for years whilst it grows before it is finally old enough to bear fruit. Even then, it still requires looking after if it is to continue to bear fruit. That is what democracy means.
In the long run, a nation gets the government it deserves. After 37 years, we in Zimbabwe deserve this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship complete with its entourage of corrupt and incompetent opposition parties.
The BVR registration programme started in September, but Mwenezi villagers did not participate due to poor mobilisation. ZEC Masvingo provincial election officer Mr Zex Pudurai confirmed the mobilisation programme in Mwenezi which started last Thursday.
"We have launched a voter education campaign which started on Thursday in Mwenezi where officials from ZEC are using different forms of educating people on the importance of voter registration. These officials are using different forms which include door to door campaign, group voter education, going to gatherings, road shows or even in buses, they are going where people are so that the word would reach everybody," he said.
There is no doubt that when the time comes, ZEC will announce that there are 5 million plus voters on the voters' roll. Who is to say otherwise given that no one will ever verify the roll.
The regime failed to produce a verifiable voters' roll in 2013 and there is no doubt the regime has no intention of producing a verifiable voters' roll for 2018 elections.
Happyton Bonyongwe, as CIO, was one of the most powerful person in the land. Zimbabwe is a Police State and the CIO is the core and most feared component of this Police State. We should also remember that President Mugabe is a control freak who been spying everybody who is anybody; three or more spies, who do not know each other, spying the same individual; and then spies spying on spies.
Lately President Mugabe has clearly become paranoid about his security, he has been "sleeping with one eye open", his wife said. Promoting his security boss so he has absolutely nothing to do with state security is a classical Mugabe manoeuvre. When Nyarota uncovered the Willlowvale motor scandal he was thanked for a job well done by being promoted from Chronicle Editor to supervising the office cleaners!
As CIO boss Bonyongwe knew the going on in the very lucrative grand diamond looting in the country and he took his cut. Minister of Justice has no business nosing around in this black market and all links with the dealers must seize and so will be the secretive payments. Happyton will not be so happy when it dawns on him that his will not be minister after the next reshuffle due in less than a year from now following fresh elections. Our former CIO boss has just taken early retirement! Bonyongwe has just been shafted big time!
@ Mliswa
A lot of what you are saying is true but only to a point.
"This is why I always say that the divisions in ZANU PF will be disastrous for the country. when the elephants fight, the grass will suffer," you say, for example.
The truth is Zanu PF has not always been divided and yet the mismanagement, corruption and murderous tyranny was the order of the day even back then. Zanu PF has always been a party of murderous thugs whose insatiable greed for absolute power and wealth turned them into cold hearted monsters. Even now with millions of our people living in abject poverty and the country in danger of total collapse the selfish morons are spending millions of luxury cars, mansions, all manner of expensive vote rigging schemes to ensure they retain power at all cost, etc.
"When some of us defend ED, as we defended mai Mujuru, we are not defending the person but the office!!! It is about the structural integrity of the state, it is about respecting national institutions and National Offices," you say.
The dignity of the institution is like a brand name, it takes years of proven track record to establish but a single day to destroy. President Mugabe and his corrupt and murderous cronies have completely destroyed Zimbabwe's State institutions we have to rebuild them from scratch and the rebuilding cannot even start with the same thugs in office much less expect them to do the work.
Only an idiot like you Themba would "defend" E D Mnangagwa and Mai Mujuru; these are thugs with a lot to answer for what has happened in the country these 37 years. The only institution they should be in, for the good of the nation, is prison! You should be there too, your meteoric rise in gangster party like Zanu PF to say nothing of your amassed wealth was not for your good looks or good deeds!
The real demotion for Mnangagwa would have been if he was booted out of the VP post and thus taking him off his pole position to be Mugabe's successor. Ministerial post in President Mugabe's Zimbabwe where MPs and cabinet ministers have no power or authority to do anything are just fancy titles. Mugabe is a control freak, MPs and cabinet members "vakadzi vaMugabe" (are Mugabe's subservient concubines) as Margaret Dongo once said.
President Mugabe booted out Joice Mujuru when she became a threat to his resolve to retain the presidency and then pass it on to his wife. Booting out Mnangagwa has clearly proven to be a bridge too far even for him!
President Mugabe swears in the new ministers.
These people are wasting our time and resources. Zimbabwe is right on the edge of the abyss and these new ministers are not going to do anything to anything to change course, it is going to be business as usual with this lot because they have not seen the danger and never will!
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