"When I was in the military I was under (the) ministry of defence, which is part of government and who says military should never be politicians," new Minister of Agriculture and Lands and former Air Marshall, Perrance Shiri, told reporters after he was sworn-in.
"I am
Zimbabwean, I have got every right to participate in the country's
politics," he said.
Yes,
Minister Shiri, you are a Zimbabwean and you have every right to participate in
the country’s
politics but not to abuse your position for selfish gain?
Can
you deny that you have been a member of the notorious Joint Operations Command
(JOC), the Junta comprising yourself, other top brass members of the security
services and headed by former President Mugabe and assisted by now President
Emmerson Mnangagwa. In being a member of the Junta you have played your part in
the planning or/and execution of treasonous acts of politically motivated vote
rigging and acts of violence including murder for sole purpose of establishing
and retaining the de facto one-party, Zanu PF, dictatorship. You have also
taken part in the wholesale looting of the nation’s wealth for selfish gain and to bankroll the
dictatorship’s no-regime-change
mantra.
Minister
Shiri, we both know that the coup that toppled Robert Mugabe was
unconstitutional and therefore an act of high treason. What did you know of the
coup? You can be certain of one thing; the truth, the whole truth and nothing but
the truth, will come out one of these fine days!
As Air Marshal, you were
duty bound to act in a none-partisan manner and yet you have not done so selfish
reasons of securing your own position in the Zanu PF ruling elite. As a member
of the Zanu PF ruling elite you have lived a life of opulent luxury and comfort
when the overwhelming majority wallowed in abject poverty and heart breaking
misery.
Do you know that 90% of the people are unemployed and 72.3% live
on US$1.00 or less a day? Zimbabwe now has the singular honour of being the
poorest nation in Africa.
Do you know that opulent excessed of the few ruling elite is the
root cause of the abject poverty of the majority? This situation is socially,
morally and politically reprehensible and cannot be allowed to continue.
You, Minister, and your friends in the Zanu PF dictatorship have
rigged past elections to keep yourselves, your families and cronies in power for
selfish reasons. This must stop if we are ever going to end the misery of
poverty this political system has condemned the majority of our people.
The country is schedule to hold parliamentary and presidential
elections next year and there must be no question about the elections being
anything other than free, fair and credible.
The people’s right to free and election is sacrosanct, Zanu PF has
usurped that right; it must be restored by implementing all the democratic
reforms agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement. Zimbabwe is in this
political and economic mess today because the nation has been stuck with an
incompetent and corrupt regime.
The nation could to remove Zanu PF from office these last 37 years
because the party rigged the vote. You, Minister Shiri have played your part in
the vote rigging.
In the next elections, it is the people of Zimbabwe in a free,
fair and credible elections who will decide who will rule the country. The
demand for free, fair and credible elections is not negotiable!
Let me be perfectly blunt with you, Minister Shiri; it is clearly necessary
to be blunt because the decades of unearned and excessive luxuries have
atrophied your brain, you cannot see what is blatantly obvious - that the Zanu
PF dictatorship has failed and it must be completely dismantled. Your right to
be Minister, so you can continue to loot, is the antithesis the rights of millions
of povo to free elections and right to life itself!
9 comments:
It is true that the opposition are in disarray but that was not always the case. In 20013 and even more so in 2008 the people voted for MDC in droves and yet MDC still lost those elections. Zanu PF has a well-funded vote rigging machinery and with no meaningful reforms the party will rig next year's elections just as easily as it has rigged past elections.
Indeed Zanu PF is already rigging next year's elections. There is no freedom of expression and free media. Zanu Pf is getting billions of dollars from the looting in Marange and other places to bankroll its vote rigging activities. The opposition are stone broke! There is no way ZEC is going to register 7 million genuine new voters from scratch and produce a verified voters' roll in the time left before the next elections. With no verified voters' roll the sky is the limit to the number of vote rigging dirty tricks Zanu PF can employ to ensure a landslide victory.
We demand free, fair and credible elections and that is impossible to deliver without implementing the democratic reforms! It does not matter what Zanu PF say, without reforms next year's elections will never ever be free, fair and credible! That is a fact!
This is the great tragedy of Zimbabwe, even after 37 years of leisure and luxury contrasted by the heart breaking misery of of millions, people like Perrance Shiri still believe that they have the right to continue the looting and deny everyone else their human dignity and hope.
The nation risked life, limb and treasure, many lost their very lives, for freedom, human rights and independence. All we accomplished on 18 April 1980 was remove the white colonial oppressors but only to inherit new corrupt, incompetent and even more ruthless oppressors.
How ironic that people like Robert Mugabe, Perrance Shiri, Emmerson Mnangagwa and the rest of the Zanu PF thugs still consider themselves the nation’s liberators. Whilst it is true that they were are the ones who carried the guns and carried the bigger burden in the struggle it must be noted that they were not the only ones and that even those who played a smaller role it was all very significant. The stone sitting at the peak of the highest mountain must never consider itself more important than those at the base because without the base there will be no peak.
The Zanu PF thugs have long turned from liberators into mercenaries and the price they have demand from the people has been freedom, liberty, everything of value including their very lives. Even today with millions of ordinary Zimbabweans wallowing in abject poverty the mercenaries still demand the pound of flesh! Enough is enough the madness has gone on for far too long.
Yes, Perrance Shiri you have every right to be minister but only in a government elected by the people of Zimbabwe in a free, fair and credible elections. The people of Zimbabwe are in this economic and political mess because they were denied a meaningful vote and their ticket out is by restoring that free vote.
Next elections must be free, fair and credible and no stone will be left unturned to make sure the results of another sham elections are declared null and void!
@ Mapondera
It was the Junta that impose created and retain the Zanu PF dictatorship all these last 37 years. The Junta was responsible for all the gross mismanagement and rampant corruption that has destroyed the country’s economy whilst the Junta members, their families and cronies have all grown filthy rich. The people have failed to remove Mugabe from power all these years because the Junta masterminded the political oppression and the vote rigging.
“Pleaser leave Minister Perence Shiri alone. Junta needs respect for the new dispensation they have brought to Zimbabweans. Unlawful or lawful it does not matter for now. JUNTA woyee. Lets move forward and change the fortunes of our beloved country. Some are people are retrogressive and will forever want to dwell in the past. Bygone are bygone. Pamberi naMnangangwa nemasoja avo,” you say.
What new dispensation has the Junta brought? All they did was remove an old dictator they had imposed all these years and replace him with another dictator. The Zanu PF dictatorship itself has not change one iota, the mismanagement, corruption, vote rigging, etc. will remain. So all talk of the country moving forward is just wishful thinking.
The only way Zimbabwe is ever going to move forward is for the country to implement the democratic reforms designed to end the dictatorship’s vote rigging and political oppression and replace it with a healthy democratic system of government. Only a democratic government will ever address the mismanagement and corruption.
It is the naïve and gullible people like you my friend who have dragged the nation into this mess because you have been easily fooled by Mugabe’s promises of “Gutsa ruzhinji!” (Mass prosperity!) ZimAsset and its 2.2 million jobs, etc. Promises the regime has never fulfilled but promises you have swallowed hook, line and sinker every time because you were too foolish to see change were there was no change.
We need to end the corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship, the system, and not just replace one dictator for another. We need to implement all the 2008 democratic reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections! If you cannot get your head round that then you will do the nation a great favour by shutting up!
Such opulence in the midst of abject poverty is obscene particularly when it was the latter who paid for it directly or indirectly!
Looking at Chiwenga’s mansion, Kasukuwere’s mansion, Mugabe’s mansion, Chihuri’s mansion and even MDC leaders like Tsvangirai’s mansion, Mwonzora’s mansion, etc. only serve to underline just how corrupt Zimbabwe’s leaders had become. Something must be done to recover some of the looted wealth and spend it on helping the millions who are today living in heart breaking poverty.
@ Nomazulu
The ideal outcome of the Zanu PF factional war was for the two sides to fight and destroy each other completely. It is most unfortunate that the factional war stopped when the Lacoste faction is still strong enough to regroup and still cause a lot of mischief. Worse still, some people in the eager to see the back of Robert Mugabe have prop up the Lacoste faction by publicly praising the coup. There is no legal justification for the coup, it is illegal and, by extension, so is the Mnangagwa administration.
The weaker the Zanu PF faction emerging from the factional war the easier it would have been for us, the ordinary Zimbabweans, to pressure it into accepting meaningful democratic reforms. As things stand Zanu PF will get a massive good-will vote next year from people who still fail to see that it was not just the removal of the dictator Mugabe that we wanted but the dismantling of the dictatorship itself. So, with the massive good-will vote, it may not be necessary for Zanu PF to blatantly rig the vote and thus get away with the vote rigging.
I can see why the likes of Dr Nkosana Moyo was eager to join Mnangagwa’s administration, his chance of winning next year’s elections are worse now than before the coup.
The prospect of another five years of this corrupt and oppressive Zanu PF rule is making me sick!
@Slungish
What are you wittering about? If you have nothing but contempt for the Shonas then why should you care whether they are untied of not? Patrick has just said we should bury the dead but not the truth. The truth about all the looting and the political murders including the Gukurahundi massacre must be thoroughly investigated and those responsible punished. How is that "wasting energy"? You are just lashing out at anyone who is Shona without even listening to what he or she has said. Your hatred of the Shona has blinded you to reason. You are the kind of moron that can drag a nation into a totally pointless tribal war. The people of Zimbabwe have suffered greatly in the last 37 years, we have a task and a half to drag the nation out of this hell-hole and the last thing they want is to be suck into a foolish tribal conflict.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa is moving to severely alter Robert Mugabe’s controversial Indigenisation Act which blocked foreigners from investing unless they cede 51% of their total shareholding.
Analysts had for years called for this Act to be repealed.
This was one stupid act that should have never ever been passed.
Decades of isolation by international lenders coupled by reluctance to reign in on excessive spending by Robert Mugabe’s government had led to a complete collapse of the economy.
Zimbabwe has no currency of its own and has resorted to issuing treasury bills to finance government activities, according to the central bank as at June 30, $2,5 billion treasury bills were in stock. Last year, government accumulated a current account deficit of $ 55,8 million.
Chinamasa told reporters on Wednesday, after signing an agreement for a $153 million Chinese loan to upgrade Zimbabwe’s main airport that government was facing difficulties in paying up its debts, even those owed to China.
Whatever the Chinese give away they will be getting it back 100 if not 1000 fold this is why they have hit the ground running when it comes to propping up this Zanu PF regime. China is the one country that has profited greatly by having Zanu PF in power all these last 37 years and hence her primary objective is to make sure that there is no regime change in Zimbabwe. As soon as Zanu PF's rule is secured China will be back to making the same extortionist demands forcing Zanu PF to sell the nation's resources at give up prices for China's benefit at our own expense. Whilst other nation have told President Mnangagwa they want to see democratic change in Zimbabwe China is going out of its way to underline that it does not care if next year's elections are rigged. Indeed, China has help Zanu PF rig elections in the past and they will be working very closely with Zanu PF officials right now on how to rig next year's election. Whatever economic recovery the Chinese bring it will be at the cost of retaining the Zanu PF dictatorship in power - that is too high a price because the country's long time economic and political interests are best addressed after we have dismantled the Zanu PF dictatorship. Chinese financial assistance is nothing but a pain killer to Zimbabwe's problem of bad governance, what we want is a cure - implementing the reforms to dismantle the dictatorship.
The UK and the rest of the West have lost a lot of economic ground to the Chinese in Africa and they will be tempted to ditch demands for democratic reforms and open up trade. Zimbabwe's economic recovery will depend on the country biting the bullet and implement the democratic reforms. Nothing of any substance will ever be accomplished as long as we have this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship in power.
It is up to us, ordinary Zimbabweans, to make sure countries like UK, USA and other Western countries do not give up on democratic reforms. And by the same token, it will be up to us to make sure nations like Chinese know we are aware they have propped up the Zanu PF dictatorship all these last 37 years and they are already spending billions of dollars to ensure there are no reforms and the Zanu PF dictatorship remain in power at all cost.
Thanks to China's past influence Zanu PF has enjoyed absolute power these last 37 years at the price to the nation of 90% unemployment rate, 72.3% living on US$ 1.00 or less a day, etc. This cannot go on and if China thinks we are going to sit back whilst this madness continues then it has something coming!
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