I stayed late to
listen to the 04.30 am UK time Thursday 11 January 2018 BBC HardTalk interview
of Professor Jonathan Moyo. To say I was very, very, disappointed is an
understatement, I used it complete with the superlatives only because there no
other way to express my feeling – the limitations are with the language.
HardTalk, as the name
of the programme implies, is supposed to ask the hard question and get to the
heart of the matter. I therefore expected Zaniah Badawi, the BBC interviewer,
to drive home the point that Zimbabwe’s 15 th November 2017 military coup had
become a necessary evil because there was no other way of removing then
President Robert Mugabe from power. Here are some of the hard questions she
should have asked:
Professor Moyo, are
you denying that President Mugabe had failed to hold free, fair and credible
elections in all his 37 years in power?
Is it not true that
the 15 November coup was the second after the de facto coup staged in 2008 to
stop Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC party taking power after Mugabe and Zanu PF
was defeated in the March vote?
Professor Moyo and
former President Mugabe talk of rule of law and constitutionalism only when it
suits you but ignore it to pursue your no regime change agenda. SADC forced
Mugabe and Zanu PF to go into the 2008 to 2013 GNU on the understanding
Zimbabwe will implement democratic reforms designed to restore the ordinary
Zimbabweans’ freedoms and basic human rights including the right to free and
fair elections.
Sadly, not even one of
these reforms were implemented. It was President Mugabe and his Zanu PF party
that has systematically eroded the people’s freedoms and rights since
independence and now the regime is undermining all efforts to restore them.
You, yourself, Professor Moyo has even publicly boasted that “You can’t expect us to reform ourselves out of
power!” Are you saying Zanu PF has the right to rig elections, stage
coups, etc. to stay in power?
So, you and your G40
friends have seen nothing wrong with vote rigging and military coup per se, the
only reason you are condemning the 15 November 2017 coup is because you were
the victims?
Professor Jonathan
Moyo is “one of the most hated man in Zimbabwe”, Ms Badawi said in her
introduction but, as the interviewee, he was as slippery as a catfish, she soon
learned. She tried to remind Moyo that Mugabe’s legacy was the 90% mass
unemployment, abject poverty that has ¾ of the people living on US$ 5.00 or
less a day, etc. He dismissed that as a “challenge” not a legacy!
According to Oxford
dictionary a legacy “is a gift left in a will; something handed down by a
predecessor”. So, after 37 years of corrupt, vote rigging, staged coups and
murderous oppression Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs are handing today’s
generation an impoverished nation whose economy is in total meltdown after
decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption ruled by lawless thugs.
Most of the interview
was taken up by Moyo giving details of how he and his colleague, Saviour
Kasukuwere escaped under the very nose of Chiwenga’s armed hit-squard!
Professor Moyo went
town about the regime now in Harare being “illegal led by thugs”, of course it
is illegal and Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and the rest are thugs but then so was the
Mugabe regime. Zanu PF was a party of lawless and ruthless thugs before the
slip, this is a characterisation the splinter factions will take with them
wherever they go. It saves the pot’s purpose to call the pan black and so it
will call the pan black.
Letting Jonathan Moyo
escape is the biggest blunder the Mnangagwa faction has ever made because he
knows a lot of dirty stuff about Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and many, many others in
the regime’s coup-plotters cabinet! Moyo is on the run for his life from his erstwhile
for thugs, he knows that they are ruthless and there will not be kissing and
making up if they catch him. His mission is to do everything in his power to
make life as uncomfortable for them as he can; he will be leaking a lot of
their dirty past, of that we can be certain.
13 comments:
“The constitution of the country has been subverted and there has to be a return to constitutionalism.”
Moyo said the army acted unconstitutionally when it briefly took power from the government in November.
“The army deployed itself in Zimbabwe when the constitution says only the president can deploy it,” said Moyo.
There is no question that the coup was illegal, that goes without saying. What Moyo has conveniently overlooked here is that Mugabe’s own regime was illegal because he rigged the vote to subvert the people’s democratic will. Zanu PF has never held free, fair and credible elections and in 2008 the regime even staged a coup to stop Tsvangirai and MDC getting into government.
The reason why many Zimbabweans celebrated the November 2017 coup is simple; they had tried all the legal and peaceful means to remove Mugabe and failed and they were just glad to see him removed at last, or be it by force!
Zimbabwe was in a desperate situation, stuck with a vote rigging and murderous tyrant. Desperate situation often call for desperate measures, the coup was a desperate measure!
@ Grace Kwinjeh
“These steps include showing without any reasonable doubt that the war against corruption is not just a cruel ploy to punish and subdue G-40 enemies, consequently, the president has to bite the bullet and offload himself of the ‘fat Alberts’, fat cats whose lips are dripping with fine oils in a land of hunger and lack. The interim President can only pull the rug from under the opposition’s feet by immediately starting ‘Operation restore legitimacy’, a brave step forward that will bury forever any voice of dissent,” you advise.
Sound advice but, sadly, wasted on President Mnangagwa for three reasons:
1) Jonathan Moyo knows a lot of dirty stuff that President Mnangagwa, VP Chiwenga and many in the regime have done including stuff of corruption and vote rigging that would undo everything the regime tries to do to create the impression the leaders are honest to goodness and decent the people can trust.
2) The war on corruption is to subdue G40 members and nothing more. If Mnangagwa was to go after the “fat Alberts” in his Lacoste faction then there will be no one left because everyone in Zanu PF is corrupt including Chiwenga and Mnangagwa themselves.
3) The greatest single act that President Mnangagwa knows he must perform to restore legitimacy is to hold free, fair and credible elections. He does not have the time to implement all the reforms necessary he would not do it because he knows that Zanu PF will lose. Chiwenga and others will tell him in no uncertain terms “Chef, mafarisa!”
Mnangagwa and company won the decisive battle of Zanu PF factional war, they are in power, but they must now prepare for the gorilla hit-and-run attacks from G40, especially Jonathan Moyo.
“You an’t seen nothing yet!” Moyo warned in one of his recent twitters. That is not an empty threat!
@ Sarah
Are you sure you want Jonathan Moyo to tell the whole world about what Mnangagwa and Chiwenga have been doing? "Shoko harivhikwi!" There is no shield against the truth!
BBC HardTalk gave Professor Jonathan Moyo a chance to boast at how he escaped from Chiwenga's thugs and thus showing the level of chaos that accompanied the whole “operation restore legacy’, as the coup is now called. The public got the full dose of the confusion amongst the coup plotter with the first announcement of the coup.
Major General Moyo, now Minister of Foreign Affairs, announced on ZTV in the small hours of the morning that the military had taken over control of all strategic state institutions and President Mugabe was under house arrest but "this was not a coup", he insisted. No doubt the coup plotters had laboured on this point with some threatening to pull out unless this was not agreed. If the coup had failed, one can just imagine this lot arguing this was not coup in a court of law and being asked to say what it was!
Thank God reality and the truth is not subject to the whim of idiotic Zimbabwe Defence Forces thugs. What is worrying is that power and opportunity to stage such a life and death act as a coup was even entrusted to such empty heads!
President Mugabe is a control freak who surrounded himself with some of the most incompetent and corrupt simpletons he could find in the party, government, Army, etc. Margaret Dongo once called these Zanu PF leaders “vakadzi vaMugabe” (Mugabe’s subservient concubines) is sheer frustration at the easy with which he manipulated them and they were all under his spell and incapable of standing up to him even when the tyrant was bang out of order. The coup generals were clearly a bunch of indecisive simpletons who could not make up their minds on even a serious a matter as a coup.
Let Professor Jonathan Moyo escape under their noses is the biggest blunder the coup plotters have ever made. Lacoste faction won the factional war and are now in power but there is no doubt that Moyo will make their life hell. The man knows a lot of dirty on Mnangagwa and his friends and he is not one to shy away from leaking the dirty at every opportune moment to cause the greatest political damage to his enemies.
@ E Moyo
What makes you think Tsvangirai did not keep his PM limo?
Tsvangirai and his MDC friends got the limos, mansions, farms, etc. as a bribe so they will forget implementing the reforms. These guys sold-out. Judas Iscariot gave back the 30 pieces of silver and hanged himself for betraying Jesus. These MDC guys betrayed the nation and instead of asking them to give the bribes to the poor and hang themselves you want them to not only keep their bribes but also want the victims to give the traitors bonuses. How idiotic is that!
@ Zimbabweans
The one thing Professor Moyo has said that sticks out like a tennis ball size boil on the tip of the nose is that Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and the rest of the coup-plotters clan regime are thugs. We have some people blubbering on and on about the "new dispensation" and how we should all be giving them "a chance to prove themselves". Other than the dictatorship removing Mugabe and banishing all party regalia with his image and appointing Mnangagwa and regalia with his face is selling like hot cakes; nothing else has changed. Zanu PF is still a party of thugs and it is business as usual; and that is the message Moyo had for us all!
After 38 years of blundering from pillar to post because we had corrupt, incompetent and murderous thugs for national leaders one would think we have learned the lesson. Of course, it is naive and stupid to think that Mnangagwa and Chiwenga are no longer the corrupt and vote rigging thugs of yesteryear just because they now wear shirts with Mnangagwa and not Mugabe's face!
"Cry the beloved country, Zimbabwe!" You can say that again. It is bad enough that a few people should be so naive and stupid to be fooled by the change of a shirt but when the majority of people fall for the same simple trick there is no hope for such a nation. None!
In a country where most hospitals do not have even the most basic drugs much less an ambulance it is nonsensical that the government should have the money to buy Chiefs twin cab trucks! President Mnangagwa knows that Zanu PF has retained power by rigging elections and part and parcel of this process is using a carrot for the Chief who will then use a large stick to coerce the povo to attend party rallies and vote for Zanu PF.
Whilst President Mnangagwa would like to be seen at least as breaking away from the Mugabe modus operandi of vote rigging and have free and fair elections, he also knows that if he lost the support of such people as Chiefs now this could be the slippery road. My guess is Mnangagwa will rig the elections but will be a lot more subtle than Mugabe, he will give the Chiefs cars but try hard to hide the evidence!
Mugabe promised the Chiefs new cars to buy their loyalty to the party, the Chiefs and the other traditional leaders are the ones who have threatened the people with expulsion from their homes if Zanu Pf lost the elections. Mnangagwa knows only too well how this has been very effective in frog marching the people, especially rural people, to attending Zanu PF rallies and to vote for the party. He is giving away the cars for the same reason, vote buying.
Zanu PF has no intention of holding free, fair and credible elections. President Mnangagwa keep saying the elections will be free and fair and yet continues to do all the things the party has always done to buy votes or intimidate the voters to vote for the party.
People like Ambassador Damme are setting the democratic standard so low that it is impossible to see how we can ever hold free and fair elections. Rugeje is not the only one who has said Zanu PF will be using its usual dirty vote rigging tricks. President Mnangagwa has dished out 52 new twin cab Isuzu trucks to some of the Chiefs with the balance to be distributed by March. The Chiefs get the carrot and the ordinary people will get the stick.
Rugeje is doing exactly what President Mnangagwa appointed him to do, whip the people into line! He will be working with the Chiefs to deliver the votes. There is no doubt that Rugeje will be called and asked to carry on with his excellent work only that he should talk peace and act war.
@ Chikotikoti
If we can make sure that the reforms are implemented and elections are free, fair and credible that will be a excellent starting point for Zimbabwe and it does not matter who wins the elections then, the important thing is we would have opened the door to free and fair elections in future too. The reason why President Mnangagwa will not implement any reforms now, even if he was cocksure of winning the elections, which he is not but even if he was, is because he knows that once the gene is out of the bag he will find it hard to put it back. Once the reforms are implemented it will be hard to undo the changes.
@ Lloyd Msipa
Let us make this very clear from the outset, there is no legal basis for postponing elections and in your article you have not offered any such basis. The constitution is very clear that there must be regular elections and we would be most unwise to set a dangerous precedence of postponing elections because future regimes will do the same for no better reason than that they fear losing the vote.
“What good will it do us as a country to rush into an election that may result in a disputed outcome considering the abnormalities that face Zimbabwe,” you have argued.
“Will it not be prudent for the political parties, civic groups and the generality of Zimbabweans to work out and agree on a national road map in the national interest. The reality of Zimbabwe economically and politically doesn’t speak of a country that is ready for elections.”
Whatever these “abnormalities” are you talking should have been fixed by the government of the day of the last five years the very fact that there are there is proof of the last government’s failure and thus the need for elections to get a competent government.
I agree that holding elections without first implementing the democratic reforms designed to stop vote rigging is bound to produce disputed results. Postponing elections will not solve anything if the same Zanu PF and MDC people who failed to implement even one reform during the last GNU are going to be in power.
If you think you will ever get Zanu PF and MDC to postpone elections and get them to step down you are wasting your time.
The elections must go ahead as planned; if Zanu PF does not implement the reforms necessary for free and fair elections then the people of Zimbabwe must not take part in the flawed and illegal elections and demand that they are declared null and void. This will form a legal basis for creating an interim administration similar to the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Present Mnangagwa can spare the nation the expense of holding another meaningless election by announcing that his party has failed to carry out its set task of holding free and fair elections.
Whatever happens, Zimbabwe must emerge out of the coming elections knowing the reforms were implemented or will be implemented by an interim administration - a clear and viable roadmap forward - and not just another political fudge! Postponing the elections with no clear roadmap to ensure all the democratic reforms will be implemented is just another waste of time.
@ E Cross
The tragedy is that Mugabe’s ruinous reign of death and destruction could and should have been brought to an end in 2008 or 2013 at the very latest if MDC leaders had not been so hopelessly corrupt and incompetent. MP Cross has never given the people of Zimbabwe a satisfactory answer to the question: why did MDC fail to get even one democratic reform implemented in the five years of the GNU?
“Politically-connected people drive around in luxury cars that would turn heads in London or New York. A month ago, one of Mugabe’s sons was seen in Bulawayo driving a brand-new Rolls Royce convertible with friends — drinking in public with radio blaring out music. He had never worked in his life. The image of former first lady Grace Mugabe spending US$150 000 in cash on a single visit to a store in a major city — screaming obscenities at a journalist who tried to capture the scene on camera, will not be forgotten,” you tell us.
The nation would have been spared such loses if MDC had implemented the reforms!
You have not said who what tasks the administration will be asked to perform in the interim period, who will be constitute that administration, who will supervise the said administration, etc. You clearly have not thought this one through because if you did you would have realised that if the SADC supervised GNU accomplished nothing what chance will a GNU in which Zanu PF is boss have of doing anything useful.
If we are going to have a GNU then it must be because Zanu PF failed to deliver free and fair elections as happened in 2008!
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