"ED is playing CHESS and Chamisa is playing DAFT," says Gara - ED has his Achilles heel too!

“Rine manyanga hariputirwi!” (No matter how well one tries to hide the truth, it will always come out!) so goes the Shona adage. Ever since the last November coup President Mnangagwa has tried so hard to portray himself and his Junta regime as civilised and law abiding individual a far cry of the corrupt, vote rigging and murderous thugs of the Mugabe days!

In an effort to prove why President Mnangagwa and his Junta are going to win this year’s election Noble Tawanda Gara, one of the regime’s apologist has reveal some juicy behind the scene details ED and the regime. The details show ED is a very cunning and calculating leader but, most important of all, one no one in their right mind would trust!

“The scintillating and "seamless" pace at which ED Mnangagwa carried out two important events in our country within the last five years. First it was the 2013 elections which ED won for ZANU-PF with a landslide. Second was the 2017 calamitous and epochal removal of Robert Mugabe from office. These two events are important because:” wrote Gara in his recent article in Bulawayo 24.

“ - They show ED operating unfettered for the first time as he was given carte blanche by Mugabe to run the 2013 elections.

“ - They also show how effectively and dramatically ED can pull a situation "out of the fire".”

The 2013 elections were held with no democratic reforms in place and therefore they were not free and fair by any stretch of imagination. Zanu PF rigged those elections and Gara is reminding us ED played the leading role in rigging those elections.

It is not that Zanu PF leaders do not know that the party has been rigging elections, they do and has the reason they have been resisting demands to implement the reforms and keep the carte blanche powers. Candid Zanu PF leaders like Professor Jonathan Moyo have admit they are not going to implement the reforms purely out of self-preservation.

“You can’t expect us to reform ourselves out of power,” Professor Jonathan Moyo said. Those were the happier days when he enjoyed the sweetness of absolute power as one of the Zanu PF bigwigs. Today he is one of G40 faction members who were booted out of the party and with a bounty on his head dead or alive!

The reasons why President Mnangagwa was quick off the mark in promising free and fair election and precisely because he knew Zanu PF was notorious for rigging election. He wanted to reassure the people of Zimbabwe and whole world that his “new dispensation” regime was poles-apart from that of Mugabe – he will deliver the one thing Mugabe has failed to deliver “free, fair and credible elections”.  

In his clumsy effort to prove that ED will delivery another Zanu PF victory this year, Gara has reminded us all ED use of “carte blanche” powers to rig to deliver a landslide victory for the party in the 2013 elections. Since not even one reform was implemented since then, there is no doubt that he will do the same again in this year’s elections.

“Eddie Cross suggests that Mugabe triggered his own demise by firing Mnangagwa and while I concur with this, it is by far not the full story! The reality is that ED and his team anticipated, expected and indeed manoeuvred Mugabe to fire him,” continued Gara.

“Having a comprehensive psychological profile of both Grace and Bob, they goaded the woman into overdrive through innocuous yet irritating little rumours attributed to ED---the type of rumours that drove Grace over the edge---to self-destruct!

“Before ED and his team could take the quantum leap of moving the whole army against Bob, they needed Bob to cross a certain line---firing a long-time confidante and the highest ranking deputy in the party was that line.

“My whole argument is that Robert Mugabe and his wife were driven to go exactly where ED and his team wanted them; the masses also went where they were bid (18 November street protest) and they did so happily.

“ED's modus operandi is quite simple---he goes with the flow---he follows the path of least resistance but at the end of it all, he knows how to manipulate events and personalities to his full advantage—always ending up on top of the situation.”

There are a few of us who warned of the folly of ordinary Zimbabweans being sucked into Zanu PF’s factional war. The people’s objective is to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship and the danger with siding with either faction is that it will welcome the support so far as it helps it defeat the other faction and as soon as that is done will move against the people to preserve the dictatorship. And that is exactly what has happened!

“Eddie Cross, who, though in the opposition, quite admires ED's political prowess and with good reason, also gives the analogy of how a goat was devoured by a crocodile. He says the goat had drunk his fill and had just turned his back on the river, quite confident that he was walking away from danger---at that complacent moment the crocodile struck its fatal blow,” explained Gara.

“On that Super Sunday, Grace Mugabe was also super confident that she had got rid of ED and yet that was her last moment in power!”

ED and the Junta have devoured the people’s dreams of ending the dictatorship in a similar manner, Gara did not need to rub that in!

“Juxtapose these facts to the on-going electoral tussle and I am compelled to make the following conclusions:” he boasted in his conclusion.

“1) ED is quite sure that he will win the elections and all his play at the moment is to pacify the international community and undercut any post-electoral protestations by the opposition---in this regard he is playing a game of CHESS while Chamisa is playing a game of DRAFT(or is that DAFT?)---not the same game!

“2) ED knows that he is not a great orator and his strength is tangible deliverables of which his trump card would be the economy----and he has been obsessing with that to the extent that the opposition do not see his footprints in campaigns---in view of this I predict that the economy will make a sudden and momentous recovery wiping out especially the shortage of currency almost overnight---ALL THIS WILL HAPPEN BEFORE ELECTIONS. We might even have the Zimdollar in circulation by election time!”

On the first point Gara is right, ED is playing a game of CHESS and Chamisa is playing DAFT. What could be more daft than insisting in taking part in the elections you have been warned, repeatedly by SADC, the Americans, etc., are flawed, so flawed the “elections are done” months before the ballots are cast!

However, on the economy Gara could not be more wrong; there will be no “sudden and momentous economic recovery”.

ED’s “Zimbabwe is open for business!” clarion call has failed to attract the flood of investors he expected. President Mnangagwa made the call as Dr Jekyll, whilst trying to hide the real ED, the mean, corrupt, vote rigging and manipulative Mr Hyde. It was not only Gara, as reveal here, would saw Mr Hyde behind the Dr Jekyll façade; many others did notably the shrewd foreign investors!

There has not been a flood of foreign investors into Zimbabwe because investors do not do business with cunning, manipulative and lawless thugs.

Ever if President Mnangagwa and his Junta should manage to hoodwink the international community, especially SADC, to turn a blind to another Zanu PF rigged elections, the regime still has the problem of the serious economic meltdown. Mugabe rigged the 2013 election but his troubles never went away because he could not rig the economic recovery; Mnangagwa will face the same nightmare only worse because the level of poverty is much worse now.

ED’s Achilles’ heel is that he is a thug and the post-coup new dispensation wanted him to be statesman. All attempts to hide his mean-spirited Mr Hyde persona with the multi-coloured designer suits complete with the “very loud” rainbow scarf to portray a more affable Dr Jekyll have failed. The real ED has burst out, he is rigging this year’s elections with the same characteristic “scintillating and "seamless" pace”, as Gara rightly said.