Thucydides' "something is not quite fair" with elections - is no licence to rigging P Guramatunhu

One of the things that has helped to drag us into the economic and political mess we are in as a nation is our failure to distinguish the wood from the trees, the trivial from the important, lies and wishful thinking from facts and reality. The situation is made a hell-lot worse when there is no freedom of expression and freed media. The individual is bombarded, day and night, with lies and propaganda for the purpose of complete brainwash the citizenry; lies and wishful thinking become the new facts and reality. It is little wonder Zimbabwe is a mess!

"In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it," remarked Thucydides, a respected Athenian historian and army general,” wrote Gibson Nyikadzino. 

“In any election, the minority are always a victim of the democratic process. This is the way democracies really work and Zimbabwe is no exception to that in reality. Those that deny the existence of a democracy, aptly put, losers, are often forgetful that there is no second place in politics, hence when they face defeat, they blame the electoral process using Thucydides' words that "there was something not quite fair about it".”

What Nyikadzino has failed to grasp here is that Zimbabwe’s election was not a democratic process. How can this be a free, fair and credible elections when there was no free public media so the electorate had an opportunity to study for themselves what each of the candidate stood for? 2 to 3 million potential voters were denied the vote because they were in the diaspora. ZEC failed to produce a clean and verified voters’ roll so only the authorities know how many of the 4.5 million cast ballots were from real voters whilst the rest were ghost voters.  

Zanu PF has been rigging elections ever since the country gain her independence in 1980. It is a history fact that Zanu PF did not withdraw all its freedom fighters as agreed in the Lancaster House agreement for the sole purpose of intimidating the electorate and its political opponents, for example. So the 1980 election was more about stopping the civil war, Zanu PF had warned that if the party lost the war would continue, than electing leaders freely.  

“Thucydides' view is proof in an opposition context that Mr Nelson Chamisa has for a long time been exhibiting. The losing MDC-Alliance presidential candidate has denied everything democratic in Zimbabwe,” continue Nyikadzino.

“The continued rejection of presidential results, the denial of the Constitutional Court ruling and his blind eye to the reality that the progressives are moving ahead are signals to his evaporating "legacy". When people embrace change, they ought to be careful and diligent about the decisions they make, because the political path is highly spiked with thorns.”

Poor Nyikadzino, he is trying hard to give his nonsensical diatribe credibility by clothing it in a democratic cloak! No amount of distortions and lies will ever turn Mnangagwa’s corrupt, tyrannical Zimbabwe, a pariah state, into Thucydides free and democratic Greece. The two nations are poles apart.

There was order, freedom and rule of law in Thucydides’ Greece and the Athenians paid meticulous attention to detail. This was the golden age of Greece! In Zimbabwe chaos rules the roost, we have failed to benefit from the 2 500 years of human development and progress that separate us from the ancient Greeks. Thucydides was a wise and just man unlike the buffoons and thugs ruling in Zimbabwe today.  

The blunder Nelson Chamisa made was to agree to participate in these elections with no democratic reforms in place. “MDC has stringent measures to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections!” he claimed.

It is now self-evident Chamisa was lying as Zanu PF has blatantly rigged these election. MDC leaders are their golden chances to implement the democratic reforms during the GNU; they failed to get even one reform implemented in five years because the sold-out.

It is therefore not a matter of consoling oneself that "there was something not quite fair about” Zimbabwe’s elections. We know the elections were rigged, the evidence is there, a mountain of it. And to ignore the evidence and the facts is down-right foolish!

Detail matters! Detail is everything!

Only a dim-wit like Gibson Nyikadzino, masquerading as an intellectual, would confuse chaos for order, tyranny for democracy, a rigged election for a free and fair elections. Thucydides was a wise and just man unlike the corrupt, vote rigging thug Mnangagwa; one cannot compare the two, the latter is not even fit to untie Thucydides’ sandals – he will steal them!