“PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa and opposition MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa have taken hardline stances to political engagement, which has stalled progress towards interparty dialogue seen as critical to pulling the southern African nation out of international isolation and launching economic recovery, the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) has said,” reported News Day.
“The ZCC secretary-general suggested Chamisa was held up by a need to appease his supporters, while Mnangagwa wanted recognition from the opposition leader first before any talks could begin.”
We have just had the EU Election Observer Mission final report stating in no uncertain terms that these elections were a sham.
“The electoral commission lacked full independence and appeared to not always act in an impartial manner. The final results as announced by the Electoral Commission contained numerous errors and lacked adequate traceability, transparency and verifiability,” said the EU report.
“Finally, the restrictions on political freedoms, the excessive use of force by security forces and abuses of human rights in the post-election period undermined the corresponding positive aspects during the pre-election campaign. As such, many aspects of the 2018 elections in Zimbabwe failed to meet international standards.”
“Finally, the restrictions on political freedoms, the excessive use of force by security forces and abuses of human rights in the post-election period undermined the corresponding positive aspects during the pre-election campaign. As such, many aspects of the 2018 elections in Zimbabwe failed to meet international standards.”
Does ZCC agree with this report or not?
It is impossible to see how anyone, anyone at all, can ever dispute that the elections were a sham. How can they be anything else when ZEC failed to produce a verified voters’ roll and there was evidence from the voting results to suggest there was multiple voting?
How can Mnangagwa claim to have the mandate of the people of Zimbabwe when he denied 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora the vote? During his recent visit to USA he has said his government will have the logistics in place to allow these Zimbabweans to vote next time – proof it can be done give the political will. He did not explain why they were denied the vote this time!
If ZCC leaders agree with Zimbabweans, EU and all reasonable people out there that the recent elections were rigged; then our clergy must explain to the nation what ZCC is hoping to accomplish by bringing Zanu PF and MDC Alliance to talk.
Zimbabwe is in this serious economic mess that has seen the country fall from its perch of one of the top five richest African countries, a breadbasket of the region, etc. in 1980. Today we are the poorest nation in Africa that cannot even produce enough food to feed its own people. This is a sad testimonial to human failure; as political leaders, civic society leaders right down to the individual level.
If Zimbabwe is going ever going to recover from the man-made hell-on-earth we have allowed ourselves to sink into then we will need to stop and take a long and searching introspective look at ourselves. We have fcuked up big time – there is no denying that. ZCC leaders are invited to do the same! Continuing what we have been doing the last 38 years, the very things that landed us in this mess, is clearly not an option.
Inviting Mnangagwa and Chamisa to talk so they can kiss and make up and continue in government is not an option. The former rigged the elections and is therefore illegitimate whilst the other was foolish enough to participate in a flawed and illegal process and disregarded the repeated warning not to. We are in this mess because of 38 years of bad governance; bringing these two together will not change that!
The solution here is for the illegitimate Zanu PF regime to step down. The nation must then appoint an interim administration that will implement the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections.
The people of Zimbabwe want and deserve a solution to take them out of the political and economic hell-hole Zanu PF has dragged the nation into. The ZCC proposal to bring Zanu PF and MDC Alliance to form some compromise government is just a feeble excuse to allow the vote rigging and thus illegitimate Zanu PF junta to remain in power. Demanding that Zanu PF step down and allow fresh elections is the only way out of the hell-hole!
3 comments:
The very people who promised to bring about democratic change and even had the chic to call themselves MDC - Movement for Democratic Change - are the ones have been selling out at every opportunity to bring about any meaningful democratic change.
The champion of social justice, our church leaders and civic society leaders are hobnobbing with the oppressors they have forgotten it is not the interests of Mnangagwa or Chamisa they should be concerned about but those of the long suffering ordinary people.
It is impossible to see how ZCC leaders can still believe the elections were free and fair or fail to see that keeping Zanu PF in power regardless of the fact the party rigged the elections is not get going to get the country out of the mess. They are promoting the meeting of the two party for no better reason than to keep both Mnangagwa and Chamisa in power so they can continue to bask in the political spotlight.
"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." Proverbs 29:18 King James Version (KJV)
The people of Zimbabwe will have to perish for a few more years since the nation's leaders have no vision at all the three levels, ruling party, opposition and the civic society!
@ Mbofana
Zimbabwe adopted her first and second five-year Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes in 1990 and 1995 and it was only towards the end of the second programme that Robert Mugabe and his apologists started denouncing it as a failure. It was all nonsense for four reasons:
1) Zimbabwe was spending hand over fist on welfare such as education, health, civil service and army were bloated, was increasing workers' wages regardless of productivity and other factors, etc. If Zanu PF had not spend the last decade creating these distortions then the country would have never needed to carry out these adjustments. To argue the country did not need to adjust is nonsense because no nation on earth has ever prospered from spending what it has not earned.
2) It is nonsense to say the programmes did not work when Zanu PF never faithfully implemented all the agreed reforms. Welfare to the poor was cut but the ruling elite loosened their belts as they continued to pile up the pounds.
3) If Zanu PF leaders were so smart to see the programmes were unworkable then why did they agree to implement them.
4) Only those who inherit a mountain of a debt can rightly complain about the debt not those who borrowed the money in the first place.
Zimbabwe will not be needing to borrow as much for outside if we had built on what we had in 1980. The 38 years of Zanu PF misrule has left the majority of our people broke and having to start from scratch as someone else's worker! If we use the borrowed money carefully there is no reason why we should not be able to pay back the loans. Other nations like Germany and Japan have do so and look where they are today!
David Barber, one of the authors of this article, has personal experience of this.
As he explains:
"I planned to set up a business in Africa manufacturing portable solar lamps. But, unusually, my plan was to pay Western wages to the staff and workers. Every potential investor (Black or White) was prepared to back me, but without exception they would only do so only on condition that I dropped the pay scales to the usual African poverty rates which are only a fraction of their Western counterparts.
David Barber's story is nonsensical in that none of us can dictate what to do with someone else's money. Why did he not use his own money to go into business even if it meant starting small?
Anyone who have followed Zimbabwe politics closely would know that Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube has the foolish habit of opening his mouth and saying a lot of rubbish only to make a U-turn a few days later when a lot of damage has been done. He said he going to phase out the Bond Notes only to say the opposite after a few days.
"The meetings in Bali and the World Bank/IMF annual meetings were very successful. The Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP) that I presented was well-received by all the partners as a way to revive the Zimbabwe economy. The programme hinges on a variety of issues such as arrears clearance. Again, we came up with a very strong and credible roadmap for that, which includes both HIPC and non-HIPC options for resolving Zimbabwe's arrears situation," Ncube told State-owned media journalists yesterday.
If he intended to use the HIPC route then claiming, as he did, that Zimbabwe's GDP was $25 billion up from $13 billion with corresponding per capita income is now $1 500 to $1 700 up from $750 to $850 is putting us in the wrong bracket. Still, the lenders were not going to accept the claimant's figures without checking it for themselves.
Besides debt are cancelled only if the claimant demonstrate good governance and, I hope, that includes holding free and fair elections. Zanu PF has already shown the party cannot be trusted to hold free and fair elections.
The last think the nation wants is the IMF, WB, etc. loaning this Zanu PF regime money and the national debt increased even more only for the money to be wasted on new cars, chartered planes, etc.!
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