“England must move forward to a more enlightened form of government based on a true representation of a free people. Such an institution is known as a democracy!” These were the memorable words of Oliver Cromwell, the man many would agree was the father of England’s parliamentary democracy.
“Democracy is a Greek drawl based on a foolish notion that there are extraordinary possibilities in very ordinary people,” replied King Charles 1, dismissively.
“It is the ordinary people who would readily lay down their lives in defence of your realm,” Cromwell fired back. “It is simply that in being ordinary they prefer to be asked and not told!”
Cromwell, like so many other of his generation where unhappy with England’s feudal political system in which the King enjoyed absolute power. At the time of the above exchange Charles had dissolved parliament and had been ruling by decrees for 12 years “taxing the poor beyond their means and spending it on lavish court!”
Zimbabwe has just had a new tax aimed at those living o US$1.00 or less a day. The money will pay the debt from buying cars for Chiefs, Zanu PF elections candidates, chartering a plane for Grace Mugabe from Singapore and back @ US$ 1.4 million a trip, etc.
On the political from, Zanu PF has ridden roughshod over the people, denying them their freedoms and basic human rights including the right to free elections and even the right to life. The Zanu PF regime has murdered over 30 000 Zimbabweans to create and retain the one-party Zanu PF dictatorship.
Before independence, Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF friends promised the nation “one-man one-vote”. But, by the time the country attained her independence, they had changed their minds, they were determined to impose a one-party state. They were forced to sign onto to the Lancaster House multi-party democratic constitution and they set-out to undermine it from day one.
Just like King Charles 1, Zanu PF leaders had nothing but contempt for the ordinary people’s ability to do anything and have pointedly denied them a meaningful say in the governance of the country. Zanu PF has never held free, fair and credible elections, be it at party level or national level. Never ever!
When President Mnangagwa seized power from Mugabe last year, he promised to hold free, fair and credible elections. Many hope that he made the promise because he was aware of the party’s lack of democratic credentials and was keen to put this right. Sadly, the promise proved to be a bridge too far.
SADC and AU Election Observers teams were very careful to focus on the “peaceful environment throughout the campaign period and on voting day”. They said nothing about such glaring flaws and illegalities as the failure to allow 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora to vote and the regime’s failure to produce a verified voters’ roll, although this is a legal requirement!
As for the shooting of seven unarmed civilians on 1st August, shuttering the myth these were peaceful elections, both SADC and the AU election reports did not even go there. Other observer teams were more forthright and honest in their condemnation of the elections. The elections as “biased and unfair”, said the Commonwealth team.
“Major shortcomings in the pre-election environment impacted on the free expression of the will of electors, state resources were misused in favour of the incumbent and coverage by state media was heavily biased in favour of the ruling party,” said the EU Election Observer Mission in its very detailed report.
“Further, 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.
“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.”
So there is no point denying that Zanu PF rigged the 30 July 2018 elections. As recent as last Thursday, President Mnangagwa told Police graduate that the elections were “peaceful, free, fair and credible”. We have more urgent matters to attend to!
Now we know that Zanu PF rigged the 30 July 2018 elections; WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
Answer: We must tell Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF junta in no uncertain terms that they rigged the elections, they are illegitimate, and they must go.
“Zimbabwe must move forward to a more enlightened form of government based on a true representation of a free people!” to paraphrase Oliver Cromwell.
It is not for SADC, the international community or anyone else to say this. They have all done their bit by condemning the 30 July 2018 elections. What we in Zimbabwe want is for Zanu PF must step down to allow for a democratic government to take over; the gene is now out of the bottle there is no putting it back.
Some people have argued that we should ignore the rigged elections, after all this is not the first time Zanu PF has rigged elections, and just concentrate on working with the regime. There four things these people must remember:
- After 38 years of trying to work with the Zanu PF dictatorship and failing, the country is up to her eyes right now precisely because all the past efforts work with the regime have failed. It is insane to keep trying the same thing 38 years and counting and expect a different result!
- With the country’s economy in a comatose state, 75% of the population living on US$1.00 or less per day, etc. the country is standing on the edge of the precipice. This country must finally deal with its demons before hell breaks lose and Zimbabwe becomes just another Somalia, Libya, etc.
- If we do not force Zanu PF to step down now and allow the regime to stay in office until the next elections then we can be 100% of one thing - Zanu PF will rig the 2023 elections just as readily as the party has rigged this year’s elections and all the other in the past.
- Zanu PF is imploding, as party member fight for the ever shrinking cake and to escape the rising tide of mass poverty. If we do not de-couple Zanu PF, the party from Zimbabwe, the nation, the party sink into the abyss and drag the nation with it.
When Oliver Cromwell and the other reformers failed to get King Charles 1 to accept the need for peaceful change, the country was plugged into a bloody civil war. When Charles still refused to listen to reason, he was beheaded!
“The King is not England and England is not the King. It is not the survival of the King that is at issue here but the survival of England!” Cromwell summed up forcefully.
I will say Amen to that!
Zanu PF is imploding, the party is rotten to the core and the centre cannot hold; the party is sinking into the abyss and is dragging the nation down with it! We have a duty to stop and can do so if we apply ourselves.
Our call for democratic free, fair and credible elections is a justice cause but, as history will tell us, that is not enough to guarantee our deliverance. We have demanded free, fair and credible elections with very little conviction and belief. And when elections have been blatantly rigged we have, at best, we have reacted much as the hen after a chick snatching eagle - make racket flapping wings, huff and puff to impress the naive and gullible but knowing fully well it will do nothing to recover the snatched chick or stop it happening again!
We have to confront the Zanu PF dictatorship with as much resolve and revolutionary fervour as we confound the all flap and no substance hens amongst our people! (I am sure you can already guess who are these hens are! All will to be revealed in the next instalment.)
4 comments:
@ Mandaza
Exactly a year on since the coup, the evidence speaks for itself: it is back to the future (things from the past are being currently recycled, while packaged as though they are something new).
As internal events in Zanu-PF now show, for this is a situation beyond retrieval; the party is facing an inexorable end in the final analysis even though it may appear that it has recovered and will renew itself. The tensions and looming potential clashes between Mnangagwa and one of his deputies, Constantino Chiwenga, cannot be taken lightly.
Indeed, the Zanu-PF of Mugabe is markedly different from the Zanu PF of Mnangagwa which not only lacks internal cohesion but is deeply divided over an unresolved leadership issue arising from the coup, its dynamics and conflicting expectations of its architects, hence the Mnangagwa-Chiwenga battle so soon after the coup.
While we will leave this for time to tell, the signs of a cracking edifice with collapsed pillars around it and a gradually sinking foundation are there for all to see. This is the reality of Zanu-PF now, which has been crumbling since its 2014 congress that dumped Joice Mujuru and scores of other high-profile party leaders.
It was always a fallacy; a misleading notion, to have expected anything new from a man who has been part and parcel of the very system and leadership that is largely clueless on the economy, given to institutionalised profligacy, endemic corruption and unbridled patronage.
For the structural foundations of the economic malaise are almost synonymous with the political imperatives of the securocratic state: violence or the threat of it and, therefore, the need for a bloated state operations designed less in relation to the functions and operations of an average or normal government than, the objective of less policing regulating and intimidating its citizens; and the legacy of patronage, through which the party and state are conflated in a laager of self-defence and self-preservation, but at inordinate cost to the focus, and at the expense of prospective and potential investment in production, economic development and wealth creation for the country.
So, in the meantime, it is back to the future, the persistence of only the illusion that a military state can reform, politically and lead the much-needed economic recovery and growth.
As appears more likely, only mass protests on a national scale might rescue the situation and herald the beginnings of a new era; or, as remains still remote, the emergence of an enlightened leadership within the establishment itself, courageous enough to cure the coup and return Zimbabwe to constitutional and democratic governance, push for meaningful economic and social reform and re-engage the international community to rescue Zimbabwe.
So far Mnangagwa has failed to measure up to such a task and expectations; it is most unlikely that he will ever live up to that, although he still has a window of opportunity to redeem himself and save the nation.
You are right, Mnangagwa has “failed to measure up to the task expectations” of the new democratic dispensation he eulogises endless about without a clue what it means. I agree Mnangagwa has just repackaged the same corrupt, vote rigging and tyrannical Zanu PF and is trying to sell it off as something new, different and better!
Emmerson Mnangagwa is a corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous thug. He was never going to hold free and fair elections because he feared that he would never stand the heat of close democratic scrutiny especially with his checked track record. He thought he could get away with a fudged election but clearly no one was fooled. He has since resorted to what he knows best brutilising everyone into submission. We are in for a rough ride!
However, Germany is still sceptical about fully engaging Zimbabwe on the economic front.
The Germans are not yet convinced that the reforms undertaken by the Mnangagwa government are genuine and far-reaching. A spokesperson for the Germany Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development had this to say:”The implementation of political and economic reforms by the Zimbabwean government is a prerequisite for the resumption of bilateral development cooperation.”
Uwe Kekeritz, the opposition Green party’s parliamentary spokesman for development cooperation is also unconvinced by the Zimbabwe government’s appetite for reforms. He added
”I do not see genuine political change with regards to the development of democratic structures. There are still many questions remaining with regards to human rights Development assistance should be resumed, but in close cooperation with the civil society, as far away from the government as possible. dw.com
This will land like a hammer blow on the heads of the Zanu PF leaders and apologists; they have been trying to sell the nation the idea that President Mnangagwa’s “Zimbabwe is open for business!” clarion call was bearing fruit.
The Americans have already said Zimbabwe has not change and hence they will not do business with a pariah state and now the Germans. Where Germany goes the rest of EU will follow.
The only other big player left is the Chinese but Mnangagwa know they will only be coming to Zimbabwe to loot just as they are already doing in Marange. Mugabe booted the Chinese out of Marange angry at their refusal to bankroll his wasteful habits. The Chinese helped Mnangagwa rig 30 July 2018 elections and within weeks they were back in Marange! The Chinese are NOT going to bankroll Mnangagwa’s corrupt and incompetent regime.
So, without the much need direct foreign investment all hope of any meaningful economic recovery are dead in the water!
Zanu PF has blamed sanction for all the country's economic ills but this was a scapegoat to draw attention away from the real cause which are mismanagement and corruption. It is disappointing that a leading newspaper like News Day would still believe the sanctions lies! News Day is becoming more and more like The Herald!
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