"We want unity!" replied VP Mohadi in desperation - GNU will NOT bring economic recovery P Guramatunhu.

Zimbabwe’s economic situation is getting worse and worse by the day; as much as President Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF friends would want to ignore it, it is now clear that they cannot do so. The regime has tried everything and nothing has worked and hence the panic. Inviting Nelson Chamisa into this government will be a public admission that Zanu PF has failed to govern, the one thing Mnangagwa and his junta had never considered. Anything to contain this worsening economic meltdown is now on the table!

The Zimbabwe economic troubles date back to Robert Mugabe’s days. When Mnangagwa seized power in November last year the country’s unemployment rate was a nauseating 90%, the people queuing at the banks for the little cash was the norm, etc. Mnangagwa was cocksure he would make things better; nothing much changed until after the 30 July 2018 elections when things took a turn for the worse.

There was panic buying as rumours spread that the country had no foreign currency to pay for imported goods such as fuel, wheat and medicine, etc. President Mnangagwa had soaked up most of the forex to pay for cars for Chiefs and other elections expenses. 

The new Minister of Finance, Professor Mthuli Ncube, had poured fuel to the volatile financial market with his foolish remarks undermining confidence in the country de facto local currency, the Bond Notes and the RGTS. The black market exchange rate of the Bond Notes to US$ was 2:1 before the elections suddenly shot up to as much as 10:1 on the back of Minister’s statements. 

Finance Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube, with his now familiar blundering incompetence, announced in his recent national budget that import duty on cars would be paid in foreign currency and not Bond Notes. He opened the Pandora box because now everyone else, Pharmacists, Petrol Stations, everyone with economic clout is demanding payment in US$. 

It is the ordinary Zimbabweans with no economic leverage who are suffering the most as they are forced to accept Bond Notes at the official exchange rate of 1:1 but forced to pay in US$ which they buy at the black market rate of 10:1 or whatever. The Minister has just thrown the country’s poor and disadvantaged to the merciless wolves! 

“I have the key to the economic recovery!” Nelson Chamisa has often boasted, taking full advantage of the panic Zanu PF leadership!

President Mnangagwa and his cronies know that the economic meltdown is socially, politically and morally unsustainable. There is a limit to how much suffering and deaths a people can endure in silence before they finally say enough is enough and revolt. The regime’s pre-emptive “shoot to kill” barbarism on 1 st August was a timely remind to the populous of what Zanu PF will do to those who dare revolt. And yet even with the fear of being shot there is no doubt that rebellion is in the air in Zimbabwe. 

The cup is full to overflow, the day the nation’s bottled anger is released it will send out a tsunami wave that will sweep away the regime and its trigger-happy thugs. Mnangagwa is not a particularly clever man but even he knows that he is now sitting on a time bomb!  

“Come lets talk!” Chamisa’s call has echoed and grown louder and louder with each passing day. Zanu PF bigwigs are now openly talking about inviting MDC Alliance to join them in government.

“In an interview with our Bulawayo Bureau yesterday, VP Mohadi said Zanu-PF was not interested in coalition talks with the opposition as the ruling party had total control of Parliament,” reported the Herald.

“We haven’t heard anything of that sort or an approach from those that would want a Government of National Unity with us,” said VP Mohadi.

“But if they want to discuss with us they can come, but certainly not on a GNU because we have got the mandate emanating from the two thirds majority in Parliament. We can do it alone unlike in 2008 where we had a sort of hung Parliament. This time there isn’t going to be that kind of arrangement.”

The VP is lying, the 2008 GNU was NOT because there was “a sort of hung parliament”. No one, absolutely no one, not even SADC and AU elections observers recognised the election as a democrat process because of the blatant cheating in the March 2008 vote. ZEC took six weeks to whittle down Tsvangirai’s 73% vote, by Mugabe’s own Freudian slip, to 47% to force the run-off. This was then followed by the wanton violence to punish the electorate for having rejected Mugabe in the earlier vote. 

Mugabe claimed victory but no one recognised him and his Zanu PF regime as legitimate. No one. 

It was SADC that proposed the formation of  Government of National Unity (GNU) comprising Zanu PF and the two MDC factions as a way out of the political impasse.  In the Global Political Agreement (GPA), which gave birth to the GNU, the three political parties agreed to implement a raft of democratic reforms and to write a new constitution whose principle purpose was to ensure future Zimbabwe elections were free, fair and credible. 

The 2008 GNU was supposed to make sure that the blatant cheating and wanton violence of the 2008 elections would never ever be repeated again.

SA President Thambo Mbeki was the co-signatory to the GPA on behalf of SADC. The regional body was the guarantor of the agreement, the guarantor the GNU would implement the reforms and deliver free, fair and credible elections. 

Sadly, GNU failed to implement even one democratic reform and the new 2013 constitution was weak and feeble and so the GNU failed to delivery the free, fair and credible elections. Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends, who were expected to implement the reforms, took their eyes off the ball. 

Zanu PF rigged the 2013 elections and, with still no meaningful reforms implemented, the party rigged this year’s elections too! 

VP Mohadi can witter all he wants about Zanu PF having the “mandate emanating from the two thirds majority in Parliament”. He knows that Zanu PF blatantly rigged the 30 July 2018 elections and has been told so to his face. The outgoing British ambassador to Zimbabwe, Ms Catriano Laing, told VP Mohadi, he was acting President with Mnangagwa attending the UN GA, that “electoral playing field was not level”. 

It should be remember here that the British, especially the ambassador Laing, had worked tireless to get everyone else to accept the Mnangagwa regime, glossing over the many shortcomings of the regime. Glossing over the glaring electoral irregularities was a bridge too far even for the British!

“I can solve your legitimacy problem!” said Chamisa, with the opportunistic flare of a vulture after scraps.

This is just nonsense from Chamisa. Election observers condemn the July 2018 as flawed and illegal because the election results had “numerous errors and the figures could not be verified and traced”.  These problems did not just apply to Mnangagwa and Zanu PF’s figures but to the opposition’s figures too. There was no verified voters’ roll, a legal requirement, for example. It was very naive on the opposition to agree to participate in an election without something as basic as a voters’ roll. 

So Mnangagwa and Zanu PF have no electoral mandate to govern because no one can verified the authenticity of the voters who voted for them. Even if Chamisa was to accept Mnangagwa as dully elected, that will not change Mnangagwa’s illegitimacy because it is not what Chamisa or anyone else say that matters here. The fact that the whole electoral  process was flawed and illegal is all that matters here.  

“We want unity, which is one of our mandates to get the people of Zimbabwe together and speak with one voice, work and progress together and this is important. In fact, we want them (opposition parties) to be part of Zimbabwe. We don’t want them to be left out,” said VP Mohadi.

Yeah right! So Zanu PF blatantly rigged the July 2018 elections for the sake of “unity and bringing the people of Zimbabwe together”! If the economic and political situation in the country was not so perilous and a matter of life and death, one would laugh at the sheer stupidity of that statement. 

VP Mohadi, you and your Zanu PF cronies blatantly rigged the 30 July 2018 elections confident you will deliver economic recovery, if need be rig economic recovery. The worsening economic meltdown is forcing you to accept sharing political power with the MDC Alliance, hoping that will deliver the economic recovery. 

Let me tell you Sir for the umpteenth time, whatever power sharing arrangement you come up with MDC Alliance, it will not bring about any meaningful economic recovery. The root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is because the country is a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging thugs. As long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state there will never be an meaningful economic recovery. 

Zanu PF has rigged elections in the past and got away with it, not this time. A Zanu PF and MDC Alliance GNU will solve nothing as it will only be seen as Zanu PF in all but name. The only way forward this time is for Zanu PF leaders to step down and MDC leaders to step aside and let the nation appoint an interim administration that will implement the democratic reforms leading to the holding of free, fair and credible elections. 

Both Zanu PF and MDC leaders had many, many the golden opportunities to get Zimbabwe to end its curse of rigged elections and pariah state; they have wasted each and everyone of these opportunities. What the nation ask, indeed demand, of you VP Mohadi, Chamisa and your colleagues is to stop holding the nation to ransom!

Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is real and the country is being dragged ever closer to the edge of the precipice with each passing day. The economic situation in the country is morally, socially and politically  unsustainable and Zanu PF stepping down now is the only sure way to save the country! Time is running out!