“Hupenzi inyama yegakava!” (There is no one more stubborn than an idiot!) we say in Shona. Hopewell Chinono is not just a run-of-the-mill idiot but one paid and paid well to confuse the opposition and the Zimbabwean people at large. Whilst the nation is fighting hard to end the weakness that have dragged us into the hell-on-earth we are now stuck in; Chinono is doing his idiotic best to keep us there!
Zimbabwe is in a serious economic and political mess after 39 years of corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF misrule. There have been many, many golden opportunities to end the de facto one-party Zanu PF dictatorship but sadly they have all been wasted because the opposition tasked to implement the democratic reforms were corrupt, incompetent and sell-outs.
There is one common denominator is both the ruling party and the opposition, both camps are stuffed to the rafters full of corrupt and incompetent individuals! There reason for this is easy to see, there is no meaningful debate and democratic competition allowed in the parties.
When Robert Mugabe, for example, succeeded Ndabaningi Sithole in 1975 as leader of Zanu PF there was no debate or democratic elections; he was nominated, seconded and crowned. Mugabe then surrounded himself with dimwits like the late Simon Muzenda, Joice Mujuru, Emmerson Mnangagwa, etc. whom he promoted under the pretext regional, gender or some such feeble excuse.
With dimwit around him it was then easy for him to justify his refusal to groom a successor – there was no suitable candidate. Come each elective congress, he saw to it that only his name was in the hat turning the election into a coronation.
It is an open secret that Mugabe was a control freak; he never allowed his ministers any slack to do anything in case their accomplishment eclipses his own. In all his 37 years as head of government, Mugabe has never allowed a cabinet meeting to go ahead unless he is there to chair it. No doubt many of the intellectuals appointed into his cabinet or some such position have learnt to tone down their contribution just to their job. By the time they final left, Mugabe had reduced many a professor and otherwise well respected professional into idiotic savant.
The dimwits around Mugabe have done the same thing themselves. Aware of their own serious, they too have in turn appointed dimwits who will not be a threat to their own position.
There is no meaningful debate or democratic competition in most of the country’s opposition parties. They are all copies the Zanu PF template. Nelson Chamisa succeeded Morgan Tsvangirai in can only best described a palace coup and he is now consolidating his position as leader using the same undemocratic means Mugabe would be proud of. And guess who is cheering and applauding MDC blundering; Hopewell Chinono.
“I had a chat yesterday with a friend emanating from the article I had written about the upcoming MDC Congress and Nelson Chamisa’s imminent official ascendancy to the MDC Presidency, after being nominated without opposition,” wrote Chinono in one of his articles in Nehanda Radio.
“In my view they can emerge much stronger from this congress if there is a true representation of the country’s regions in the top six positions.”
This culture of turning elections into coronation is counter-productive because it stifles debate and democratic competition. Chamisa should have been asked to defend his performance record to date and present his vision of what he wants to do in the future. A serious challenger to Chamisa was then expected to cross examine the record and take Chamisa to task on everything. Chamisa will be forced to defend himself and cross examine the challenger’s record. It is this cut and thrust that forces quality leaders to emerge and to keep them on their toes.
Leaders should be elected on merit and merit alone. The moment you compromise on merit to allow for regional, gender, race, etc. you have lost it because you open that bottle for whatever reason there is no closing it!
Hopewell Chinono is a Mnangagwa apologist masquerading as an opposition adviser. The opposition parties in Zimbabwe have been corrupt and incompetent and hence the reason they have failed to force Zanu PF out of power regardless of its pathetic track record. Chinono’s job is to make sure the opposition parties continue those practices guaranteed to keep corrupt and incompetent individuals as leaders so opposition parties remain weak and feeble.
“The MDC should avoid the retrogressive temptation to elect their number 1 and 2 positions from the same region, and they should also not try to appease folks close to their President in return for proximity to the main center of power,” argued Chinono.
Neither Mugabe nor Mnangagwa had their number 1 and 2 from the same region and that did not stop their respective regimes being corrupt, incompetent and utterly useless. In the case of MDC, the damage has already been done by turning this elective congress into yet another meaningless rubber stamping coronation.
There is nothing to shout about Chamisa’s past performance record; he is corrupt and incompetent and will now surround himself with dimwits who will not be a threat to his leadership. MDC A will continue to be led by corrupt and incompetent individuals for the next five years, nothing has changed there.
There is no progress but Chinono is paid to misled the MDC leaders and members into believing the party is strong and set to win 2023 elections hands down!
2 comments:
People must never forget who Professor Lovemore Madhuku is! He is the leader of the National Constitution Assembly (NCA) an activist organisation formed to push for constitutional reforms in the late 1990s that has since morphed into a political party. NCA was formed together with Tsvangirai and many others who went on to form the MDC, Madhuku and a few others remained in NCA for whatever reasons.
There is no doubt that Madhuku has seen how MDC leaders have done well for themselves by abandoning the common cause of pushing for democratic changes especially during the 2008 to 2013 GNU when MDC leaders were in power. MDC leaders like Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube, Nelson Chamisa, David Coltart, etc. sold-out during the GNU by failing to get even one reform implemented. They had their snout in the feeding trough provided by uncle Bob (Mugabe) and the feeding was good.
What is more the MDC leaders sold-out and got away with it, at least as far as the ordinary Zimbabweans are concerned. The MDC wildebeest members have remained faithful to the party blissfully unaware the leaders sold-out.
So MDC leaders themselves have since abandoned an pretence they will ever implemented the democratic reforms as the settled for the few gravy train seats Zanu PF was giving away as bait to entice they continued cooperation in forgetting about reforms and free and fair elections. Other opposition parties and candidates, including Madhuku and his NCA, have joined in the scramble for the bait seats!
Of course, Madhuku knows Mnangagwa and Zanu PF rigged last year's elections and have do so for the last 39 years. He knows the country should and could have had free, fair and credible elections ever since the 1980 elections; we did not because there was no political will on the party of Zanu PF and all the opposition parties. He knows that he and the other opposition candidates participated in the flawed and illegal elections last year and in the past out of greed.
Madhuku also knows, as Nelson Chamisa and the rest, that by participating the opposition is giving the modicum of political credibility to the rigged elections.
What Madhuku, Chamisa, Biti and the rest of the opposition sell-outs do not know is that the game is up. opposition leaders who sold-out will be held to account!
@ Benford Mafuvad
“Is this not ironical that you write an article and then you are the first to commend on it?”
Poor Benford it must be a curse being you. Why are you obsessed about the trivial matters and ignore the substantive matters. You are making a mountain out of a mole hill that I commended on what I said. So what is wrong or “ironic” with me adding, subtract or whatever to what I said earlier?
You are supposed to commend on the substantive issues I raised and not waste time and space going to town of the spelling, gramma, who commended, etc., etc. How many times have I told you that but yet you still fail to understand.
The real tragedy here Bebford is that you are not the only Zimbabwean who is brain-dead and hence the reason the country is in this mess. The country is facing serious economic meltdown, millions are living in abject poverty and hundreds are dying unnecessarily of want of the most basic needs such as clean water, US$4 per month medicine, etc.
We need to focus on finding a way out of this mess and all you care about is how many times some one has commended! Well I despair, I do! Still, it must be hard being so shallow, thick and slow.
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