Chief Nhlanhlayamangwe Ndiweni torched a storm when he graced and addressed the MDC congress in Gweru on Saturday. The chief criticised the Zanu-PF government and Judiciary for failing the nation which, according to commentators, was hypocritical of the opposition party which criticised partisan involvement of chiefs in politics.
So why did the Chief Ndiweni fail to criticise his fellow Chiefs for turning rural peasants into nothing but serfs beholden to the Zanu PF thugs? Zanu PF has lasted these 39 years and it is no secret that the country’s Chiefs and traditional leaders have played a key role in retaining Zanu PF in power and the leaders have been richly rewarded. If Chief Ndiweni has played no part in the Zanu PF dictatorship all these years then some of us have never heard of his defiance.
"I know there are people saying the Constitutional Court gave a verdict, Chief Justice Malaba gave a verdict to determine who should stay at State House. Every week, every Saturday in Ntabazinduna every one of my headmen give a better judgement than that. The judiciary has let us down profoundly, we are in this mess because they did not rise to the occasion," said Chief Ndiweni, addressing the crowd at the just ended MDC congress.
There is no disputing that Zanu PF blatantly rigged last year’s elections. The whole election process was full of flaws and illegalities it beggars belief how anyone let alone a sworn Court Judge, the custodian of the law and dispenser of justice, failed to condemn these elections.
“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,” stated the EU Zimbabwe Election Mission final 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.”
In their own affidavits submitted the the Constitutional Court both the plaintiff, Nelson Chamisa, and the key defendant, ZEC, confirmed ZEC many of the flaws and illegalities in the process. They confirmed that the elections went ahead without a verified voters’ roll and that many all V11 forms, the summary of vote counts at each Polling Station, were never made public, for example. These are common sense and legal requirements for any meaningful elections.
In his court judgement, Chief Justice Malaba acknowledged the flaws and illegalities in the affidavits before the Court but chose to ignore it all on fallacious assumption that affidavit evidence will all be contradicted by the “primary source” evidence in the sealed ballot boxes. This was just a convenient bolt-hole for the Judges because they should have asked the sealed boxes to be opened if this was the only acceptable evidence.
Beside there would be nothing in the sealed ballot box to confirm or otherwise that the voters’ roll was not verified and released at least one month before nomination day, for example. The issue of free, fair and credible elections was more than a Chamisa vs Mnangagwa or MDC A vs Zanu PF; this was a national issue, the people of Zimbabwe vs Emmerson Mnangagwa and Zanu PF. It is an outrage that Chief Justice Malaba treated the case as a trivial matter.
Still Chief Ndiweni should have asked Nelson Chamisa, now that he had his attention, why he and his MDC A friends had participated in an election process they knew and warned repeatedly would be rigged. Chamisa and his MDC friends had the golden opportunities to implement the democratic reforms that would have stopped Zanu PF rigging elections during the 2008 to 2013 GNU; they failed to get even one reform implemented. Not one! Chamisa et al participated in last year’s flawed and illegal elections for the same reason - greed.
Zimbabwe is in a serious economic and political mess. With 90% out of work and 3/4 of the population now living in abject poverty, the situation is unsustainable there is a real danger of the country back sliding into chaos and political instability. The solution has been staring us in the face all these years - implement the democratic reforms and end the curse of rigged elections.
Chamisa et al have been on the political stage for 19 years now and they have had many golden opportunities to bring about meaningful democratic change but have failed to do so. Worse still, they will never implement any reforms. Never, is a strong word but in this case, wholly justified given MDC leaders have proven beyond all doubt that they are corrupt, incompetent and sell-outs!
“The judiciary has let us down profoundly!” True but they are not the only ones; so too has Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF corrupt vote rigging and murderous thugs. The corrupt Chiefs and other traditional leaders and Nelson Chamisa and his the corrupt, incompetent and sell-out opposition friends, have too let us down. But most important of all, we, the people, have let ourselves down by being so naive and gullible and allowing ourselves to be conned and dragged into such a mess!
5 comments:
Zanu PF rigged last July's elections and by participating in the flawed and illegal elections our opposition political opportunists gave the process some modicum of credibility. If our opportunist had joined everybody else in condemning the elections as a farce all attention would have focused on getting the regime to step down. Our sell-outs opposition are endorsed the elections and are calling for political dialogue in the hope of securing some gravy train seats for themselves.
The international community know that Zanu PF rigged last year's elections and that the MDC leaders have lost political credibility. The national economy will not recover even if MDC leaders like Chamisa get their wish of a gravy train seat because the world will know the Zanu PF pariah state will not change with or without these MDC opportunists. The danger of this process dragging on is real and the prospect of Zanu PF remaining in office till 2023 is real.
The challenge is to show the nation that Chamisa and company are wasting the nation's time for their own selfish reason. As long as MDC A continue to have these MDC supporters who follow the party no questioned asked the world will do nothing to help end the mess we are in because by supporting failed leaders we are tell the world we are not yet ready for democracy and good governance!
@ Nelson Chitorera
“How can you talk of Chamisa and MDC as failures. Since 2000 MDC has been winning elections. Zanu pf are the culprits because they rig elections. What chief Ndiweni said was correct.”
You are 100% correct there; Zanu PF has rigged elections since the first independence elections in 1980. You are also 100% correct but failed to say so that MDC leaders have failed to stop Zanu PF rigging elections. MDC leaders have failed to get even one democratic reform implemented even when they had the golden opportunity to do this during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. To therefore deny that Chamisa and MDC leaders are failures is to bury one’s head in the sand.
Patrick acknowledged what Chief Ndiweni said about the Con Court judgement being rubbish was correct. However Patrick was also critical of the role the Chiefs, Headmen and other traditional have played in helping Zanu PF rig elections and deny the rural voters their say. Patrick was right in question why Chief Ndiweni has never anything about this!
This was just another wasted opportunity, the party makes yet another resolution calling for reforms but failed to establish why no reforms have been implemented even when the party had the chance to do so!
Chamisa is the leader of the three amigos but certainly not one of them, he is a foreigner in that whilst the other three will talk until the cows come home about everything and anything he does not. His forte is being single track minded. During the GNU he never ever said anything about the democratic reforms and tagged along during the referendum on the new constitution and repeated what everyone else had said more because he needed to be seen than out of conviction. The only thing Chamisa cared about is the Nokia mobile phone ring-tones.
During the 2018 election campaign he waffled about everything else without a clue what he was talking about. He came to life when he was talking about bullet trains, spaghetti junctions and airports. He wanted a 30 minutes bullet train between Bulawayo and Harare but would not listen to the argument that NRZ track was in such a sorry state the maximum speed limit is 50 km/hour. He wanted every growthpoint in Zimbabwe to have a spaghetti junction and failed to notice the collapse health and education services.
Chamisa, gringo, and his 3 amigo, were in UK and had the mistake of appearing on BBC HardTalk. Let us just say the gringo was grilled. It is not therefore surprising that the four have confine their roadshow to African countries with its more naive and gullible audience and media.
The real tragedy here is that Zimbabwe is absolutely desperate for a competent opposition, one with some common sense at least, and what do we get Gringo, and the 3 Amigos!
Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF thugs must be celebrating their early Christmas gift! They know exactly what the four want, a gravy train seat and plenty of media coverage to message their egos and the MDC A will once again forget about the reforms. Zanu PF's election victory in 2023 is as certain as ever now the gringo and his 3 amigo are campaigning for Zanu PF!
Mnangagwa must be so pleased with Chamisa et al, he will have the four accompany him in his hired luxury jet one of these fine days. Chamisa will be thrilled to bits, he will be dreaming of every village must have one so he will not have to use the potholed roads!
Name one thing Tendai Biti, David Coltart and Welshman Ncube have ever accomplished in their 19 years in the MDC? We are talking about reforms today and yet that was the very thing MDC promised to do, bring change as the party name implies.
We all know you, Chinono, you are a Mnangagwa loyalist and are therefore thrilled to see a feeble and utterly useless opposition!
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