"Sikhala case expose MDC confusion" - Zanu PF is no better. We must clear deck for clean start N Garikai

Dear Noble Runyanga

Ref: your Bulawayo 24 article “Sikhala case exposes MDC confusion, dilemma”

You are right that MDC is a party with no sense of direction and purpose, given to prevaricating and even when they act it is only to issue a perfunctory statement no one, not even the party leaders and supporters themselves believe.

“If Chamisa was a serious leader worth the term he would unequivocally condemn Sikhala's utterances irrespective of the party members' views thereon. He should have told them of the negative consequences of the statements and the legal implications thereof. Chamisa generally loves populism. It enables him to make up for his lack of substance,” you said.

“Given this background, Chamisa and his hangers-on are torn between toeing their handlers and owners' line of dialogue and development and the party's own unnecessarily confrontational approach.  They are torn between losing their members who desire a non-existent Chamisa win and "Government" like yesterday and pleasing their masters by participating in dialogue which will take the country forward. He is insisting on the non-existent illegitimacy issue as the sole trump card to while up some time for, as surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the patience of the world, which includes his handlers, will snap leaving him exposed.

“The world has watched as Chamisa and the late Morgan Tsvangirai, before him, claimed election rigging on the part of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) in favour of ZANU PF to make up for their own party's shortcomings only to embarrass themselves by failing to adduce any irrefutable evidence to buttress their claims.

You are right that no one beyond MDC leaders, their sheepish supporters and the Zimbabweans so desperate for change they believe anything, has ever supported Chamisa’s foolish claim that he “won” the presidential race. But if the truth be told the same people have also rejected Zanu PF’s claim of electoral victory for the same reasons; ZEC “failed to adduce any irrefutable evidence to buttress Zanu PF claims”!

“The electoral commission (ZEC) lacked full independence and appeared to not always act in an impartial manner,” stated the EU Mission final report.

“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.”

And yet in your article you talk of the international community accepting Zanu PF’s election victory claim.  

“After the congress and Chamisa's ominous threats of "war" one would have expected a repeat of the 14 to 16 January protests within a week in gargantuan proportions given his propensity for student activism-like destructive and violent protests but this has not happened. This is because the owners of the project, which he fronts as a titular leader, have moved from the "Mugabe/ Mnangagwa must go!" politics of yesteryear to give President Mnangagwa and his team a chance following his poll victory last year. They now prefer dialogue to Chamisa's baseless confrontation. They have accepted the reality of a Mnangagwa electoral victory and the resultant Government,” you claim.

No one of substance has ever backed Mnangagwa’s call for dialogue and his Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) forum because it is nothing but a talk-shop with no power to change anything.

No one has backed Chamisa’s proposed power sharing Transition Authority (TA) because it is nothing but a watered-down version on the 2008 to 2013 GNU. The latter failed to implement even one democratic reform. “We sat and ate and did nothing!” Chamisa admitted last week. There is nothing to suggest MDC leaders will do anything else other than sit and eat in the TA.  

Zimbabwe is in this seeming intractable economic and political mess because the nation has had the great misfortune of having an incompetent, corrupt and tyrannical ruling party Zanu PF. Asking MDC to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship has not worked because the opposition turned out to be equal corrupt, incompetent and “confused”, as you said. To get out of the mess we need to think outside the box, to look beyond Zanu PF and MDC!

Last year’s elections were flawed and illegal and failed to produce a legitimate winner or runner up. Both Zanu PF and MDC conspired to go ahead with the elections knowing the whole process was a farce. It therefore does not make any sense for the nation to look to either of these two parties to chart the nation’s way out of the mess.

Both Zanu PF and MDC are now part of the problem and therefore can never be part of the solution too!     

As long as the country remains a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous thugs there will be no meaning economic recovery. This is a fact and a reality!

After 39 years of ruinous Zanu PF misrule the people of Zimbabwe must finally grasp the nettle and stamp out this curse of rigged elections and bad governance. Zanu PF rigged last year’s elections, the regime is illegitimate and it must step down now. MDC must step down too for their part in participating in flawed elections. We need to clear the political deck and have clean start!