For the last 39 years the country has drifted like a log, with ordinary people hang on to the log for dear life, in the flood Zambezi River, totally at the mercy of a corrupt, incompetent and murderous tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship. Sadly, the country's economic meltdown has fuelled a raging factional fighting in the dictatorship and political and economic volatility have the log hurtling down the rapids.
Two years ago on 15 November 2017 there was a military coup in which the Zanu PF dictators Robert Mugabe and a select few around him were removed from office. As much I wanted to see the back of Mugabe after 37 years of corrupt and tyrannical rule, I still objected strongly to the coup. Two wrongs do not equal a right; especially when those staging the coup were themselves corrupt, incompetent and murderous tyrants.
It was no secret than Emerson Mnangagwa, Constantino Chiwenga and the rest of the coup plotters were the very individuals who had played a major part in the establishment and retention of the Zanu PF dictatorship, keeping Mugabe himself in power, all the last 37 years against the democratic wishes of the people.
It is no surprise that Mnangagwa and his coup friends have portrayed the November 2017 coup in the most agreeable light they could master. They announced the coup as “a military assisted transition”. They even got one of the country’s high court judges to declare the coup “constitutional, justified and legal!”
When Mugabe hesitated signing the resignation letter, the coup plotter burnt the midnight candle to make sure the people came out in the street in large numbers demanding that Mugabe resigned. The story goes that Mugabe was warned that if he still refused to resign “the people will march into his Blue Roof mansion!” No that the coup plotters were controlling Mugabe’s security, that was no empty threat.
Two years down the line, those who had condemned the coup as an act of lawlessness that could never put to right the Zanu PF dictatorship have been proven right. The coup remove one dictator but only to replace him with another dictator.
The November coup was a lost opportunity to demand the democratic changes designed to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship. Swapping one dictator for another was certainly not want we wanted. It is therefore shocking to hear anyone, now with the benefit of hindsight, suggesting that Zimbabweans were pleased with the November 2017 coup.
“Which coup? SADC is unaware of the said coup, is aware of change of administration that was extensively celebrated and supported by nationals!” remarked none other than the Executive Secretary of SADC Dr Stergomena Tax.
Tax said SADC will not meddle in the affairs of Zimbabwe.
“I have already responded to this. Use the Parliament and Judiciary. Engage with the Executive. Regional bodies come in after exhausting internal mechanisms. Are you at that stage? Use the Parliament and Judiciary. Engage with the Executive. Regional bodies come in after exhausting internal mechanisms.”
The only way to get the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible election implement is by forcing Zanu PF to accept last year’s elections were NOT free, fair and credible. SADC is one of the few bodies who had, foolishly endorsed the election as having been free, fair and credible and so cannot change its position now. SADC is handicapped and cannot play any meaningful role is solving Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis.
By endorsing the November 2017 military coup as merely a “change of administration” SADC has foolishly let the military coup gene out of the bottle, once again. In 1960s and 1970s, Africa was plagued by military coups and now we are foolishly encouraging them again!
It is ironic that SADC endorse Zimbabwe's rigged 2013 elections as having been free, fair and credible. Indeed, until the coup, SADC leaders had always counted Mugabe was one of them!
The main reason why many Zimbabweans celebrated the November 2017 coup to remove Mugabe was simple: how else were they going to do it since 37 years of the ballot had failed.
Mnangagwa rigged last year’s elections confirming that Zanu PF’s vote rigging juggernaut is still the same ruthless well oiled machine of the Mugabe days. Now that the Zimbabwe Courts have confirmed military coups are “legal, constitutional and justified” and SADC will view it as a normal “change of administration”; the next political change in Zimbabwe is another coup.
The tragedy is the coup will replace one dictator with another when what the nation is dying for is replacing the dictatorship with democratic system of government.
2 comments:
It is at times like this that one really start to comprehend that seriousness and utter hopelessness of our situation in Zimbabwe. The country is facing serious economic meltdown that has left 90% out of work and even public hospitals have now close because of 39 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption by this vote rigging and tyrannical Zanu PF regime.
We have had many golden opportunities to end the Zanu PF dictatorship especially during the 2008 GNU and the now late Morgan Tsvangirai and his fellow breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent MDC village idiots wasted the opportunities. MDC has failed to implement even one democratic reform in 20 years on the political stage. Not one!
If you fail to get help from your own family members it is natural to look to the neighbour to help. But when one hears such foolishness as “a military coup is a change of administration” from SADC Executive Secretary Stergomena Tax; one despairs.
What makes Zimbabwe’s situation particularly disappointing is that we, the people of Zimbabwe, are our own worst enemy. The country is in this mess this deep because in all the last 39 years we have hardly lifted a finger to object to the sheer madness going on around us.
Zanu PF blatantly rigged last year’s elections, as it has done countless times in the past, and most of us hardly noticed, it was all water off a duck’s back. MDC leaders sold-out during the GNU in failing to get even one reform implemented and, to this day, many of Zimbabweans are not even aware they were short changed.
Democracy is government by the people and Zimbabwe’s attempt at having a democracy was doomed from the word go; the country did not have the people competent to govern themselves. Zimbabwe have proven to be naive, gullible and, worst of all, too lazy to be masters of their own destiny.
We are a subservient nation without even the common sense to save ourselves much less posterity.
Those who cannot think of tomorrow never learn from the past and so are destined to repeat the same foolish mistakes. Zimbabweans have been repeating the same foolish mistakes these last 39 years and hence the reason the nation is stuck.
Unless we snap out of our sloth-like slumber and take up our duties as citizens of electing competent leaders and holding them to democratic account with the seriousness and urgency the matter demands. There will be no end to Zimbabwe’s man-made economic chaos and political paralysis.
People do get the government they deserve; we certainly deserve this corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship complete with its entourage of corrupt, incompetent and utterly useless opposition parties. No fewer than 130 of political parties contested last year’s rigged at last year’s elections and by participating the gave some credibility to the flawed and illegal elections.
@ Chokwadi
Actually, when Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends ignored SADC's warning in June 2013 not to take part in the elections with no reforms in place SADC leaders gave up on Zimbabwe. They endorse Zanu PF's victory in 2013 just as they did last year because if the MDC and the rest in the opposition camp wanted to participate in elections regardless the certainty the elections are being rigged then SADC have no choice but to accept the winner of the rigged elections.
No one in SADC has supported Chamisa's position of accepting the parliamentary results but reject the presidential when the whole process is flawed and illegal. Chamisa is splitting hairs and only a fool would want to be dragged into that nonsense.
So you are right that the elections was flawed and SADC endorse the result regardless because both Zanu PF and MDC did not mind that the process was flawed. But that is not to say SADC leaders do not know that the elections were rigged and, more significantly, that the failure to hold free, fair and credible elections is at the very heart of the Zimbabwe political and economic mess.
SADC leaders are not interested in being dragged into the proposed dialogue between Mnangagwa and Chamisa because they no it will be a waste of time as the two gentlemen and their respective parties will never implement any reforms and thus deliver free, fair and credible elections.
If we want to end the Zimbabwe economic and political crisis then we must accept that the curse of rigged elections is at the heart of it. It is up to us, Zimbabweans to stand up to the Zanu PF thugs and demand that they step down. As for Chamisa and his MDC friends SADC, AU and the whole world know they have lost political credibility and will ignore them. If is only the foolish Zimbabweans who continue to attend MDC rallies and pay attention to the blubbering who are giving MDC leader the time of day!
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