It was the Spanish-American writer and philosopher George Santayana who said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it!”
We, in Zimbabwe, have yet to sit down and learn from the last 40 years of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship. And before we have even started, we are being bombarded by village idiots not only falsely claiming there is a material difference between the Zanu PF dictatorship under Mugabe to the same under Mnangagwa but worse still portray the former period as a golden age of unparalleled peace, justice, tranquility and economic prosperity!
“In just one year, the human rights environment has deteriorated to such an extent that it is heartbreaking for me.
"I am sure for Walter Kamba, had he been alive, he would see so much suffering and the hopes for Zimbabweans for a better future under a new government dashed,” said Ms Navanethem Pillay in a recent Walter Kamba memorial lecture.
Whilst no one would deny the human rights situation in Zimbabwe is heartbreaking. Still, the present is situation is but a continuum of the past which, if the late Walter Kamba had been as conscientious and prudent as Ms Pillay is portraying him to be, would have been equally appalled. If he was appalled, he certainly did not show it much less do anything to stop it.
Indeed, as the chairperson of the Election Supervision Commission in post independent Zimbabwe and Vice Chancellor of the University of Zimbabwe Walter Kamba was placed in an opportune position to nip in the bud the curse of rigged elections. He chose to turned a blind eye to it all.
Even after the blatant vote rigging and near fatal shooting of an opposition candidate, Patrick Kombayi, in the 1990 elections all Kamba and his fellow commissioners ever did was write a report!
A report Mugabe ignored as he went on to pardon the two CIO operatives convicted of the attempted murder of Kombayi. The two were acting in the interest of the late Simon Mudenda, the Zanu PF candidate in that election. They never even spent one night in prison!
Ms Navanethem Pillay is a South African top lawyer and human rights defender and a former United Nations Human Rights Commissioner. She is no stranger to Zimbabwe and its culture of political violence. She visited Zimbabwe in her UN capacity in 2012 and commented on this very scourge of election violence.
“I was able to raise many areas of concern from a human rights point of view, such as nonrecurrence of violence that occurred in the last elections and what steps are being taken to protect ordinary people from such violence,” Pillay said, following her meeting with Zimbabwe GNU leaders in May 2012.
She was warned that no meaningful reforms had been implemented and that time was fast running out! She did not listen and instead produced a wishy-washy report suggest everything was fine and the next elections would be free, fair and credible. All nonsense as we now know!
“In every facet of life, deterioration of civil and political and economic social and cultural rights has reached crisis proportions,” Ms Pillay told her Walter Kamba lecture audience.
As if to suggest during Mugabe’s day, when she was here last, things had never ever “reach crisis proportions”!
Trying to compare Mugabe’s Zimbabwe to what the country asunder Mnangagwa is just as futile as comparing a cobra and a black mamba - these are deadly snakes, there is no such thing as being better off being bitten by one and not the other!
For your own information, Ms Pillay, the late Walter Kamba was just one of the many Zimbabwean professionals who have compromised their professional ethics and self-respect for thirty pieces of silver.
He knew that Zanu PF was a party of corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous thugs, he knew the regime appointed him to spruce up its tarnished image. He accepted the cushy job and pinched his nose. Of course, Kamba is a sell-out and he knew it himself.
When Kamba finally stepped down as Vice Chancellor of UZ, he complained of “interfering hands in the running of the University”. He did not have to say it himself because everyone was saying it to themselves “And throughout your tenure as VC, you have done nothing to stop those interfering hands!”
To be fair Walter Kamba was not the only sell-out Zimbabwean professional; both Mugabe and Mnangagwa have had little trouble recruiting professionals to spruce up the image of the party and government. There is Professor Jonathan Moyo, Professor Mthuli Ncube, Tendai Biti and his MDC friends, Minister Kirsty Coventry, etc., etc.
Hacking off the 37 Mugabe years; sanitised them as having been better than the last 3 Mnangagwa years; will help us forget and forgive Mugabe. But if we are to learn all the important lessons from the Zanu PF dictatorship, then discard the Mugabe years; they are not just the Genesis of the dictatorship but the Old Testament!
“Kakangamwira Mugabe, kukanganwa chezuro nehope!” (To forgive and forget Mugabe is to forget yesterday’s trials and tribulations with night’s sleep!) as one would say in Shona.
We in Zimbabwe must remember Robert Mugabe as a corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous tyrant. Mnangagwa was his pupil who learnt well from the dictator and has taken over from where he left off. As for Walter Kamba, he was just one of the many sell-out Zimbabwean professionals; we have the great misfortune of having many, dead and alive.
6 comments:
When Professor Walter Kamba was appointed UZ Vice Chancellor in 1980, he was a well spoken academic held in high regard. When he spoke people listen to every word he said. I bet Kamba was one of the few individuals who had then PM Mugabe’s hotline number. It was exactly for that reason that Mugabe wanted him as VC and then chairperson of Election Supervision Commission.
Robert Mugabe knew, even as signed the Lancaster House Agreement paving the way for Zimbabwe’s independence, that he did not want democratic elections. Whilst he, like every other black nationalist had joined in the “One-man, one-vote!” chorus throughout the struggle for independence; he had no wish to honour that after independence. The only vote that counted, as far as he was concerned is a vote for Zanu PF and to be absolutely certain of Zanu PF victory he cheated and used every dirty trick in the book, including cold blooded murder of his political opponents, to secure a victory.
Having a well spoken and respected individual like Walter Kamba declare the rigged elections free, fair and credible was priceless.
The 1985 elections took place at the height of the Gukurahundi massacre, the worst politically motived wanton violence in the country’s history. Of course, everyone knew the real purpose of the massacre was to whip the late Dr Joshua Nkomo and PF Zapu comrades into political oblivion and clear the way for the imposition of a de facto one-party state. The whole election process that year was conducted under a dark cloud of a brutal war directed at the defenceless civilians. It was very thing a democratic election should not be and yet Kamba and his blind as a mole commission still declared the elections free, fair and credible.
Of course, Kamba was a sell-out and lost all credibility. By the time he left/resigned his post at UZ Mugabe would not even answer his calls. Mugabe used Kamba only to discard him like used toilet paper, just as the dictator had done with many, many other sell-outs.
Zimbabweans have nothing but contempt for Ms Navanethem Pillay, she too sold-out when she visited in 2012. And now she is wittering nonsense of an imaginary Walter Kamba, a far cry from the Mugabe boot-licker we all know.
The UN has always used a different yard stick, one significantly shorter than UN standard, to measure the human rights practices in Africa hence the reason the UN has accepted rigged elections in Zimbabwe. Of course, it is an insult as it re-enforces the notion that we are incapable of performing to the universal standard and we should not even bother to try! There are UN officials who believed this wholeheartedly and Ms Navanethem Pillay is certainly one of them.
Of course, she knows of Professor Walter Kamba's role in Zimbabwe's checked history of rigged elections. She knows he sold-out big time to Robert Mugabe and she will not even deny it. Yet she will still maintain that by Zimbabwe one foot long yardstick of a human rights activist - he is a hero par excellence precisely because we are incapable of producing better.
It is times like this that one is reminded of how the Indians in Africa had fought against discrimination and exploitation by the white colonialists and yer they looked down upon the black Africans and have treated them like scum, worse than most whites treated the blacks.
People like Ms Pillay are not fellow travellers in our search for a just, free and democratic Zimbabwe; they are our worst detractors in that, outwardly, they appear to be on our side but are doing they best to stop up attaining our goal for their own selfish reason - they are superior to us and want to keep it that way!
Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission Chairperson Loice Matanda Moyo has dismissed claims by suspended Zanu PF Youth league leaders Lewis Matutu and Godfrey Tsenengamu that business tycoon Kuda Tagwirei is corrupt and leading a corruption cartel that has captured the government.
She told the weekly Sunday Mail that the allegations by Matutu and Tsenengamu were baseless.
Of course, ZACC would dismiss the Matutu cartel list, these know those on the list are the untouchables and the commission will not dare even to conduct their token "catch and release"!
@ Sam Samuel
"What do you expect from these clowns. Free fuel anytime. Free latest cars. Husband on the bandwagon of the gravy train. Free money abroad. Every idiot and most uneducated person knows these cartels are corrupt. He gave Chiwenga a car. Simple corruption which does not need anyone to investigate. Chiwengas bought houses abroad for USD$10million. Is that too hard to investigate. How was the money sent abroad. Where did it come from. Can this idiot/clown Matanda whatever just shut up."
The IMF has just confirmed that Zimbabwe's reform programme is "off-track" and one of the reason for it is the country's failure to stamp out corruption. ZACC is not there to stamp out corruption but to give the illusion that it is stamping out corruption. The IMF understood this was the case all along and hence the reason they never forked out even one dollar to fund Zimbabwe's recovery plan - they knew the plan was going nowhere.
Zimbabwe is in this political and economic mess largely because we, Zimbabweans, have been unbelievably naive and gullible. We know, or should know by now, that Mnangagwa is the Godfather of corruption and yet we were naive enough to believe he would ever appoint a competent ZACC !
@ John
We are dying right now! If a big hospital like Pare has no painkillers what more of the rural hospitals!
Before you pick up the gun, get someone who can implement the reforms, just because MDC leaders sold-out does not mean no one else can implement them.
The trouble with people like you is you have never understood what the 2008 GNU was about and therefore how MDC sold-out! Only an idiot would seek a violent solution when there is a peaceful one, if only they open their eyes.
Gun! S***t! That will only result in a new generation of liberators who will claim they have the divine right to govern just as these Zanu PF thugs have done these last 40 years!
“Zimbabwe has too many smart, educated and talented people to be in such a mess.Zimbabweans are running the world all over but our country has been run down.
We must all give our country a new life, a new direction & a new image. Change will not just happen. We must cause it to happen,” tweeted Chamisa.
Zimbabwe has some of the most corrupt, incompetent and utterly useless political leaders in the world both in the ruling party and the oppositions and, to make matters worse, we have allowed these useless busy to stay way beyond their use-by dated!
The nation has risked life and limb to elect MDC leaders into power on the promise they will deliver the democratic changes the nation has been dying for. After 20 years in power, five of which in the GNU, MDC has failed to implement even one reform.
"Change will not just happen. We must cause it to happen!" You were an MP and even a minister, name one change you and your fellow MDC leaders have caused to happen?
If the people of Zimbabwe are serious about wanting change, then they must start by booting out the MDC who have been running with the hare and hunting with the hounds!
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