Let us start by defining the primary task the late Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends were entrusted to do by the people of Zimbabwe. The people risked life and limb to MDC leaders into power on the understanding the party will bring about the democratic changes, as the party’s name implied, the nation was dying for.
MDC was launched in 1999 and after 21 years on the political stage, 5 of which in the GNU, the party has failed to bring about even one meaningful democratic change. Not even one. Why?
Corruption, is the short answer!
MDC leaders were elected into positions of power and authority on the ticket of delivering the democratic changes to restore the people’s freedoms and rights including the right to free and fair elections and even the right to life itself. Sadly, as soon as they got into power they forgot about the democratic changes in pursuit of their selfish interests.
Mugabe bribed Morgan Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC leaders with the trappings of high office during the 2008 to 2013 GNU; the ministerial limos, generous salaries, US$4 million mansion for Tsvangirai, etc. With their snouts in the feeding trough, MDC leaders forgot about implementing the democratic reforms, the primary reason they were in the GNU.
A seat on the gravy train was enough for the greenhorns MDC leaders but after a while they have matured and so has their greed. Now they want it all!
Zimbabwe’s economy was already in serious trouble but the seizure of the white owned farms, ostensibly to give to landless peasants but in reality to give the Zanu PF ruling elite, was the hammer blow that destroyed the economy and from which it has never recovered. The farm grab was and still is the apex of Zanu PF corruption and greed.
MDC leaders have openly criticised the Zanu PF land reform policies and their disastrously economic consequences. For years the MDC leaders have refrained from joining in the scramble for land but not any more.
"There are many people from the opposition who have applied for land," Job Sikhala, MDC A MP reminded Minister for Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement, Anxious Masuka.
"We have heard that land is being distributed on a partisan basis."
“MDC members refused to apply at the advent of the allocation programme, and now like other late applicants, who include deserving youths with a background and qualifications in agriculture, have to wait for land to become available. Zanu-PF legislators interjected, wondering why the opposition MPs left their allocations so late,” commented The Herald.
The Herald was rubbing in the metamorphic transformation of the MDC leaders from the supposedly champions of democratic change to the corrupt and incompetent opportunists, indistinguishable from their Zanu PF counterpart. MDC leaders are now fighting for every scrap of the spoils of power to feed their insatiable greed.
In his book, The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe, David Coltart readily admitted the folly of participating in flawed elections and that MDC has participated out of greed.
“The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn’t now do the obvious – withdraw from the (2013) elections,” wrote Coltart.
“The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility.”
By participating in flawed elections MDC leaders have not only given the flawed “process credibility”, as Coltart acknowledged above, but more significantly given the vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy and thus are helping to perpetuate the Zanu PF dictatorship.
MDC leaders have conned the people into participating in these flawed and illegal elections on the falsehood the MDC has devised strategies to win rigged elections. They lied because they would never admit the really reason for participating was greed.
All the MDC leaders who have got into a position of power and authority, they have been dazzled by the power, wealth and good living and have completely forgot about the long suffering of those who elected and why. MDC leaders will never implement the democratic reforms the nation has been dying for. Never ever! They are now preoccupied with amass power and wealth for themselves.
“Takatuma mapete kumukaka!” (We send cockroaches to fetch milk!) as one would say in Shona.
41 years of Zanu PF misrule has left the country’s economy in ruins, basic services such as health care and education have all but collapsed and millions of our people are living in abject poverty. Zimbabwe is facing its worst ever existential threat and the need for meaningful democratic change have never been more urgent than it is today.
The sooner Zimbabweans finally accept that MDC leaders are corrupt, incompetent and will never deliver any meaningful democratic changes; the sooner the nation can get the competent men and women who will implement the reforms.
Zimbabweans must demand the implementation of the democratic reforms BEFORE the next elections. If the elections go ahead with no reforms, the nation must have them declared null and void. It will be insane to participate in the flawed 2023 elections or let Zanu PF get away with yet another rigged election.
4 comments:
Zimbabweans have a fundamental weakness, they will see what they want to see, not what is there regardless of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and they will believe in it damn the consequences. They have fallen into this trap again and again and still they refuse to learn. Of course, those who will not learn from the past are destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over again and pay dearly for their folly with each pass.
Following the 2017 military coup that booted Mugabe out of office many Zimbabweans rallied behind the coup plotters, they were the nation’s liberators and praised them to the high heavens. The people were conveniently forgetting that it was none other than Mnangagwa and his coup plotters who were the rock on which the Zanu PF dictatorship was built. Mugabe was merely the figure head and his removal changed nothing as Mnangagwa took over and the dictatorship lived on.
The people wanted to see Mugabe as not only the dictator but embodiment of the dictatorship itself and they believed his removal alone would usher in a new era of freedom and liberty. So when Mnangagwa proclaimed the “Second Republic, a new dispensation, etc.” it was all music to the people’s ears.
It was all nonsense of course because the November 2018 military coup marked the point when Lacoste, one Zanu PF faction prevailed over its rival faction G40. The people have been fighting Zanu PF for meaningful democratic change to dismantle the dictatorship and should have kept their eyes on the ball.
You are right, MDC leaders have failed to bring about even one democratic change in their 21 years on the political stage because as soon as they got into power they forgot the reforms to focus on feathering their own nest. Zanu PF has exploited this weakness, bribed the MDC leaders so now they run with the povo hare by day and hunt with the Zanu PF hounds by night. And the people, with their knack for seeing only what they want to see, have doggedly remained faithful to MDC leaders refusing to accept the evidence of the blatant betrayals.
MDC leaders will never implement any democratic reforms; they would have done so during the 2008 to 2013 GNU when they had the golden opportunity to do so. Chamisa and the whole opposition contingent will participate in the 2023 elections with not reforms in place; the people will believe the usual nonsense of the opposition devising strategies to win rigged elections.
The consequences of yet another rigged elections, is Zimbabwe will be dragged deeper and deeper into this hell-on-earth of our own making. The consequence of refusing to open our eyes for all these last 41 years is there is now a real danger of the nation sinking beyond the point of no return and becoming another Libya with all the death and destruction that entails.
@ Arthur Mntungwa
“The land dispute with ZANU has never been about ownership, black or white. It was about the way the land distribution was done. So, just because ZANU went ahead with land grabs using its control of the military forces of this country, doesn’t mean that if I’m opposed to their way of doing things, I should not in the end have land. Opposition to their land grabs methodology still stands. The same objective of land redistribution could still have been achieved through legislation, given that they had a two thirds majority in Parliament, or it could have been achieved through wooing opposition MPs. Julius Nyerere redistributed land in Tanzania to achieve is Ujamaa land policies, but he never killed any white farmers like ZANU did in Zim.”
The primary objective of the land redistribution was to resettle the peasants living in overcrowded and, often, poor marginal rural areas on the land where they can earn a decent living. To date, only a tiny number of rural peasants have been resettled.
Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies have used the need to resettle the peasants as cover for their own sinister plot to seize the farms and share the spoils among themselves. MDC leaders have hesitated using their own political power and authority to muscle in the scramble for farms for the ruling elite and their cronies. But as we can see, they have since thrown away all inhibitions and are openly and publicly demanding their share of the spoils of power.
Lord Acton was right in arguing that the same moral standards should be applied to all men, political and religious leaders included, especially since, in his famous phrase, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
Agreed, Zanu PF thugs have enjoyed absolute power compared to MDC leaders whose power has never risen to the same nauseating heights as that enjoyed by Zanu PF thugs. In your shallow mindedness you have condemned Zanu PF greed in looting the farms and forgiving MDC leaders for doing the same thing.
Of course, it is foolish, to say the least, to condemn the corruption of those enjoying absolute power and condone the corruption of those yet to reach the dizzying heights of enjoying absolute power. This is not a beauty contest and the consequence of corruption are no more devastating to the victims because the perpetrator is the dictator himself or his acolyte.
The people of Zimbabwe risked life and limb to elect MDC leaders into office to implement the democratic reforms to end the Zanu PF dictatorship, oppression and greed. They did not risk life and limb to elect MDC leaders so that they could join and compete with Zanu PF thugs in the oppression and looting!
MDC leaders’ joining in the scramble for farms is but just one more example of MDC leaders’ greed and betrayal but the mother of all betrayals was the failure to implement even one reforms during the GNU and the participation in flawed elections giving the vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy. Patrick is right is portray MDC leaders as the proverbial cockroaches who were send to fetch milk but forgot the errant as they gauged themselves on the milk, many drowned!
Lord Acton writes to Bishop Creighton in a series of letters concerning the moral problem of writing history about the Inquisition. Acton believes that the same moral standards should be applied to all men, political and religious leaders included, especially since, in his famous phrase, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”:
I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position, like Ravaillac; but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greater names coupled with the greater crimes. You would spare these criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them, higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice; still more, still higher, for the sake of historical science.
@ Nhlanhla Moses
“Zimbabwe is still at rail-road crossing with regard to the Gukurahundi genocide whose resolution remains elusive forty-one (41) years on. The signage is unambiguously restricting any break-through whatsoever and the current state of affairs largely hinges on the faulty methodology of resolving the problem that is not centred on the victim but on the guilt-stricken but unrepentant perpetrator. The piercing pangs of guilt are a menace to the genocide masterminds themselves. They are fearful and need to be saved. Inevitably, both victim and perpetrator find themselves in a cycle of the dramatic irony of debilitating fear on the one hand and severe but unconfessed guilt on the other, respectively. Unless the approach is premises on the victim, as opposed to the so-called new dispensation and its self-baked Matabeleland Collective, the genocide will remain an eternal self-torture for the perpetrator and a scratched wound for the victim.”
Zimbabwe is NOT “at rail-road crossing” with regard to resolution of the Gukurahundi genocide. You want compensation for the victims and you are undecided whether to go by rail or road on the matter.
What you are refusing to accept is that the country has moved on. 41 years of Zanu PF corrupt and tyrannical rule has left the country in economic ruins, unemployment has soared to dizzying height of 90%, basic services such as education and health care have collapse and 50% of our people now living in extreme poverty.
So, who exactly are you expecting to cough-out the billions of dollars of compensation money?
Surely the nation’s primary concern as we witness the last days of the Zanu PF dictatorship should be on rebuilding the shuttered economy and restore all the freedoms and rights Zanu PF has denied us all these last 41 years. And not throw the nation into new turmoil, quarrelling about who suffered the most under the Zanu PF dictatorship when it is clear we all suffered!
Your agenda is no different from that of Robert Mugabe – you want to dominate. Mugabe’s excuse for starting Gukurahundi was to accuse Dr Joshua Nkomo and his PF Zapu members of starting the dissident insurrection. You excuse for seeking Gukurahundi mark 2 is to accuse the imploding Zanu PF of refusing to pay Gukurahundi compensation.
Who exactly is expected to pay the reparation bill; is it Zanu PF thugs or the Zimbabwean people who are not counted as the victims of the massacre. If it is the latter then they are as much victims of the Zanu PF misrule given the sorry state of the nation.
Zimbabwe has its work cut out rebuilding the nation from the ruins Zanu PF has left behind and it will be unforgivable if the nation fails the long suffering people of Zimbabwe in this task for whatever reason.
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