“Yesterday (MDC) Mhondoro youths launched a vigorous voter registration campaign under the 1 million campaign banner in memory of one the youths who was brutally murdered!” announced mdcmhondora on twitter. The comment was copied to the party’s leaders, Nelson Chamisa and far and wide.
Murdered by whom?
What crimes had the youth committed?
Where the murderers arrested and
punished?
What assurance are there that this will
not be repeated again?
There are a thousand and one questions
one would ask. The answer to the first and last questions above are by Zanu PF
operatives and the one thing that is certain is the Zanu PF inspired violence
will return if the party should ever feel it’s iron grip on power is threatened.
Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections were a
watershed in that Zanu PF showed the world just what the party would do to
retain absolute power. The party ordered the counting of the March 2008 vote to
stop and in the six weeks recount it whittled down Tsvangirai’s 73% vote, by
Mugabe’s own Freudian slip, to 47% - enough to force a run-off.
Zanu PF’s primary focus during the
run-off was to punish the people of Zimbabwe for having rejected Mugabe and Zanu
PF in the March vote. The party used war veterans and Zanu PF youths backed by
the Police, Army and CIO to destroy property, intimidate, beat, rape and over
500 people were brutally murdered.
“What was achieved by the bullet cannot
be changed by the ballot!” thundered Robert Mugabe.
The 2008 to 2013 GNU was meant to
implement a raft of democratic reforms to ensure the blatant cheating and
wanton violence of 2008 will not be repeated ever again. Sadly, not even one
reform was implemented. Not one!
The task of implementing the reforms
during the GNU fell to Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends. Mugabe bribed the
MDC leaders with the trappings of high office and, with their snouts in the
feeding trough, they completely forgot about the reforms for the five years of
the GNU.
SADC leaders, who were the guarantor the
GNU would implement the reforms, tried to have the July 2013 Zimbabwe elections
postponed until reforms were implemented. They warned Tsvangirai and company it
would be folly to participating in the elections with no reforms.
“If you go into elections next month, you
are going to lose; the elections are done!” SADC leaders warned Tsvangirai in
June 2013, according to Dr Ibbo Mandaza who attended the SADC Summit in Maputo,
Mozambique. Tsvangirai and company paid no heed.
Zanu PF went on to blatantly rig the 2013
elections as SADC leaders had rightly predicted.
There was very little violence in 2013
and 2018, nothing compared to 2008, but only because Zanu PF had completely
overhauled its vote rigging schemes to deliver a landslide victory without
having to resort to the use of violence. The party has deployed the war
veterans and other party operatives just to remind the electorate the party has
the capacity to use violence and can and will use violence if election victory
is threatened.
So, every MDC leader and supporter knows
that if this so called “vigorous voter registration campaign under the 1
million campaign banner” was ever successful then Zanu PF will respond by
stepping up the violence. Remember, Zanu PF has retained all its 2008 carte
blanche dictatorial powers to rig elections thanks to MDC leaders’ failure to implement
the reform and stubborn refusal to postpone elections until the reforms are in
place.
What is almost certain to happen is that
the 2023 elections will be relatively peaceful because Chamisa and company have
no intention of posing a serious political challenge to Zanu PF. Ever since the
GNU debacle, MDC leaders have given up on implementing the reforms to guarantee
free and fair elections for a cosy you scratch my back and I will scratch yours
arrangement with Zanu PF.
The post 2008 GNU political arrangement
entails Zanu PF remaining the ruling party with the vote rigging powers to
secure 2/3 majority plus the presidency. The party will keep all its 2008 vote
rigging powers but will only evoke these powers if anyone should threaten its
dominance. MDC leaders will contest the elections to give the vote rigging Zanu
PF legitimacy and will win the 1/3 or so of the gravy train seats plus the
corresponding share of annual Political Party Finance Act pay out.
Zanu PF’s legitimacy is derived from MDC
leaders getting the ordinary Zimbabweans to participate in the flawed
elections. The MDC leaders have been telling the people that the reforms are no
longer necessary because the party can still win rigged elections.
In their naivety in believing MDC can win
rigged elections the people are giving the vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy and
thus help perpetuate their own oppression and suffering.
Of course, it is insane for anyone to
believe in win rigged elections especially when there are no limits to what Zanu
PF can do as the 2008 elections showed! How many more years will it take before
the penny finally drop on the sheer stupidity of participating in flawed
elections to give the vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy?
5 comments:
The are two lessons Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies have learnt following the humiliation of being forced into the 2008 to 2013 GNU. The first lesson was to adapt. Before the GNU, Zimbabwe was a de facto one party state, a Zanu PF dictatorship to be exact. The GNU forced Zanu PF to seek a compromise arrangement in which the party retained its dictatorial dominance whilst maintaining the outward facade of a multi-party Zimbabwe. The party has even allowed the opposition to win a few gravy train seats to entice them to participate in flawed and illegal elections Zanu PF needed to secure its 2/3 majority and win the presidency.
The second lesson Zanu PF has learnt is to tone down its dictatorial powers, be subtle and not blatant. So instead of the blatant, in your face, cheating and wanton violence of the 2008 elections; Mnangagwa even promised to give back the vote to all Zimbabweans in the diaspora only to do nothing about. The party will fine tune some of the old and trusted vote rigging methods such as failing to produce a verified voters' roll, spending a fortune on Chiefs and other key players who will then do the party's dirty bidding during elections, etc.
Zanu PF will only resort to wanton violence if the more subtle vote rigging methods have failed and, even then, the party will go the extra mile to hide the evidence.
Nelson Chamisa and the rest of the MDC leaders know they are corrupt and incompetent and they wasted their opportunity to implement the reforms during the GNU. Robert Mugabe bribed them, exploited their weaknesses, to make sure they forgot about implementing the reforms during the GNU and afterwards they accepted the subordinate role in the farcical multi-party Zimbabwe.
Chamisa and company know they are participating in these flawed elections to win the few gravy train seats Zanu PF is dangling as bait. And by participating they will give the vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy.
No one has ever taken MDC's post election complains that Zanu PF stole the elections seriously because everyone knew without reforms in place Zanu PF would rig the elections. Indeed, Chamisa is just being childish in complaining about rigged elections when he boasted "MDC A had stringent measures to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections!"
If the elections were free, fair and credible it is ZEC that should be launching a vigorous voter registration exercise because it is its duty to make sure as many Zimbabweans as possible are given the opportunity to register and then to vote in every election. The very fact that it is the voters themselves who have to jump the many hoops just to register to vote goes to show this is a flawed and illegal process. The real big question is why are the opposition politicians tolerating this if they were not working in cahoots with Zanu PF?
In a communiqué, the Nelson Chamisa-led opposition party said it had managed to attract the rural populace through the party's Zimbabwe agenda 2021 which is targeting six million voters for the 2023 elections.
"The national executive council (NEC) noted the significant progress that has been made so far in implementing agenda 2021. The agenda has gathered momentum throughout all provinces in Zimbabwe. The enthusiasm both in rural and urban dwellers on the need for convergence is encouraging. Citizens are mobilising to win Zimbabwe for change," read a communiqué issued by the party after its NEC meeting.
"The people's party is on the move. It's getting stronger by the day. There is a stampede among ordinary people to buy party cards and become party members. The party is accelerating its membership drive in recruiting and mobilising for victory. The six million registered voter target is getting close to being achieved."
But Zanu-PF spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo described the claims by the MDC Alliance as "wishful thinking".
This is just part and parcel of the MDC’s “Win In Rigged Election (WIRE)” narrative to justify why the party failed to implement even one reform during the GNU and why it continues to participate in these flawed and illegal elections.
The opposition would have found many votes from the 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora; they are not so easily intimidated by the Zanu PF thugs as is the case with the rural voters, for one thing. In 2018 Mnangagwa promised the people in the diaspora will have the vote but has not kept his promise.
The regime had time to amend no few than 30 different sections of the constitution to consolidate the party’s dictatorial strangle hold but had no time to extend the postal vote to the 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora. 5 million voted in 2018 and therefore the 3 million is 38% of the 8 million potential voters!
It is telling that MDC leaders have once again said nothing about Zanu PF denying 38% of the electorate their right. It is all water off a duck’s back as far as Chamisa and company are concerned. They know Zanu PF will rig these elections and they are participating to win the few gravy train seats Mnangagwa is giving away as bait. They false narrative of winning rigged elections is to hide their greed.
The challenge is for the ordinary Zimbabweans to finally open their eyes and see MDC leaders for what they really are – corrupt, incompetent and sell-outs. It is insane to believe in this WIRE nonsense especially after 41 years of rigged elections.
Like it or not by participating in these flawed and illegal elections Zimbabweans are shooting themselves in the foot by giving legitimacy to the vote rigging Zanu PF. And we are being conned again and again by Chamisa and company, village idiots in their own right! “Benzi inyama yegakava!” (The village idiot is stubbornly idiotic!) as one would say in Shona.
@ Abednico Mweembe Mweembe
“That is great stuff more work must be done in rural areas before rotten maize is delivered to those areas.”
The rural areas are Zanu PF strong holds because the party has reduced the rural voters into nothing but medieval serfs beholden to the overbearing Zanu PF operatives including war veterans, party youths and the traditional leaders. Last Tuesday, 25 May, Mnangagwa handed over 18 twin-cab Isuzu trucks, the first batch to be given to the country’s 270 chiefs – down payment for their part in frog matching the rural voters to attend Zanu PF rallies and to vote for the party.
Abednico, it is either you are a Zanu PF double agent playing the dumb MDC supporter or you are indeed a dumb MDC supporter. Sadly for Zimbabwe we have more than our fair share of idiots from both camps and hence the reason the nation is stuck!
@ Sondela Kuboni
“We want our Mthwakazi state, where political parties will get into an election mode for 3 month in every 5 years as opposed to election mode for 4yrs with one year reserved for development. Continue outdoing each with more and more electioneering mode.”
Yes Zanu PF and MDC have been in electioneering mode for 4 out of 5 years if not 5 out of 5 years because they have brought about nothing of substance.
As for you and your Mthwakazi friends you have spend all your time sabre-rattling. You are itching for a tribal/regional confrontation, you want to drag the nation into yet another meaningless bloodshed just as Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs did in 1983 with Gukurahundi.
You talk of seeking development and yet has never ever articulated anything of substance because you cannot think of any. You are no different from Mnangagwa and his 2017 “Zimbabwe is open for business!” mantra that was still born. Investors are a shrewd lot, they could see that Zimbabwe was still a pariah state and would not be fooled by the rhetoric.
Your sabre-rattling is marking Zimbabwe as a politically unstable nation stumbling for one crisis to the next. Only a fool like you would think that is conducive to stability, peace and development.
If there is any more innocent blood shed in Zimbabwe, history will remember that it was people like you who started the fire! There is absolutely nothing to be gained by dividing the country. Nothing!
MDC leaders know that without reforms Zanu PF will just rig the elections just as happened for the last 41 years. MDC leaders are participating because they are after the few gravy train seats Zanu PF is offering to entice the opposition to participate. By participating the opposition are giving legitimacy to the vote rigging Zanu PF who would otherwise find themselves in the sin-bin as happened in 2008.
MDC leaders have to keep up the narrative they are winning rigged elections to justify why they keep participating in the flawed elections and to hide their real reason - greed.
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