It was natural for then Zambia opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema (HH) to meet and hobnob with a fellow opposition leader like Nelson Chamisa. But now that HH is the President of Zambia his relationship with opposition leaders will be more guarded especially after reading the report he was plotting mischief against other Africa leaders.
“The opposition MDC-Alliance and the recently elected UPND of Zambia, have reportedly developed a plan to annihilate all long-standing ruling parties, especially former Liberation Movements in Africa by 2030 a senior MDC Alliance official from Harare who spoke to this reporter on condition of anonymity said,” reported Bulawayo 24.
“According to the official, the MDC-Alliance and its Zambian counterpart will initially roll out the project in East and Southern Africa.
“The two parties are said to have already established links with opposition groups in Uganda, Egypt, Nigeria, Cameroon, Rwanda, and Burundi.
“The official revealed that elections in 11 countries have so far been identified as providing opportunities for the project to be implemented.”
The 11 countries and the respective target political party are Angola MPLA, Lesotho All Basotho Convention, Kenya Jubilee Party Kenya, Zimbabwe Zanu PF, Nigeria All Progressive Congress, SA ANC, Botswana Botswana Democratic Party, Namibia SWAPO, Mozambique FRELIMO, Uganda National Resistance Movement and Tanzania Chama Cha Mapinduzi. All the 11 countries will be holding national elections between 2022 and 2025.
The report has touched raw nerves especially in regimes like Zanu PF who are paranoid about regime change and hence they have blatantly rigged elections denying their people their basic freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country and even the right to life.
Zanu PF has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans to establish and retain the de facto one party dictatorship in Zimbabwe and the party is not about to give up power.
The nearest Zanu PF has ever got to losing its iron grip on power was in 2008 to 2013 when the party was forced to go into Government of National Unity (GNU) following the party’s blatant cheating and wanton violence in the 2008 elections. The GNU was tasked to implement a raft of democratic reforms designed to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship and end the curse of rigged elections.
The task of implementing the reforms was left to Morgan Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC leaders including Nelson Chamisa who took over the leadership of the party after Tsvangirai’s death. Robert Mugabe bribed the MDC leaders with the trappings of high office and, with their snouts in the feeding trough, they forgot about the reforms.
MDC leaders have failed to implement even one democratic reform in five years, FIVE YEARS, of the GNU.
Ever since the GNU debacle, MDC leaders have participated in flawed and illegal elections to give vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy. Zanu PF has dangled a few gravy train seats to entice MDC to participate and the later have found these irresistible.
It is Nelson Chamisa and his MDC A that are giving vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy by participating in flawed and illegal elections. Even when Zanu PF has failed to produce something as basic as verified voters’ roll, MDC A have participated regardless.
"The removal of old parties would usher in a unified, liberal and pro-Western Africa. The project has the solid support of developed democracies that want to reverse Chinese and Russian influence in Africa,” the MDC A official explained.
“The project has solid support of developed democracies!” That is a blatant lie because when MDC failed to implement even one reform - proof of just how corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent MDC leaders were - the developed democracies deserted MDC in droves.
Even if HH had discussed with Chamisa and other progressive political opposition leaders the crying need for Africa to end the curse of rigged elections - not the annihilation plot suggested here - still HH had clearly pick the wrong partner to do this in MDC. MDC had already failed to implement the reforms and end the curse failed when the party had the golden opportunity to do so, HH should know this. It was naive, to say the least, to expect MDC leaders to do any better now.
By blubbering about a “MDC A and UPND plot to annihilate” Africa’s corrupt and tyrannical regimes the MDC A have created a diplomatic storm for Zambia and, worst of all, poisoned the debate for democratic change and free and fair elections. Zanu Pf has dismissed all demands for democratic reforms as a Western inspired regime change agenda, now they will say they have the evidence.
“Chawanzwa usaudza Chamisa; Chamisa idare ingorira napakati pohusiku!” (When you have something important, do tell Chamisa; is a bell that will ring out and broadcast the news even in the dead of night!) To paraphrase a Shona adage!
19 comments:
But the rights group said it would push for the exclusion of Zimbabwe from the United Nations if it continues to deny voting rights to its citizens in the diaspora.
Zimbabwe, which had only 4,8 million people voting in the 2018 general elections, is estimated to have over five million of its citizens in the diaspora who were denied the right to vote. The pressure group accused Mnangagwa's government of blocking its citizens from voting, fearing that those in the diaspora would account to 50% of the country's registered voters, and would not vote for it.
The blatant denial of the right to a meaningful vote of Zimbabweans in the diaspora is just another example of how Zanu PF is rigging the elections. It is absurd that an election in which 3 million out of a total of 8 million potential voters are denied the vote can ever be legal, free, fair and credible.
The right for all in the diaspora to be given an opportunity to vote is a cause well worth fighting for.
Still, it is impossible to see how registering with MyRight2Vote and then voting will change anything since that vote will never be included in the national vote.
The EU, USA and even SADC have all called for democratic reforms before elections in Zimbabwe and it is only the corrupt, incompetent and opportunistic opposition which has stubbornly refused to listen and continued to participate in flawed and illegal elections. By participating, the opposition have given legitimacy to the vote rigging Zanu PF. It is not clear what MyRight2Vote would want the UN to do when it is clear it is us Zimbabweans who are giving Zanu PF legitimacy!
Frankly MyRight2Vote’s activities are a complete waste of time, at best, and, at worst, mudding the waters and thus giving vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy.
It is a crying shame that before independence Africa’s nationalist leaders across the continent were united in the chorus call of “One man, one vote!” With the exception of a few leaders, notably Nelson Mandela, African leaders have discarded “One man, one vote!” in pursuit of absolute power and one man dictatorship.
The root cause of Africa’s economic mess and political instability is the failure to hold free, fair and credible elections.
Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema (HH) is not the first nor will he be the last African leader to rightly identify the failure to hold free and fair elections as the root cause of Africa’s problems - whilst in opposition. Many have done the same only to forget about free and fair elections once in position of power and authority.
The moral of this story is the HH should have picked his opposition partners with greater care and should have been careful what he said to them. I totally agree, this alleged plot to annihilate Africa’s old guard leaders has created a category 5 diplomatic hurricane for Zambia. HH must be deeply regretting ever meeting Nelson Chamisa and his loud mouth, bell ringing out even in the dead of the night!
@ Arthur Mntungwa
“Form and lead that opposition party that will do the right things as you propose and remove ZANU. Stop obsessing with the MDC.”
The people of Zimbabwe have risked life and limb to elect MDC leaders into office on the understanding the party would implement the democratic reforms the nation was dying for. After 21 years, 5 of which in the GNU, MDC leaders have failed to implement even one reform. It is imperative that MDC leaders should be held to democratic account for this failure.
Of course, MDC leaders have sold-out and if you don’t see anything wrong with that it must be because you are mentally blind!
Those seeking to silence the few demanding democratic accountability of all our political leaders are the enemies of change and good governance!
@ Abednico Mweembe Mweembe
“Fortunately HH will never listen that to rubbish.”
HH would want to push the agenda for free, fair and credible elections without having to defend it as a regime change agenda sponsored by the west which what this story is suggesting. Like it or not the MDC’s blundering has costed HH the moral high ground in this fight!
@ Razi Emile
“This Nomusata Garikai speaks for Zanu PF. The idea is to get all African Governments to disassociate with Chamisa.
This Garikai thing will never buy a Ferrari in Zimbabwe because of Zanu misgovernance since 1980. Garikai has learnt to feel contentment from owning a bicycle which has no tyres as his property of pride.”
How has MDC’s failure to implement even one reform in 21 years, 5 of which in the GNU helped to end Zanu PF dictatorship?
You just cannot stomach being told the truth that MDC sold-out and by participating in flawed and illegal elections, Chamisa and company are giving legitimacy to the vote rigging Zanu PF.
HH was right to focus on the need for Africa to hold free and fair elections but the way MDC has cast this struggle as “a plot to annihilate’ Africa’s old guard sponsored by the West will make the task that much more difficult to accomplish. Of course, HH must be regretting ever meeting Chamisa, the man who could not be trusted to handle anything with composure and decor!
@ Prisca Ncube
“What a bad taste of an article. I even wish it was never written. You don’t paddle falsehood and make them into facts. With all due respect i have for you Nomsa, this article deletes all good work you have done for years.”
I beg to differ!
I can well imagine HH discussing with Nelson Chamisa and other progressive opposition leaders the crying need for Africa to deal with the curse of rigged elections and bad governance. However by portraying this matter as a “plot to annihilate” Africa’s old guard sponsored by the West the MDC official, whoever he/she was, has made the fight for free and fair elections tough. Zanu PF has resisted demands for meaningful democratic reforms under the pretext that this is a Western driven agenda and the regime will take this story as proof of their concern.
MDC leaders have had the golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms that would have ended the Zanu PF dictatorship years ago. They have failed to implement even one reforms because they are corrupt and incompetent.
These are all historic facts and not falsehoods.
If you are saying there is no MDC official who said these things then the accusation of paddling falsehoods must be laid at the door of the person who wrote the original article. But given how corrupt and incompetent MDC leaders have already proven to be, it is easy to see one of them saying such things!
In the interest of informative debate, you should do is explain what you consider to be falsehoods.
@ Moffat Dube
“The way you get agitated on behalf of political parties you will die with hypertension depression.”
If Zimbabweans out there had taken the responsibility of holding the country’s leaders to democratic account with the seriousness and urgency the matter demands the country would not be a Banana Republic in which 49% of the population are living in abject poverty where basic services such as health care and education have all but collapsed.
Millions of Zimbabweans are facing heart breaking economic and social hardships not because they are “agitated on behalf of political parties” but rather as the consequences of decades of bad governance. This situation is getting worse and not better and the nation is not going to got out of this man-made hell-on-earth by people burying their heads in the sand and do nothing to end the curse of bad governance.
Nations get the government they deserve and we in Zimbabwe certainly deserve the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship complete with its entourage of equally corrupt and incompetent opposition parties.
@ Abednico Mweembe Mweembe
“So you mean you are cleverer than HH and his team and you want to tell them who to befriend? HH and NC have known each other for many years not after Zambian elections as you foolishly think. You see in this country we have a lot of pretenders who would pretend to dislike Zanu but inside themselves like the party and would do anything to insult those who are a threat to it like MDC alliance.
You have been not happy with MDC alliance bcoz it is clear that it has huge chance to topple Zanu hence you have teamed up with other pro Zanu gangs to undermine the party. Why don' t you demand for reforms from Zanu?
What progress have you made in bringing about reforms by insulting Chamisa daily? Is Nomsa your wife .Each time she write rubbish any article like this one you will say something defending her.”
I totally agree with Nomusa that if I was HH I would not want to be pushing the democratic reform agenda in Africa on the coat-tail of a Western sponsored regime change agenda. The right to a meaningful say in the governance of one’s country is not a privilege which tyrants like Mnangagwa feel they can give to some and deny to others. The demand for free and fair elections must be fought for on its own merits alone without having to be mixed up with what the West want!
If HH agrees with fighting for democratic changes must be separated from the West’s agenda then he must be disappointed with the MDC’s blundering incompetence in the handling of this cause. If he agrees with the MDC’s handling, then he is wrong. I hope you are not suggesting that HH and his team can never be wrong!
You cannot bear to see MDC held to democratic account on anything; in your blinked myopic view anyone who holds MDC to account must be a Zanu PF supporter.
If MDC had implemented the democratic reforms during the GNU when they had the golden opportunity to do so then the Zanu PF dictatorship will be history. By participating in flawed elections MDC are giving Zanu PF legitimacy and I am fighting to end this insanity. If you think a Zanu PF supporter would do these things then please yourself!
@ Charles Tendai Chinya
“Mr Mukori writes from where?? Come home and lead us.”
Here we go again, you are focusing on the messenger and not the message.
My message is Zimbabweans must open their eyes and see MDC leaders for what they really are - corrupt and incompetent who sold-out by failing to implement even one reform these last 21 years and who are now giving Zanu PF legitimacy by participating in flawed elections. Zimbabweans must put an end to this insanity by refusing to participate in these flawed elections and demand reforms before elections.
What Zimbabweans need to get out of the mess Zanu PF landed the nation into is to think for themselves and stop allowing themselves to be led by the nose like the bull at the market!
The message will not be any more clearer because I live is Zimbabwe or live on Mars!
@ Arthur Mntungwa
“Wilbert Mukori Yes, we know that. Then you take the lead and show everyone how things are done. We have heard you. Now take the bull by its horns!!”
Telling Zanu PF buffoons that they are blatantly rigging the 2023 elections by denying 3 million in the diaspora the vote, by failing to produce a verified voters’ roll, etc. The regime is dangling the usual few gravy train seats, share of the annual Political Party Finance Act payout and the newly added POLAD perks to entice the opposition to participate and thus give Zanu PF legitimacy.
The whole world know that MDC leaders are corrupt and incompetent and sell-out.
After 41 years of rigged elections the people of Zimbabwe are demanding an end to this madness. Zanu PF and its surrogate political acolytes are holding the nation to ransom by holding flawed elections and participating to give Zanu PF legitimacy. The only sure way to break this cycle is to declare the 2023 flawed elections null and void to create the political spare for the appointment of a body that will implement the reforms.
If you don’t call that taking the bull by the horns, then you don’t know what is!
At the inauguration, President Emmerson Mnangagwa had the indignity of having to share the platform with the opposition that the country's courts have ruled to be illegitimate. His spokesperson, George Charamba recently attacked Hichilema as a "sellout" and it appears the ill-feeling between the two administrations is persisting.
UPND spokesperson Joseph Kalimbwe said Hichilema and his party were being targeted by Zanu-PF cyber-attacks which he said were "scandalous".
"We are in Zambia talking about the need to tackle corruption in our country but across the border Zanu-PF supporters think the message is directed at them and so they start to attack and demonise us," Kalimbwe tweeted.
"Not even our own political opponents attack us like they do. It's scandalous!.”
The report that Chamisa and President Hichilema were plotting to annihilate Africa’s old guards would only have inflamed the Zanu PF regimes. MDC A official who revealed the plot said the West was behind the plot, this is the red-rag to the Zanu PF bull!
@ Abednico Mweembe Mweembe
“Wena Mukori you have been poking into a wrong hole for a long time now. Demand for reforms from Zanu. You always think fighting for reforms started with MDC instead it started in the 50s up to this day we still fight for it does not make sense to accuse mdc for not implementing reforms. That is silly.”
You are a simpleton and it is therefore not surprising that you should find it very difficult to grasp anything beyond the 1 + 1 = 2.
Whilst no one expect you to be a rocket scientist, however to exercise your right to vote, for example, you are expected to have a discerning mind to think for yourself and not to be always following blindly no questions asked. If you had the discerning mind then you would not be talking of “Demand for reforms from Zanu PF!”
You would know the people have Zimbabwe have risked life and limb to elect MDC leaders into power on the understanding the party will bring about the democratic reforms the nation has been dying for all these years. If the people believed Zanu PF would bring about these reforms then why have they bothered risking life and limb electing MDC to do it?
After 21 years, 5 of which in the GNU, MDC leaders have failed to deliver even one reform and, worst of all, the corrupt and incompetent MDC leaders are the ones now keeping Zanu PF in power by participating in flawed elections giving Zanu PF legitimacy.
So if you understand what is really going on here you would see that it is not only foolish to demand reforms from Zanu PF but, worst of all, the foolishness fails to identify MDC betrayal as the new stumbling block in the search for change.
People risked life and limb to elect MDC to implement reforms and people must hold them to account and not some one else. If MDC leaders have proven incompetent to implement the reforms, which they have, you replace them with men and women who will carry out the important task.
Your idea that MDC should be allowed to stay in power regardless their failure to deliver change and ask Zanu PF to deliver the changes instead beggars the question what use is MDC then?
@ Abednico Mweembe Mweembe
If the demand freedom, justice and liberty started ten, a hundred or a million years ago what difference did that make? During the 2008 to 2013 MDC leaders are the golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms that would have dismantled the Zanu PF dictatorship; they failed to implement even one token reform because they are corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent!
@ Arthur Mntungwa
“Repeating what you have said ad infinitum like a scratched record is certainly not taking the Bull by its horns. Get your hands dirty and lead from the front, not from Cyberspace!”
The real big challenge here is to force a nation that has been brainwashed into helpless zombies, totally incapable of one coherent thought. For a nation that has blundered from pillar to post for the last four decades, it is not action that has been lacking but rational thinking - a brave new world a brainwashed nation has never known!
Zimbabwe’s greatest challenge is not doing something but doing the right thing, the rational thing!
This is a farce, anyone who knows what is happening in Zimbabwe will tell you the 2013 Constitution was "dictated by Mugabe", as MP Paul Mangwana boasted soon after the 2013 referendum. The nation was duped into passing that dictator's decree and no amount of tinkering with it will make it a democratic constitution.
@ Stonecold Matandamanyoro
“Wilbert Mukori in all your writings its apparent that you attack the MDC a lot. Why can’t you put your boots on the ground and show people how its done other than just making noise with no solution. Chamisa is not Tsvangirai neither is Mnangagwa a Mugabe. If Zanu PF is attacking MDC A from one angle and you attack it from the other; won’t you colluding with Zanu PF in that area? Can you pin point where Chamisa, Sikhala and Biti have been corrupt as you say coz diamonds are being syphoned every day but it has to be MDC that us corrupt. Mdc never had power to change anything in the GNU that is why Mugabe made sure the Ministries like defence, home affairs and justice remain under Zanu PF control.”
If I have heard your arguments once I have heard them a thousand times and it is always the same bottom line - “I subscribe to the notion that those in public office must be held to democratic account, however I don’t want MDC A, Nelson Chamisa, etc. held to democratic account!”
You are just an empty headed bigot like any other Zanu PF bigot out there; pretending to be fighting for democracy, freedom and justice when in reality you are fighting to replace Zanu PF just as Zanu PF was fighting to replace the white colonialists.
The people of Zimbabwe have risked life and limb to elect MDC leaders for the express purpose of bringing about the democratic changes the nation was dying for. After 21 years, 5 of which in the GNU, MDC has failed to implement even one reform. The nation is still stuck in this mess because MDC leaders sold-out and only a dimwit would hold Zanu PF or whoever else you think to democratic account for it!
“Put your boots on the ground, form your own political party, etc.” these are all feeble excuses to justify stifling debate and silencing criticism of MDC leaders. Are you suggesting then that freedom of expression, holding those in public office to account, etc. are rights to be enjoying by those with “boots on the ground, etc.”?
Zimbabwe is in this economic and political mess and it is none other than those with the boots on the ground, Zanu PF and MDC, who landed the nation into this mess. It is but foolish to say the same village idiots have the exclusive right to find the solution, we would not be in the mess if they were not idiots!
“Can you pin point where Chamisa, Sikhala and Biti have been corrupt.” In failing to implement even one reform in 21 years! In participating in flawed and illegal elections only to give Zanu PF legitimacy!
Voter registration has been very sluggish but, no doubt, ZEC will find ways of boosting the numbers of registered voters especially in the so-called Zanu PF rural stronghold where the voters have been reduced to medieval serfs beholden to the overbearing Zanu PF thugs. ZEC will never produce a verified voters’ roll, it has never done so in the last 41 years, although this is a legal requirement and so no one will ever know where the additional registered voters came from. It is all part and parcel of the vote rigging, of course.
This is all a farce, we all know Zanu PF is rigging the election and MDC A and the rest of the opposition are playing along participating in the farce to give Zanu PF legitimacy. MDC A are after the few gravy train seats and the share of the annual Political Party Finance Act pay-out, the reward for participating in the flawed elections.
A FACTION of the MDC led by Mr Douglas Mwonzora says it will take legal action against Mr Nelson Chamisa if he clings on to the name MDC-Alliance. It is understood that Mr Mwonzora, who is the country's main opposition leader by parliamentary representation, is also set to recall more of Mr Chamisa's allies who have not attended party meetings.
This comes as hordes of defiant MDC legislators, who refused to recognise Mr Mwonzora as the opposition leader, were recalled early this year
The MDC-Alliance is a group of seven political parties that came together on the 5th of August 2017 after signing an electoral pact not to contest each other, but to field one council candidate and one parliamentary candidate and one Presidential candidate so as not to split the vote and remove Zanu-PF from power.
The MDC-T, Mr Damba, said was the biggest partner in the Alliance and its president was the presidential candidate as well as the chairperson of the Coalition Principals Forum.
This is just a waste of time and energy and, most important of all, a betrayal of the people of Zimbabwe. The people have risked life and limb to elect MDC leaders on the understanding they will bring about the democratic changes the nation was dying for.
MDC leaders have not only failed to implement even one reform even when they had the golden opportunity to do so during the GNU, they are the ones giving vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy by participating in flawed elections.
MDC has always been dogged by endless dog-eat-dog bickering and fighting amongst themselves and ever since the death of Tsvangirai this has gone into overdrive! As long as MDC remains the country’s main opposition, Zimbabwe’s fight for a just and democratic country will remain on hold!
@ Nomazulu
For the record, I have read many of Nomazulu’s articles and I think she has contributed a great deal in the mental enlightenment of Zimbabweans - the one thing the nation has been starved of for generation. And I sincerely hope that she continues in this important task.
As regards the above article, Nomazulu has clearly got the wrong end of the stick.
My take from Mandla Ndlovu’s article is an MDC A official who said Chamisa and Hichilema were plotting to ouster Africa’s old guard “with the help of the Western nations”. If Ndlovu fabricated the story and no MDC A official ever said that then I had no way of knowing that. I notice, you have not offered any evidence to prove Ndlovu fabricated the story.
Would I put it beyond MDC A official saying something like that? The answer is no, MDC leaders have blundered in many, many way much worse than the case here and so I believed Ndlovu was telling the truth.
I am not jealous of President Hakainde Hichilema’s success as President of Zambia and wish him and everyone in Zambia well. My sympathy with him and the diplomatic fire the unguarded MDC A official’s remark had ignited especially the bit about getting assistance from the West.
My anger with MDC is over the party’s failure to implement democratic reforms in Zimbabwe when they had the chance to do so, over the party’s participation in flawed elections and giving Zanu PF legitimacy and over mudding the waters by bringing in the issue of the West helping in the fight for democracy as if this was all about the West and we are just a side show.
True, I have repeated hundreds of thousands of times that it is insane to participate in flawed elections expecting a different result and will say it millions of times more as long as people continue participating in flawed elections. You can say that it is I who is insane but I know it is those participating in the elections who are insane.
I would argue you, Nomazulu, to read my article again and you will find everything I said above is true!
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