“Register To Vote If You Have Had Enough Of Zanu PF” was the headline of the article in Zimeye / Newsday.
Reading a few lines was enough to evoke memories of my first visit to Ingutsheni Mental Hospital in Bulawayo.
My mother and I were visiting my aunt and her family. My uncle was one of the a health worker at the Hospital and lived in the houses just outside the high security fence enclosing the Hospital grounds.
The mental patients were encourage to take part in physical activities such as playing football, watering the garden, etc. I observed one patient watering the garden with a leaking bucket. He fetched the water from a concrete tank and had to carry it 50 m or so to the vegetable bed. The leak was so bad that by the time he got to the bed, there was very little water left in the bucket.
He carried the bucket on his head and was soaked through and through in water and mud.
The health care worker, who had been keeping an eye on the patient, casually told his charge that he has the problem with the leaking bucket. The patient looked at the bucket and from his countenance it was clear the penny had finally dropped - he had a leaking bucket!
“I will carry the bucket on my shoulder!” announced the patient with triumph.
It was a hot day and the soaking helped to keep the patient cool. No harm done! We all laughed at the sheer insanity of it all, he was a mental case, and yet we all felt miserably sorry that a follow human being should suffer such an infliction!
I felt the same sickening feeling reading through the Newsday article. This was insanity at a national scale because I know the views expressed in the article are the views of many Zimbabweans out there!
“It is not fair to say Zimbabweans deserve the leaders they have. Whether through fear or otherwise, many in this land voted Zanu-PF into power,” argued the Newsday article.
So if “many in this land voted Zanu PF into power” and it really does not matter whether they did it under coercion then we deserve this corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship.
“If there was any rigging or intimidation, it was done by Zimbabweans. And so is the stealing that is rampant in government,” continued the Newsday lunatic.
“If”! After 41 years of rigged elections, this is a settled matter. It is foolish to ignore the reality of rigged elections given the nation has not escape the ensuing tragic consequence of the rigged elections - being stuck with a corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship. Just because the rigging “was done by Zimbabweans” does not make it alright or turn the tragic consequences into a pleasure!
In the March 2008 election, when the Zanu PF’s vote rigging juggernaut was force to lay idle for the first time since independence, the people did vote freely without fear or coercion. Morgan Tsvangirai garnered 73% of the vote according to Robert Mugabe’s own Freudian slip.
But before ZEC could announce the results the Zanu PF vote rigging juggernaut was switched on and swung back into action! After six weeks of cooking up the vote count; MDC’s parliamentary majority was reduced to single figure and Tsvangirai’s 73% was whittled down to 47%, enough to force a presidential run-off.
During the run-off the Zanu PF vote rigging juggernaut went into overdrive. As far as Zanu PF was concerned the run-off was all about punishing the people of Zimbabwe for having rejected the party and Mugabe in the March vote.
The party launched a military style Operation “Mavhotera papi?” (Whom did you vote for?) A rhetorical question whose answer was the wanton violence dished out by Zanu PF operatives backed by the Police, Army, CIO and Prison Service personal.
“What was accomplished by the bulleted cannot be undone by the ballot!” thundered Robert Mugabe, to remind all what the wanton violence was about. Mugabe “won” the run-off with 84% of the vote; the landslide victory was never in any doubt, the people had learned their lesson.
SADC leaders refused to recognised the 2008 elections as a free, fair and credible elections and refused to accept Mugabe and his Zanu PF as the legitimate government. The region body forced Mugabe to accept the need for the country to implement a raft of democratic reforms to ensure free and fair elections and the decommissioning of the Zanu PF vote rigging juggernaut.
Sadly, not even one democratic reform was implemented in the 2008 to 2013 GNU. The Zanu PF vote rigging juggernaut emerged out of the GNU years untouched and it is primed and going up through the gears as the 2023 elections approach.
“The activists’ work will go up in smoke if the youths do not register to vote and if Parliament does not ensure that the Registrar-General and Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) work according to the dictates of the Constitution,” announced the triumphant Newsday.
“Parliament ought to hold the Executive to account, but it is found wanting.”
The rigged 2018 elections delivered a landslide Zanu PF parliament. How can the same Parliament now “ensure” ZEC or any other state institutions delivery free, fair and credible elections when parliament itself is but a part of the Zanu PF vote rigging juggernaut?
The corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent MDC leaders not only wasted the golden opportunity during the GNU to implement the democratic reforms and dismantle the Zanu PF vote rigging juggernaut opposition. The lunatics are off call for mass voter registration, mass voting, etc. and none of which will slow down the Zanu PF the vote rigging juggernaut much less stop it.
It took the people of Zimbabwe nearly 20 years for them to finally accept that Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF cronies were corrupt, incompetent and, worst of all, ruthless tyrants who were riding roughshod over them, denying them the basic freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country and even the right to life. The people reached the consensus on the need for democratic reforms to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections and restore the people’s right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country.
The people have risked life and limb to elect Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friend into power on the understanding the party would implement the reforms to end the Zanu PF dictatorship. After 22 years, 5 of which in the GNU, MDC leaders have failed to implement even one reform. Ever since the GNU debacle the MDC lunatics have been participating in flawed and illegal elections to give the vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy in return for a share of the spoils of power.
How long will it take for the people of Zimbabwe to finally open their eyes and mind and finally realise the MDC leaders have all but abandoned their task of implementing the reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections.
MDC leaders do not believe Zanu PF will ever lose an election in which the thugs have carte blanche powers to rig, they only pretend to deceive the gullible and naive public. It is the people of Zimbabwe themselves who are insane to believe MDC leaders have Winning In Rigged Elections strategies, especially after 41 years of rigged elections!
2 comments:
@ Steele
“It is unfortunate that Moyo and his associates are victims of the toxic and deadly politics that they helped to create, perpetuate and ensured took root in the country, but it may also be a long overdue dose of karma.
Whichever way you look at it, so dangerous is this diabolical snake pit masquerading as politics that it nearly consumed Mnangagwa, who had to flee the country in the dead of night fearing for his life — such was its ferocity. After 40 years of independence, this is where we are today in Zimbabwean politics, a zero sum game — kill or be killed.
One would think that having nearly been a victim of such awfulness, once in power, he would be inclined to dismantle such a destructive political system. Instead, virtually all the same structures and actors remain in place, just a few changes at the very top. How can we expect things to change?
This brings us to the apology. Contrition can be a first step towards redemption and should not be taken lightly after all, how many of these fallen politicians have bothered to do the same? A prime example of another character who caused untold suffering to the people of Zimbabwe and almost single-handedly wiped out billions of dollars (US dollars or equivalent) in savings due to his and Zanu-PF's ruinous policies when he was Governor of Reserve Bank, Gideon Gono. To this day, he has never apologised.
This article is by no means meant to be an "obituary" of or even an epilogue on Moyo, primarily because he is a man that should never be written off, after all, intelligence and cunning are traits that will always stand him in good stead. He has tried to stay relevant via social media, but this is more out of curiosity than anything else for now. The damage has already been done. Above all though, he and his kind are a reminder of how the hope of a strong, fair, forward-looking and democratic Zimbabwe for all its people has been put on hold by selfish shortsighted politicians.”
Zanu PF thugs created the de facto one party state for the sole purpose of securing for themselves absolute power and to achieve that goal the party chucked out merit, stifled debate and democratic competition - the very basic requirement for an efficient and successful system. By creating a de facto one party dictatorship Zanu PF had per se condemned the party and, most important of all, Zimbabwe to failure.
The November 2017 military coup was all about rescuing Zimbabwe from the economic meltdown - proof that even the Zanu PF buffoons know that Zanu PF rule has been a total disaster for the nation.
Mnangagwa’s “Zimbabwe is open for business!” mantra was a genuine attempt to kick start the economy. It was a lead balloon that never even took off because it was clear military coup was first and foremost about securing absolute power in the Lacoste vs G40, the de facto one party state and all it entailed were to remain untouched. Investors are shrewd and savvy lot, they could see that Zimbabwe was still a pariah state and would not be fooled by some hot air mantra insist there was change when there was none!
It is naive to expect Zanu PF to change itself, that will never happen.
The nation had the golden opportunity to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship during the 2008 to 2013 GNU - Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends wasted the opportunity. We must now work to create another opportunity to implement the reforms.
His comments came shortly after a Chinese miner bragged that it had authority to displace the villagers because they had no title deeds to the land they were occupying.
Chamisa said it was even more disturbing that the same unsettling pattern happened in Chilonga, Chiredzi in Masvingo province, the diamond rich area of Chiadzwa, ethanol projects in Chisumbanje, and other resource-rich areas where locals were displaced.
"It is not an isolated incident, these things which are happening in Uzumba and Mutoko. It is a system where the ordinary people are disregarded and thrown off their land for the benefit of the elite," Chamisa said.
This is becoming a familiar pattern of politicians making a big song and dance of what is going wrong in the country when they are out of power and yet they did nothing about any of these things when they were in office. The problem of the rural people have no title deeds was a deliberated colonial policy designed to re-enforce the ethos of blacks as third class citizens who owned nothing of value. Zanu PF has kept the same policy for its own selfish political advantage.
MDC were in power during the 2008 to 2013 GNU and they have done nothing to end some of these social injustices. They have failed to implement even one democratic reform, which was their primary task in the GNU!
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