Zanu PF is a party of thugs who got into politics for the sake of securing political power, absolute power, and the influence and wealth it brings. They don’t care about anything or anyone else.
Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies presented themselves to the nation as the champions fighting to end white colonial rule and securing freedom, justice and economic prosperity for all. This was but a necessary disguise, the wolf in a sheep coat. To the ordinary Zimbabwean, Zanu PF’s 41 year rule has been that of a wolf let loose amongst the helpless sheep.
Shared power, influence and looted wealth is the glue that has held Zanu PF thugs together and stopping them fighting amongst themselves. Wealth is finite and with time the nation’s wealth started to dwindle, especially given the insatiable appetite and wastefulness of the Zanu PF thugs; with the glue gone, the infighting in Zanu PF has gone up through the gears this last decade. It is now overdrive!
“Zimbabwe's 2017 coup coalition collapses!” screamed the Bulawayo24/The News Hawk headline.
“The fact that Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga is contemplating challenging President Emmerson Mnangagwa for the Zanu-PF presidency at the party's elective congress next year, while factions loyal to the two protagonists are slugging it out at various levels of the party, including at provincial and district levels, is testimony to the fact that the 2017 coup coalition has collapsed.
“Under the coup arrangement, Mnangagwa was meant to pass on the baton to Chiwenga in 2023, but no sooner had he assumed power than he started consolidating his grip by, among other tactics, purging Chiwenga's allies, with the aim of remaining at the helm, setting the stage for a power battle between the two gladiators.”
Robert Mugabe had manage to pacify the demanding but wasteful Zanu PF thugs by doling out loot hand over fist. He was lucky in that he inherited the Biblical seven fat cows and seven fat ears of corn from the Smith regime. When the wealth from Smith ran out in the late 1990s, Mugabe turned to the only other asset left - land. The seizure of the white owned farms to give, mainly, to party loyalists led to the collapse of the country’s once very productive agricultural sector and it took with it the economy.
The Zimbabwe economy shrunk by a staggering 50% in the period 2000 to 2008 alone and it has never ever recovered to this day.
So Mnangagwa and his coup plotter inherited one thin cow and one thin ear of corn from Mugabe following the November 2017 coup. It is no surprise the dog-eat-dog factional fighting that resulted in Joice Mujuru and her faction being booted out in 2014 and then Mugabe and his G40 in 2017 continued unabated after the coup.
Soon after the coup President Mnangagwa promised “new democratic dispensation, a Second Republic” and even promised to hold free, fair and credible elections. Some people believed him whole heartedly whilst a few expressed their doubts.
Would the coup plotters risk their lives in staging the coup to seize power only to risk losing it eight months later in free, fair and credible 2018 election! It should be noted too that the coup plotters were the ones who had blatantly rigged elections in the past to keep Mugabe in power; it is naive, to say the least, to expect them to give up these dictatorial powers now when rigging the elections would secure power for themselves.
The sceptics were right; Mnangagwa and company blatantly rigged the 2018 elections and never even bothered to implement even one token democratic reform.
The dog-eat-dog infighting in Zanu PF today is proof, if proof was needed, that the party members are as hungry for absolute power now as ever before. There was no chance of Zanu holding free and fair elections in 2018 and nothing has changed on that front.
The opposition’s participation in the 2023 elections is only tolerated by Zanu PF purely for the purpose of giving some modicum of credibility to the flawed and illegal electoral process and, by extension, giving legitimacy to the vote rigging Zanu PF. The opposition are nothing more than jackals at a multi-clan hyena kill. Any foolhardy jackal caught between the kill and the circling hyena clan will provide a nice hors d’oeuvre.
For all their political posturing Nelson Chamisa and company are participating in these elections to win the few gravy train seats Zanu PF is giving away to entice the opposition to participate. As much as the people are desperate for real political change and a meaningful say in the governance of the country; that will never ever happen, not until the democratic reforms to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship are finally implemented.
What is so, so annoying about Zimbabwe politics is that MDC leaders wasted the golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms and thus dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship once and once for all during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. They failed to implement even one reform in five years! This was the nation’s get out of jail card and MDC failed to play it.
Worse still, MDC are the ones giving legitimacy to the vote rigging Zanu PF regime by insisting on participating in these flawed elections when everyone else has been calling for reforms before elections.
It was USA ambassador to Zimbabwe 2004 to 2007, Chris Dell, who said Morgan Tsvangirai was “a flawed and indecisive character who would become an albatross round the nation’s neck if he ever got into power!” Dell could have said the same of the MDC leadership and they have become the mile-stone dragging the nation into the crashing abyss.
We still have the challenge of ending the Zanu PF dictatorship, now emboldened by the MDC blundering incompetence, but first must cut ourselves free the corrupt and utterly useless MDC who were elected to deliver change but are frustrating all efforts to bring change.
11 comments:
It probably took Ambassador Chris Dell a few hours of meeting and talking to Morgan Tsvangirai to come to the conclusion the man had a flawed character and would become a burden rather than an asset to the nation.
It took many Zimbabweans 20 years or so before they finally accepted the reality that Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies were corrupt, incompetent , vote rigging and murderous thugs. Even with all the evidence of the blatant vote rigging, the Gukurahundi massacre, etc.; the people still considered Mugabe and company liberation heroes par excellence.
No doubt it will take decades the reality that MDC leaders are corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent regardless of all the historic evidence to prove it.
Zimbabweans are not exactly an ignorant lot, for many of them have a high school education or better. Their greatest weakness is, regardless of their academic achievements, they are incapable of thinking for themselves hence the reason it took them decades see what is blatantly obvious about Zanu PF thugs and may never ever see MDC leaders for the sell-outs they are.
"A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again."
Alexander Pope 1709.
@ Eddie Cross
“However, there was a cost and the fiscal deficit in the first two decades after independence, averaged nearly 9% of GDP; three times the sustainable level.
As a result, after taking over a fiscus with very limited external obligations, Zimbabwe found itself by 1997 in a situation where it was seriously indebted and unable to service its obligations.
These difficulties were compounded in 1997 by the decision to pay $3,5 billion in reparations to the veterans of liberation struggle.
The following year, this expenditure was compounded by the decision to send the army to help overthrow the Mobutu Sese Seko regime in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Three years later, having spent over $1,5 billion and lost several hundred of lives, the Zimbabwe army installed a new president in DRC and withdrew back to Zimbabwe.
These two unplanned and unbudgeted expenditures broke the back of the Zimbabwean economy and by 1999 the country was experiencing serious economic and political problems.
In 1999, the Movement for Democratic Change entered the political arena and to everybody's astonishment and shock, inflicted the first electoral defeat on the ruling party in the form of the referendum on a new Constitution conducted in the year 2000.
While Mugabe publicly accepted this new challenge and dispensation, privately he decided to unleash a reign of terror on the country.
In the next eight years, he nationalised the commercial farming industry using violence and unconstitutional means with many gross violations of basic human rights.
In 2005, he unleashed a second national programme of human rights abuse which he called Murambatsvina.
However, Mugabe made sure that this brief interlude did not persist and in 2013 he again took back control of the State and immediately resorted to the same mix of bad economics and political control which had characterised his administration up to 2008. The result was that Zimbabwe quickly found itself back in a mess.”
Eddie Cross, all you said above is true until you came to; “However, Mugabe made sure that this brief interlude did not persist and in 2013 he again took back control of the State and immediately resorted to the same mix of bad economics and political control which had characterised his administration up to 2008. The result was that Zimbabwe quickly found itself back in a mess.”
The GNU was first and foremost to implement the raft of democratic reforms designed to restore the individual freedoms and rights including the right to free and fair elections. It was MDC leaders who were tasked to implement the reforms; they failed to implement even one reform in five years of the GNU.
Mr Eddie Cross was an MDC-T MP and a very senior member of GNU; he and his colleagues have never admitted they sold-out big time. Mugabe was able to rig the 2013 elections and take back total control of every aspect of Zimbabwe life precisely because MDC had failed to implement reforms.
“Looking back over the past 40 years in Zimbabwe, I am surprised we are still here!” you said! Well it does help when the nation does a get out of jail and some corrupt and incompetent leaders waste it! And now, by participating in these flawed and illegal elections, MDC are the ones giving vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy!
MDC leaders were supposed to deliver the nation from the Zanu PF dictatorship and now they are the ones weighing the nation down and stopping us ending the dictatorship.
President Chamisa is in Matabeleland South Province where he is conducting community engagement meetings.
“MASSIVE RURAL MASS SUPPORT…
It’s organic, genuine, natural and from deep down their hearts. Without paying & without pain. I’m always moved.
This strengthens me. Thank you Matebeleland. Thank you Zimbabwe. A New Great Zimbabwe is loading.. #Asingeneni #Godisinit,” President Chamisa wrote on Twitter.
How many of these people know that MDC has failed to bring about even one meaningful democratic change in 22 years of the party’s history, 5 years of which in the GNU? Chamisa is promising them “total change!” and they readily believe him.
There is no doubt that many Zimbabweans are desperate for change in the country and desperate people do desperate things like supporting anyone, anyone at all, just to get the change they are after. But after 41 years of rigging elections the people must stop and consider what they are doing.
The cold reality is, with no meaningful democratic reforms in place, Zanu PF is set to blatantly rig these elections. Chamisa has done absolutely nothing to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections, his “winning in rigged elections strategies” are just hot air.
By participating in these flawed and illegal elections, Zimbabweans are giving vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy again. This is insane and we need to snap out of this idiotic mentality of repeating the same mistake over and over again, especially after 41 years of rigged elections!
Under President Mugabe, Did Zanu Pf Ever Encounter Such Inside Violence, At Any Time?
Zanu PF is a party of thugs and their appetite for violence is being fuelled by the worsening economic situation. Timid MDC will never have a look-in when to comes the fight for power. Zanu Pf is rigging these elections and Chamisa's "winning in rigged elections strategies are just hot air!
“We confirm receipt of your letter dated 11 November 2021. The contents of your letter have been considered and for the record, what is clearly being demonstrated by your letter is unethical and unprofessional conduct,” Ncube Attorneys’ letter says.
“We note with great concern that you are using ‘bullying’ tactics and as such your conduct has been reported to the Law Society of Zimbabwe. Our client shall be filing an answering affidavit and the matter shall proceed to be heard in court.”
Manikai is a senior partner at DMH. He chairs Mnangagwa’s moribund Presidential Advisory Council, which has all but collapsed, amid governance dysfunctionality, as it proved inapt and inept beyond its public relations function. Besides, Manikai is related to Mnangagwa.
Musengezi in October took Zanu PF to court over Mnangagwa’s disputed ascendancy. The first respondent is Zanu PF. Mnangagwa is second, Obert Mpofu (third), Patrick Chinamasa (fourth), Phelekezela Mphoko (fifth) and Ignatius Chombo (sixth).
Early this month, Manikai filed the respondents’ opposing affidavit before turning around and demanding withdrawal of the case lest the applicant and his lawyers suffer the consequences, in a clear case of litigation by correspondence. This prompted the complaint by Ncube Attorneys.
Mugabe has nothing but contempt for the rule of law, he never ever allowed such matters interfere with his resolve to acquire absolute power for himself and his sect Zanu PF cronies.
There was clearly nothing legal about the way Joice Mujuru and her supporters were booted out of the party in 2014, for example. When Didymus Mutasa threatened to challenge the process, Mugabe told him point-blank “in whose court !” And the court challenge fizzled out! What this cases is now highlighting is that Mnangagwa does not enjoy the same absolute power as Mugabe did! How far this case will go will underline the extend of Mnangagwa’s political weaknesses.
Once upon a time Robert Mugabe boasted of having total control of the courts, Police, Army, the traditional leaders, everyone. But as the country’s economy started to sink so there was less wealth to bribe his Zanu PF cronies with, his control over everyone started to wan too. It is no surprise that Mnangagwa, who inherited precious little in wealth from Mugabe has struggled to exert his control over everyone.
Of course Mugabe was illegitimate because he flouted the rules and so is Mnangagwa; the subtle difference between the two is the former got away with it and the latter will not!
Zimbabwe's export receipts for the first 9 months of 2021 jumped 38% to US$6.10 billion from US$4.43 billion realised in the same period in 2020. Notable improvements have been realised in international remittances which grew by over 53% and export earnings which grew by 36% buoyed by firming commodity prices. The growth is expected to take Zimbabwe's official foreign currency earnings to a record figure of about US$8 billion in 2021 (Up from 2020 value of US$6.29 billion). Despite the year on year growth in export earnings, the country is stuck in unrelenting artificial foreign currency shortages. The shortages have created an undesirable system where buying and selling foreign currency has become a big business with a greater yield than most formal businesses. Similarly, the shortages create unhealthy arbitrage opportunities in the market thereby causing price instability. A significant portion of the earned foreign currency is being diverted to the informal market and leaking from the economy through Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) due to the current foreign exchange market inefficiencies.
Zimbabwe is a pariah state governed by corrupt, incompetent and murderous thugs who iron grip on power is derived from their carte blanche powers to rig elections. And as long as the country remains a pariah state there will be no meaningful economic recovery.
Zanu PF’s default setting is to control the economy just as the regime controls everything else in society. Soon after independence Mugabe took great pride in decree hefty wage increases for the workers whilst imposing price controls on goods and services as part of Zanu PF’s scientific socialism agenda. He laid the foundation for the country’s economic meltdown that has continued to this day.
So these exchange rate controls are nothing new, they come naturally to Zanu PF like breathing and, of course, they are a disaster to the nation.
Zimbabwe has become the textbook case of a failed state in which the leaders are buffoons who are corrupt, incompetent and utterly useless but, of course, like all such buffoons they think they are God Almighty’s greatest gift to humanity. They are always cocksure they have the solutions to all the nation’s problems. It is laughable how they always insist they have answers to the problems they created - it has never occurred to them why they created the problems in the first place.
Of course, the greatest problem is none other than the buffoons themselves. The nation is stuck with them.
Zimbabwe has had many golden opportunities to to end the Zanu PF dictatorship these last 41 years the best chances falling to MDC during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have turned out to be corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent. They did not even have the common sense to implement even one reform in five years of the GNU.
There is a video on the social media of the British House of Lords calling for free, fair and credible elections in Zimbabwe as the way out of the mess. It is frustrating that it is none other than Chamisa and company, the timid jackals at a hyena kill, who are hell-bent on participating in the elections with no reforms in place!
In the first half of 2021, the UK continued to support civil society in Zimbabwe to hold the government to account.
Responding to questions on Tuesday about what London was doing to solve the crisis in its former colony, Tariq Mahmood Ahmad, UK minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, said they regularly urge the Government of Zimbabwe to uphold its constitution.
It is interesting that the British, just as did SADC leaders in 2013, are calling for free, fair and credible elections as the prerequisite for economic recovery, political stability and good governance and it is none other than the MDC leaders who are insisting on participating on flawed and illegal elections only to complain afterwards that Zanu PF rigged the elections.
MDC are participating in these flawed elections for the same reasons they failed to implement even one reform during 2008 to 2013 GNU - they are breathtakingly incompetent and corrupt. Zanu PF is offering a few gravy train seats to entice the opposition to participate in the election; Mnangagwa has increased the bait by creating POLAD and all the perks on offer.
Participating in flawed elections just to give legitimacy to vote rigging Zanu PF for the sake of a few gravy train seats is insane! The ordinary Zimbabweans themselves must wake-up to the reality that MDC leaders are sell-outs and they will never implement the reforms. Never!
@ Dudzai Mukondorongwe
"Why was Chiwenga saying these things in the week of the 4th anniversary of the 2017 coup? Was this his way of showing strong support for Mnangagwa? We know Zanu like to show off the power they have over Zimbabwe, but they rarely show off in public about breaking the Constitution even though their presence in government is a result of breaking the Constitution of the country. Even when they did the coup that removed Mugabe, Chiwenga and others insisted that what they were doing was in accordance with the law even though it wasn't. In public, dictators like to give an impression that they are following the Constitution in order as a legal justification of their rule and also to avoid pressure from international bodies like the UN and of course the West.
You are 100% correct that Zanu PF has utter contempt for the law and rule of law but love to make a big song and dance about how they care about the law. It is laughable that a few days before the November military coup then Commander General Constantino Chiwenga gave a press conference and was brandishing the Zimbabwe Constitution as the defender of the constitution. The coup thugs had even the chutzpah to get Justice George Chiweshe to pronounce the coup “legal, justified and constitutional!”
What I find interesting is how many times these last 41 years Zanu PF has ridden roughshod over the people denying them their freedoms, rights including the right to free vote and even the right to life and get away with it scot-free!
You can fool some people all the time, fool all the people some of the time but you can fool ALL the people ALL the times!
In Zimbabwe Zanu PF has indeed managed to fool ALL the people ALL the times! A damning indictment of the people of Zimbabwe; instead of being creatures of reason our brains has all but ossified into fat and is utterly useless.
Chiwenga, Mnangagwa, etc. are but buffoons, how and why any nation would want such buffoons as national leaders beggars belief!
The new COVID-19 strain, B.1.1.529, has been found in Botswana and Hong Kong (China) and has an extremely high number of mutations.
A South African professor, Alex van den Heever of the Wits School of Governance said it is not yet clear if current vaccines will offer protection against the variant. He said:
It is worrying that such a variant has occurred, but I think it is also inevitable in a way that we are going to see this.
The real question is whether past variants and vaccines will still protect us against this particular variant. And I haven’t really seen any analysis of that yet.
The question also is whether or not this particular variant is going to be more infectious than, for instance, the Delta variant, and therefore might actually spread very quickly. We don’t know.
South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases reported a rise in COVID-19 cases in Gauteng Province.
Reports suggest that the neighbouring country could be heading into a 4th wave around the festive season in the coming weeks.
So far, touch wood, covid-19 had not claimed as many lives in Africa as many people had feared given the fact the continent’s economic mess and poor health services. There is a real fear that one of these days a covid-19 variant will emerge and sweep over the continent like a veld fire!
A number European countries are grappling with a four covid-19 outbreak although many have already achieved a 60% plus vaccination rate. Many African countries will be very lucky to achieve a 15% vaccination rate by the end of the year; giving the corona virus time to mutate.
The corona virus pandemic was a wake-up call for Africa to finally sort out our problem of rigged elections and bad governance. Sadly, many across the continent are still snoring like pigs!
"In this period holders of this permit should apply for other permits appropriate to their particular status or situation.
"At the expiry of this grace period those who are not successful, have to depart the Republic of South Africa or be deported," said Minister Gungubele.
Zimbabweans living and working in South Africa had been eagerly waiting for the South African Cabinet to make pronouncements regarding the issue of permits.
Over 180 000 Zimbabweans are beneficiaries of the special exemption permits and now face a bleak future as most of them do not hold any professional qualifications that would warrant their continued stay in the country.
We have kicked the can down the street and now we are running out of street and must deal with the problem!
Zimbabweans left the country in droves at the start of the country’s serious economic collapse in the late 1990s. The economy shrunk by a record 50% in the period 2000 to 2008 alone! In all these last two decades Zimbabweans should have addressed the problems of rigged elections and bad governance, which are the root causes of the economic and political mess in the country, with a real sense of urgency and purpose. Sadly, we have continued in our sloth-like slumber.
In the long run nations get the government they deserve and we certainly deserve this Zanu PF dictatorship complete with its entourage of corrupt, incompetent and utterly useless opposition opportunists! And, boy oh boy, are we paying dearly for our folly!
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