"Irregularities and political chicanery across party structures must be decisively dealt with and expunged from the party," said President Emmerson Mnangagwa. He was referring to the recent Zanu PF elections which were marred by violence and rigging.
What a hypocrite!
The irregularities and political chicanery in the Zanu PF party elections were nothing compared to the blatant cheating and wanton violence of Zimbabwe’s watershed 2008 national elections. President Mnangagwa should know this because he was the one who supervised Operation “Mavhotera ani!” (Whom did you vote for!)
When it was clear that Zanu PF was losing the March 2008 vote the Joint Operation Command (JOC); a junta comprising the top brass in Army, Police, CIO and Prison Services plus a few others from Zanu PF headed by Robert Mugabe and assisted by Mnangagwa; stopped ZEC announcing the election results.
It took six weeks to recount 5 million votes; read, to cook up the figures. Morgan Tsvangirai had garnered 73% of vote, according to Mugabe’s Freudian slip; this was whittled down to 47%, enough to force a runoff.
Operation Mavhotera ani picked in during the runoff. Of course, JOC knew whom the people had voted for, this was a rhetorical question; the operation was about punishing the people for rejected Zanu PF and Mugabe in the March 2008 vote. And punish the people is exactly what JOC did; the country witnessed the worst wanton violence ever.
“Zanu PF has declared war on the people!” said Tsvangirai as he announced his withdrawal from the runoff.
For once, even SADC and AU, known for turning a blind eye to rigged Zimbabwe elections in the past, refused to accept Zanu PF as the legitimate winner of the 2008 elections given the blatant cheating and wanton violence.
SADC leaders forced Mugabe and Zanu PF to agree to the implementation of the raft of democratic reforms designed to restore the individual freedoms and rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections. The 2008 to 2013 GNU was tasked to implement the democratic reforms and “expunge” the cheating and wanton violence.
Sadly, not even one meaningful reform was ever implemented. Mugabe bribed Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends with the trappings of high office and, with their snouts in the feeding trough, they forgot about the reforms.
There is no denying Zimbabwe is in a serious economic and political mess; 41 years of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and rank lawlessness that have earned the country’s pariah state status have left the country in economic ruins and political paralysis.
The economic meltdown has resulted in the collapse of basic services such as education and health care and left millions of our people living in abject poverty. The economic meltdown has not spared the Zanu PF ruling elite either, many Zanu PF grandees like the late Nathan Shamuyarira lost their seat at the top table and lived thereafter and died as poor as the proverbial church mouse. It is the fear of the rising tide of poverty that is fuelling the dog-eat-dog fight for power in Zanu PF.
If there are no hold-barred in the Zanu PF member on member fight, these Zanu PF members will ruthlessly crash their opposition opponents.
"I urge the
party leadership to always listen to the aspirations of the people at every
level. It is equally important that the party leadership and membership
in general work concertedly to achieve a better quality of life for our
people," continued Mnangagwa.
"It is after all the people who have entrusted us with the mandate to
govern our great country.”
Yeah right! Zanu PF has retained its iron grip on absolute power for over 42 years now by blatantly cheating and, if need be, using wanton violence. The party has managed to get away with rigged elections because the opposition have participated in these flawed elections, the few gravy train seats offered as bair, giving the process some modicum of credibility.
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Zanu PF has retained the option of using wanton violence to compliment its other subtle vote rigging tactics such as failure to produce a verified voters’ roll, denying 3 million in the diaspora the vote, etc.
If anyone needed any reminder of the party’s capacity to use violence, Nelson Chamisa witnessed the violence for himself a few weeks ago when he tried to hold rallies. One of the rally attendees in Gutu was assaulted at a Zanu PF roadblock and died a few weeks later. He named his assailants but to date the Police have not even dared to question the three individuals!
Of course, Nelson Chamisa and the rest in the opposition camp KNOW that Zanu PF is rigging these elections and, if push comes to shove, will use wanton violence. The obvious thing to do is to demand the implementation of the reforms before elections.
However, none of these opposition opportunists will boycott the elections because they know Zanu PF is offering a few gravy train seats to entice them to participate; they have found the bribe irresistible! Chamisa and company do not give a damn that ordinary Zimbabweans are once again being denied their basic freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country, right to life, hope and human dignity. All they care about is that Zanu PF gives them a share of the spoils of power!
Zanu-PF spokesperson Chris Mutsvangwa said the President's move has taken wind out of the party's detractors.
"President EDM, true to the homegrown democratic ethos of his party is losing no time to prepare his charges and supporters for the upcoming set of elections in both 2022 and the all-important Harmonized National Elections in 2023. To this end, Zanu-PF has just finished its own internal provincial elections. To underscore the serious commitment, the Party even held them during the seasonal holidays on the annual calendar. The cadreship and membership enthusiastically responded even as the other population partook in festivities.
"The Provincial Elections were held as close as can be to the pattern of national elections. All in all, they were viewed as a dress rehearsal of the big one in 2023," he said.
"The basis of a resounding victory is being moulded. After all this is the Party that fought a bitter People's War-Chimurenga for freedom and independence
"The democratic ethos is engraved in its DNA. It will be recalled that its imminently victorious guerrilla army opted for the Lancaster House Armistice in 1979 to give elections a chance. The military victory within grasp was blessed with an overwhelming popular Vote in the 1980 plebiscite.
"A first ever in guerrilla war victories as the bush to office was shunned in favour of the popular mandate as the route to governance."
He said, meanwhile the boxes of the manifesto of the Party continue to be ticked off all to the satisfaction of the population
Propagandist an a very excitable lot and sometimes they get carried away in their own lies and rhetoric they believe their own spin regardless of the reality before their own eyes! Saddam Hussein’s “Chemical” Ali kept wittering about how the Iraq Army was “kicking the hell out of the American infidels” even when the Americans army was driving freely in Baghdad. Clearly Chris Mutsvangwa is Zimbabwe’s answer to “Chemical” Ali!
Zanu made is clear in the 1980 elections that if the party did not win the elections the bush war would continue. That was not election banter either as the 1983 to 1987 Gukurahundi massacres were to prove! Zanu PF has rigged elections ever since the country’s independence and it is rigging these by-elections and the 2023 elections too! Zanu PF has “democratic ethos engraved in its DNA!” only a paranoid schizophrenia, punch drunk of his own propaganda lies, would say such nonsense.
These elections should not be taking place until democratic reforms are implemented to take away Zanu PF’s carte blanche dictatorial powers to rig elections. The only reasons these flawed elections continue to be held after 41 years and counting of rigged elections is because Zimbabwe has been cursed with a breathtakingly corrupt, incompetent, and utterly useless opposition parties, notably MDC!
THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) yesterday triggered a storm after announcing plans to remove 35 085 names of deceased persons from the voters' roll, two months after identifying only 22 000 deceased voters on the roll.
Zec's new figures announced yesterday sparked a fresh public outcry amid fears that the figures were being "cooked up" to disenfranchise potential voters ahead of by-elections in March, and the 2023 plebiscite.
The uproar over Zec figures came barely a week after opposition political parties and civic groups challenged its statistics on newly-registered voters, after claiming that only 2 000 virgin voters were registered last year, but later revised the number to 2 971.
The law is very clear, as soon as ZEC has received information that a registered voter has passed away, the individual’s details must be deleted from the voters’ roll. It is common sense. It beggars belief why ZEC had removed 22 000 but had done nothing to remove 35 058 other deceased names. This goes back to the question why ZEC has failed to produce a verified voters’ roll in 41 years of the country’s independence?
Worse still, why have the opposition participated in these flawed elections knowing something as basic as verified voters roll was missing! It is true that Zanu PF has rigged elections but it is equally true that they would have never got away with it without the active or otherwise cooperation of the country’s corrupt and incompetent opposition!
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