Mankind is supposed
to be a creature of reason, of rational behaviour and can think. In Zimbabwe many
of us have taken leave of their senses and rational thinking and hence the
reason the country has blundered from pillar to post these last 42 years!
Ask anyone of the
40 000 Zimbabweans who attended Nelson Chamisa’s CCC Mkoba rally in Gweru, for
example, what changes they expected from Chamisa and each would have produce a
list a mile long. With the economy in total meltdown, unemployment rates a
nauseating 90%, basic services such as education and health care all but collapse,
etc.; the wish list is bound to be long!
The rally attendees
know that before Chamisa can attend to their problems, he must first wrestle
political power from Emmerson Mnangagwa and his ruling party, Zanu PF party -
something the opposition have so far failed to do.
The people of
Zimbabwe have risked life and limb to elect MDC leaders (the forerunner of CCC
before Chamisa changed the party name and colours in January 2022) on the
understanding the party will deliver the democratic changes necessary to stop
Zanu PF rigging the elections. MDC, Movement for Democratic Change, as the
party name implied was supposed to deliver the democratic changes the nation
has been dying for.
Sadly, after 22
years, 5 of which in the 2008 to 2013 GNU, MDC leaders have failed to implement
even one token democratic change. Not a sausage!
Ask anyone of those
CCC rally attendees to name just one democratic change the party has brought in
the last 22 years, and you will be greeted with thousands upon thousands of blank
faces. The blank faces are an echo of the empty heads!
However, if one was
to ask the 40 000 rally attendees to name just one change MDC had delivered in
the last 22 years, 5 of which in the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Not even one would
answer because there is not even one meaningful change MDC have delivered. 40
000 blank faces a reflection of the empty head!
At all these CCC
rallies Nelson Chamisa has made the usual empty promises of fixing the nation’s
economic and political problems including the all important and critical
problem of stopping Zanu PF rigging the elections.
"This time I
assure you, there will be no rigging, I now have eyes in ZEC, I am being
briefed about their every move and even if they want to rig, we will know in
advance and act to avert it," Nelson Chamisa told the 40 000 attending the
rally in Gweru.
An empty promise, since
Zanu PF has already decreed the regime will deny three million plus Zimbabweans
in the diaspora the vote, for example. Chamisa was not doing anything to avert
that one.
In September 2018
President Mnangagwa announced that Zimbabweans in the diaspora would finally have
the vote they had been campaigning for decades. Sadly, this was just one of the
many promises he has made but failed to honour since taking over from late Robert
Mugabe in the November 2017 military coup.
The
willingness of thousands of CCC supporters to believe Nelson Chamisa would
solve the myriad of their problems, no questions asked, even when MDC has failed
to implement even one token political reform in 22 years; is at the very heart
of why Zimbabwe is in this economic mess and political paralysis. The failure
to cross examine Chamisa and company’s pathetic record of corruption and
incompetence shows the people themselves have, at best, a superficial
understanding of the big issues of quality leadership, free and fair elections,
good governance, etc.
There
is no denying Zimbabwe is a failed state; 42 years of economic decline and
political paralysis - for neither the ruling party nor the multitude of
opposition parties have a clue what is going on much less how to get the
country out of this mess – would testify to that.
We
are in this mess because the ordinary Zimbabweans themselves have allowed this
sorry state of affairs to prevail all these years by their failure to think and
asset their rights to a meaningful say in the governance of the country.
Zimbabwe
was not doomed to end up as the failed state we are today. Whilst we remain the
naïve and gullible people who will believe Chamisa’s word that Zanu PF will not
rig the elections even all the evidence points to the contrary, for example; we
will remain a failed state. Real change, from a failed state to a healthy and
functioning democracy, will come after the metaphoric transformation from a naïve
and gullible people to a thinking and question citizen.
6 comments:
It was President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana who said "Seek yee first the political kingdom and the rest will be given unto you!"
The right to a meaningful say in the governance of one's country is the essence of the political kingdom. The right to free, fair and credible elections is the Holy Grail, the magic lamp without which all else is dust!
Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs short change the people in 1980 when the party made it clear the bush war would continue if the party did not win the 1980 elections. Zanu PF wanted political power and did not care about the "One man, one vote!" It was unwise to argue with a thug looking up the business end of an AK47 rifle.
It took nearly 20 years for the people to finally admit Zanu PF's promise of mass prosperity, "Gutsa ruzhinji" was just a mirage to hide the reality of mass poverty. More significantly, the people also realized that they could not remove Zanu PF from power because they did not have a meaningful vote. And to recover their vote the nation must implement democratic reforms to stop Zanu PF rigging elections.
The people have risked life and limb to elect MDC leaders into power on the understanding the party will implement the democratic reforms the nation was dying for. The very fact that MDC has failed to implement even one reform in 22 years, 5 of which in the GNU speaks volumes of just how corrupt, incompetent and utterly useless Chamisa and company are.
The very fact the overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans out there are putting their trust in MDC/CCC, the 22 years of treasonous betrayal forgotten, goes to show just how naive and gullible the nation is. They have yet to learn that the reforms and the holding of free, fair and credible elections is their ticket out of the hell-hole they are stuck in. Until they learn, they are going nowhere!
Zimbabwe has reported of 706 new corona virus cases in the last week. There are now a total of 241 049 cases and 5 407 deaths in the country - officially.
This nation will rightly look a nation of fools if it should turn out that we have initiated a new wave of corona virus cases by allowing these by elections and then the 2023 elections to go ahead only for the opposition to then finally admit the whole process was a farce because Zanu PF rigged!
Zanu PF is rigging these elections and we should have the common sense to implement the reforms first and put an end to this madness of rigged elections, especially when the price of this madness is even more human suffering and deaths!
Chihuri is believed to be living in Malawi and unwilling to return home. He is accused of side-tracking up to US$32 million of public funds into family companies and buying properties during the 25 years he was at the helm of the police force.
He is alleged to have sold five properties in 2017 and 2018, following his unceremonious departure from the top police post.
Chihuri is contesting court orders allowing the State to forfeit his properties, a move which last month prompted Justice Kwenda to propose that all these matters be consolidated into a single case for the court hearing.
The State seeks to freeze Chihuri’s companies and the properties, which his family acquired during his 25 years at the helm of the police force, pending the final outcome of possible criminal investigations and civil suits that could lead to their forfeiture.
In his doctorial thesis on Policing in post independent Zimbabwe, Dr Augustine Chihuri boasted that the greatest challenge for the ZRP was containing the puppets of the West who were seeking regime change. He made no secret of the fact the ZRP took it as their sworn duty to harass, intimidate and even kill the opposition, anything to stop regime change.
The real reason why the Police, like many other state institutions like ZEC, the Army, CIO, etc., ignored their democratic duty of upholding the rule of law and defend the people’s freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful vote is because the ZRP was a department of Zanu PF there to push the regime’s no regime change agenda at all costs. The Police, at least the top brass like Chihuri, were paid well by Zanu PF for their loyalty to the party.
It is no secret that the Police, Army and CIO had their own special diamond mining concession in Marange and Chiadzwa. It is not only Chihuri who has amassed a lot of wealth; Chiwenga had his C&M mansion, farms, 45 gold watches, etc., etc. before he became VP.
The Mnangagwa Zanu PF regime has been quizzing Chihuri and other G40 members to explain the source of their wealth just because they were on the losing side of the November 2017 military coup. People like Chiwenga who were on the winning side are not being asked to explain their looted wealth!
Anyone who believes Mnangagwa and Chiwenga will ever allow Zimbabwe to hold free and fair elections is downright stupid; the two know if they lose power, they too will be called upon to explain where their amass wealth came from! Indeed, worst of all they will be asked to account for the human blood on their hands too!
WE would like to put it on record that Team Pachedu has, indeed, submitted our concerns to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) and it has not responded.
We have also personally sent it requests for various information which it has ignored. (We had asked for a full list of candidates from the January 26 nomination court, as well as a full list of accredited observers for the March 26 by-elections). Zec has not responded to our request.
Team Pachedu has taken care to censor as much information identifying voters as possible in tweets to protect the identities of voters.
This also puts us in a difficult position where the general public cannot verify some of our claims for themselves on the Zec BVR site because we block names and ID numbers as much as possible, while still trying to prove our point.
For the commission to say we are publishing our findings without seeking clarification is false. As stated above, we have written to Zec and it did not respond.
Zec chief elections officer Utoile Silaigwana is trying to deceive the public when he says: "The commission has a duty to protect voters' information which they supplied in confidence"
There is no such provision in the Electoral Act and voters should be aware that any detail supplied to Zec is available in the public domain since the voters roll is a public document that anyone is entitled to access and inspect.
Zec's claim that it is only accountable to Parliament is also false. The Electoral Act requires Zec to keep voters and the general public informed.
One such way to do that is to gazette any changes it makes to the voters roll which have not expressly been requested by the voter.
Zec has never gazetted a list of the changes it made.
It is also regrettable that Zec continues to disown its own voters roll. All the anomalies we are picking in what Zec claims to be a fake, tampered with roll, are reflected on its own BVR inspection site. Does that mean it is also using a fake voters roll on its website?
State institutions like ZEC, Police, Army, CIO, judiciary, etc. are Zanu PF departments in all but name. The case for implementing the democratic reforms to free these institutions has been made many times nothing has been done because there is no political will to do so.
MDC leaders had the golden opportunity to implement the reforms during the 2008 to 2013 GNU, they failed to implement even one reform in five years. Chamisa and company are participating in these flawed elections knowing fully well that doing so will give Zanu PF legitimacy for the same reason they failed to implement any reform during the GNU – greed.
Team Pachedu know that without reforms, there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop Zanu PF rigging these elections. Chamisa’s claim to have inside information to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections is just nonsense, this is just a feeble excuse to justify why CCC are determined to participate in these elections regardless all the evidence of vote rigging.
Team Pachedu know CCC are hell bent on participating in these flawed elections and do not want to earn Chamisa and company’s wrath by speaking the truth and obvious - that it is foolish to do so.
@ Sam Wezhira
“This is beautiful analysis. I like it a lot since it points to the real problem Zimbabwe is facing; clueless citizens.”
The tragedy is even those as blind as a mole can see with their own eyes that Zanu PF is blatantly rigging these elections – the incessant wanton violence targeting the opposition, the denial of 3 million in the diaspora the vote, ZEC’s refusal to produce something as basic a verified voters’ roll in blatant disregard of the law, etc., etc. Instead of the people doing the more rational thing of demanding the implementation of the democratic reforms the growing evidence the elections are being has galvanized the people to try even harder to win the rigged elections.
The worsening economic and political situation has left millions of Zimbabweans desperate for change. Desperate people do desperate things, do irrational things.
Of course, all the people are doing in participating in these flawed elections is give Zanu PF legitimacy and thus help perpetuate the dictatorship.
Indeed, in their desperation the many of the brain-dead mob can hardly conceal their hostility at those calling for the reforms to be implemented and pointing the sheer futility of participating in the flawed elections especially after 42 years of rigged elections!
@ Garikai Gutuza
“We are looking for solutions not analysis.
Try to add value by suggesting we are in this problem together we are all looking for solution analyse on your own and propose a solution.”
A good and sound analysis of the problem is as essential as a map to a traveller only a fool would leave home without one. The fool will never get wherever it is he thought he was going and, worse still, will not find his way back home either.
If the analysis is correct, I firmly believe that with no reforms in place Zanu PF will once again rig these elections and that participating in the flawed process will only give Zanu PF legitimacy; then the solution is self-evident, don’t participate in the flawed elections.
The trouble with people like you Gutuza is you only hear what you want to hear everything else rolls of like water off a duck’s back. You have made up your mind that participating in these flawed elections is the right solution and the only analysis and solution you want to hear is one supportive of your position anything else is rubbish.
After 42 years of rigged elections the penny has not dropped to implement reforms, so elections are free, fair and credible. 42 years of trying to win rigged elections and still expecting a different result, that is insanity, the is a real possibility the penny will never drop.
You just want me to join you in your insanity. Thanks for the invitation but I will miss out. Bon voyage!
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