USA Think tank confirm the West "abandoned" the horse Tsvangirai - pointless betting on a three and half legged horse!

In an interview, senior policy analyst Marion Tupy of the Washington-based Cato Institute for Global Liberty and Prosperity said in Tsvangirai the West was betting on a wrong horse. The West have since learnt the lesson and they now expect Zimbabweans too to have learnt the lesson and look for an alternative opposition leader.

"It's true that the West has abandoned Morgan Tsvangirai its very sad but it's very true. It's like putting your money on a horse in a race hoping that he wins and then if he fails you may do it a couple of times but ultimately you decide that that person was not worth the investment," he said.

Frankly Marion Tupy was being much too kind because this was much more than a horse losing a race; this horse was paid and it went out of its way to ensure it lost the race from start to finish.

Tsvangirai was supposed to implement the democratic reforms agreed in the Global Political Agreement (GPA). The reforms were designed to dismantle the Zanu PF vote rigging machinery and deliver free, fair and credible elections. MDC had everything the party needed to ensure all the reforms were implemented;  they had the majority in parliament, had five-years of the GNU and they had the backing of SADC, the West and the whole international community. In the end MDC failed to get even one reform implemented. Not even one.

Without the reforms, Mugabe and Zanu PF were bound to rig the elections and they did just that, blatantly rigged the July 2013 elections. To go into the elections with not even one reform implemented was to plan to fail.

The only two obvious reasons MDC did not get even one reform implemented are, first of all, that the party’s leaders are corrupt. Mugabe saw to it that Tsvangirai and his colleagues enjoyed all the trapping of being power and gravy train life. Tsvangirai got a $4 million Highlands mansion. And in return Tsvangirai and his MDC friends kicked the reforms into the tall grass because they knew Mugabe did not want any of them implemented.

“MDC vadzidza kudya vanyerere!” (MDC leaders have learnt to enjoy the gravy train pleasures and not rock the boat!) Was the pithy retort from Mugabe cronies mocking at MDC’s new indifference to public desperate demands for them to implement the reforms!

The second reason is that MDC leaders are incompetent. Of course Tsvangirai and his MDC friends wanted to remain in government and retain their seats on the gravy train; the very fact that they expected to do so regardless of all the vote rigging by Mugabe shows just how naïve and breathtakingly incompetent they really are.

Some Zimbabweans have remained faithful to Tsvangirai and the other MDC leaders but that is only because they have never understood what the reforms are about let alone why implementing them is still of such critical importance to bringing about meaningful democratic change in Zimbabwe.  The day the penny finally drops; they too will understand why SADC and the West deserted Tsvangirai and MDC in droves, they too will finally desert MDC. On that day the search for competent political leaders will finally start in earnest.  

Being corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent are shortcomings that can be overcome by education or training; they are serious flaws in one’s character that will lead the individual to repeat the same mistake again and again. If Tsvangirai was a horse then he is one with a serious physical deformity he might just as well be a three and half legged horse. He has lost three races already and the way he has blundered from pillar to post it self-evident he never had a chance. Only an idiot would still bet good money on him winning the fourth race.

Marion Tupy is right, the West made the mistake of betting on Tsvangirai, “a wrong horse”; they are certainly not going to wasting a cent backing Tsvangirai ever again, they are not idiots! 

76% Zim now living on less than $200 a month - this is unsustainable we need and must have regime change!

“Following recent revelations by economists that average incomes in Zimbabwe are now at their lowest levels in 60 years, it has now emerged that more than 76 percent of the country’s adult population has to make do with less than $200 a month,” reported the Daily News.

“This, economists said yesterday means that poverty levels have reached “numbing levels”, amid indications that the situation will worsen in 2015 and beyond, as President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF government continue to demonstrate their inability to fix Zimbabwe.”

Mugabe has remained in power for 35 years because he was able to outwit and bamboozle his political opponent both inside his own party, Zanu PF and outside with easy. But the decades of mismanagement and corruption under his watch have taken their toll on the nation’s economy and now it is in total meltdown.

Mugabe has since the July 2013 rigged election found he cannot rig economic recovery. And it is the economy that is going, one way or the other, force him to finally give up political power.

It is the “Economy stupid!” to borrow from former US President Bill Clinton, that is going to force regime change – the phrase Mugabe has dreaded and vowed will never ever happen in Zimbabwe in his life time.

Mugabe was sure that his ZimAsset economic recovery plan would delivery economic recovery, he was cock sure. But after a year since the July 2013 rigged elections of grovelling and begging he still had nothing to show for it; the empty ZimAsset begging bowl was beginning to mock him, it was doing his head in.

So just to get some funding in the begging bowl Mugabe offered the Chinese and Russians deals they could not refuse. The details of the Chinese $4 billion power generation projects deals are not known but Chinese has also kept its major player position in the looting and plunder of Marange diamonds.

The Marange diamonds have been valued at $ 800 billion. Partnership Africa Canada said Mugabe got a staggering $ 2 billion for his share of the loot in 2012 alone. The GNU collected $ 400 million in taxes from Marange in 2013 when more than twice was expected. The tax remittances have since dropped to zero.

The Russian deal included them getting in on the action in Marange. They also signed a $4.8 billion platinum mining deal and it has since emerged that they too will be paying not a dollar in taxes for the first five years, at least, of operation.

What is happening in Marange is looting plain and simple and now the same is going to happen with the platinum mining in this Russian deal. This is state sanctioned looting and criminal waste!

 If Mugabe thought the Chinese and Russian deals would open the floodgate to more investors, he has been disappointed. Not even the Chinese and Russians have offered another dollar. What Mugabe wanted most was for the $27 billion ZimAsset to be paid as budgetary support. He has failed to get a single dollar for that; the Chinese told him to his face they would not offer even a dollar because he “is a bad debtor”!

With budgetary support Mugabe knows that his ZimAsset plan is dead in the water. Mugabe has nothing else to stop Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown and hence all the company closures and mounting unemployment figures. The few remaining companies will close and soon even the vendors will not be able to eke a living because vendors sell mostly to those in formal employment and not fellow vendors.

What Mugabe will have to accept is that he has nothing to offer to stop the total economic collapse and therefore he should step down now. The economic situation has reached the point when social unrest could happen with devastating consequences of which one thing will be certain, he will be swept aside Muammar Gaddafi style or worse!

Like it or not Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is economically, socially and politically unsustainable! We will have change the only question is whether it is going to be orderly evolutionary change, and time is fast running out for this; or else a revolutionary violent change. But change is as certain now as the sun rising tomorrow! 

Grace Mugabe's rock-star welcome is to divert attention from dead ZimAsset but no one was fooled.

“Grace Mugabe demonstrated the immense power she now wields in Zanu PF when Cabinet ministers, service chiefs and Zanu PF bigwigs scrambled to Harare International Airport to welcome her back to the country on Sunday after she had been away in the Far East for more than two months,” reported the Daily News.

Was this really a welcome of a real rock-star or was it a welcome of a phony rock-star to divert the people’s attention away from the nation’s real big issue – the economic meltdown. Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is now beginning to bite and Mugabe and Zanu PF’s are at sixes and sevens as what to do.

Before the 2013 elections Mugabe had given the excuse of “illegal sanctions imposed by the British and the West” for the country’s economic failures. It was an excuse for the easily fooled since Mugabe was free to trade with the rest of the world, especially with the East as he himself admitted in his “Look East” policy.

In the 2013 elections Mugabe promised the nation economic recovery through his ZimAsset plan and 2.2 million new jobs regardless of whether the West imposed sanctions were lifted or remained. The success or failure of the plan depended on Mugabe getting the $27 billion funding for it.

It took over a year of grovelling and begging for Mugabe to finally get $4 billion and $3 billion of post-dated cheques from the Chinese and Russians respectively. The two Eastern bloc giants agreed to fund ZimAsset projects but flatly refused to provide the regime with the much needed budgetary support because Zimbabwe was “a bad debtor” the Chinese told Mugabe to his face.

Mugabe had hoped that other nations would follow the Chinese and Russians’ example of ZimAsset funding support and provide the critical budgetary component of his ZimAsset plan. The floodgate of donors Mugabe was sure was coming never happened. It is now nearly two years into the five-year plan and he has not delivered any new jobs out of the 2.2 million new jobs promised. Indeed in the period the country has lost thousands of jobs pushing unemployment level to 90% plus!

The regime has grudgingly accepted that without the budgetary support and the two post-dated Chinese and Russian cheques (spending on projections has yet started) its ZimAsset plan is all but dead in the water. All talk of implementing ZimAsset has stopped; one cannot implement a plan that is dead.

With ZimAsset dead, the economic meltdown has now taken centre stage. The headline news have been about companies closing, someone or other not being paid, soldiers being forced to take a month holiday every other month to save on food bill, new government taxes, etc.; all spelling the worsening economic situation.

So to draw the nation’s attention away from the worsening economic hardship and the fact that the regime’s own ZimAsset plan is dead in the water; the Zanu PF propaganda machine has gone into overdrive manufacturing its own headline news.

When Mugabe returned from Ethiopia two weeks ago Zanu PF propaganda machine wanted his election as AU chairman trumpeted from the hilltop. Mugabe played his part by giving a vitriolic anti-western acceptance speech. On his return he got a hero’s welcome at the airport complete with the usual bussed in Zanu PF supporters. The propagandists were pleased with themselves until Mugabe tripped and fell.

People laughed at Mugabe’s fall to vent out their anger at being forced into this Mugabe praise singing charade when pressing national issues are being ignored. The fall became a serious PR disaster for Zanu PF.

Zanu PF needed to stage a big show on Grace Mugabe’s return to show that Mugabe and the party are still popular and hence Sunday’s rock-star welcome for her. Everyone in Zanu PF and government turned up at the airport because in these days of political turbulence and party purges, they are all keen to be seen to be very supportive of Grace for fear they might be “dumped” next. She is the one who master minded the dumping of Mujuru and many others list year.

As for the ordinary Zimbabweans they could not be bothered going to the airport to welcome Grace, still they are relieved that she back purely for financial reasons. They were rightly worried about how much more her extended stay in Singapore was going to cost the nation. She is a woman of little intellect but very expensive and extravagant tastes; the sooner she returned the better for us, the Zimbabwe public, who will be expected to pay the bill. After three months we can expect the bill of $12 million, at least!

“You need to be strong as women, not just to sit back,” said Zimbabwe’s answer to Madona and Evita rolled into one to her adoring fans at the airport. “Despite not feeling well, I have remained strong, I have energy. This is the third operation that I have undergone in my life so I cannot say I am a complete human being. In 1986, I had my tonsils removed. They did tonsillectomy on me because I had problems with my throat which was always sore. In 1996, I also had my gall bladder removed because it caused severe abdominal pains owing to too many acids… so severe were the pains that at one point I suspected that my cooks had poisoned my food.”

“You get to think along those lines when you are in pain. That is the reason why I am particular about what I eat. I cannot eat food like meat now because I must not take fat and even the whole family including baba (Mugabe) now follow my diet.”

So Zanu PF members came from every corner of the country to listen to that! You can take a man out of the ghetto but cannot take the ghetto out of some people; well that is especially true with phony rock-stars! Grace is no Madonna!

No amount of stage manages heroic or rock-star glorification can change the fact that Mugabe’s ZimAsset plan is dead in the water or make reality of soaring 90% plus unemployment rate, of the 16% or 2 million Zimbabweans already living in abject poverty, of the regime struggling to pay civil servants, etc. The economic meltdown is getting worse and not better and instead of wasting time and money staging these gimmicks Mugabe and Zanu PF must step down now to allow for fresh elections and implementation of a workable economic recovery plan. 

"Grace is a private citizen," says Charamba not when public pays for her extravagant lifestyle.

"She is not a civil servant; she is not a constitutional officer. Why do you pry into the life of a private citizen in the name of news?” – Charamba

Because Grace Mugabe is NOT “private citizen”, you moron! Not in the normal sense; the Zimbabwe public pay for everything she has and they are entitled to have a say in what is costing them everything including their very lives!

How many private individuals have a $5 million wedding bash paid for by the taxpayers? She went on an extended Christmas holiday with her extended family that will cost the nation as much as $12 million.

She has decided to extend the extended holiday by another month already on the pretext she is having an appendix operation. This is a simple procedure she could have had back here and would be out of hospital within a week at the most. So what the fcuk is she still doing in Singapore! Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, is failing to pay civil servant wages let alone pay for other basic necessities as soap and books for our hospitals and schools. And yet he will be expected to pay the additional $3 to 4 million her extended stay to shop will cost us.

Mr George Charamba you can get the usual suspects to issue a statement claiming they will pay for Grace’s extended stay in the Far East just as they claimed to pay Grace’s expenses when she went on the rampage in her “baby dumping” campaign against the then VP Mujuru last year. No one was fooled; we all know the Zimbabwe taxpayer directly or indirectly paid the bill.

The Zimbabwe public are not asking why Grace has not returned because they are concerned about her health; we know she is well. Unlike her husband who claimed to be “as fit as a fiddle” only to end up in a heap at the airport; at least that has settled the lie that he is physically and mentally fit to continue as president. The only thing that would bring Grace to her knees is the shopping because she is one who would shop until she dropped, literally. Zimbabweans are asking what the devil she is still doing in Singapore because they know the shopping bill is mounting!

Grace Mugabe is one private citizen that has costed the nation an arm and leg to keep and all the nation has ever got back from her is trouble and nauseating nonsense each time she opened her foul mouth!

Striking University Lecturer met Minister Chinamasa but did they demand an end to corruption.

In the mid-1990s  I had the opportunity to meet a leading Trade Union leader (it will not be necessary to name him). Gone were the ease years of the 1980s when the then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe announced hefty pay increases for the all the workers across the board and have price controls on many goods and services. All that ended when the Zanu PF government accepted its first World Bank/ International Monetary Fund (WB/IMF) sponsored five-year Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP); price controls ended and workers were instructed to negotiate with the employers wage increases.

I spend an evening trying to explain to the Trade Union Leader why it was important to take into consideration the rate of inflation, amongst other factors, in deciding what wage increase to ask for.  He did not understand what I was talking about. It does not matter how much one may try to gloss over this, knowledge is important; those whose actions are guided by knowledge have prospered whilst those who have blundered from pillar to post have suffered.

Two related stories occurred to illustrate the critical importance of knowledge. The first story was about lecturers in Zimbabwe’s State Universities going on strike to demand payment of their January salary and 2014 bonus. Whilst all the other civil servant had finally been paid their January wages and the bonus they had been singled out with no explanation from the employer, government.

The second story was on how the national army had reportedly muscled in on a $4.8 billion platinum mining project.

“The ministry also wants the benefits of the deal to accrue to Zimbabweans and treasury, rather than the army. We don’t want a repeat of the Chiadzwa scenario where the country is not truly benefiting from its diamonds. The army partnered the Chinese in mining diamonds, but the country has nothing to show for the resource,” a source in the Ministry of Mines told the Mail and Guardian newspaper.

It is a matter of record that former finance minister Tendai Biti and the current incumbent, Patrick Chinamasa, have complained about the diamond revenue not being properly accounted for. The late Zanu PF MP Chindori Chininga went even further and said in a parliamentary report in 2013 that the diamond mining in Chiadzwa and Marange was going on 24/7, the gems were shipped out of the country as quickly as they are extracted and that no one in the Zimbabwe government knew anything about diamonds; their size, quality, value, who was buying and selling them, etc.

In a rare moment of concern for the nation interest, the then Vice President Joice Mujuru complained of how in India a who city had sprung up to cut, make jewellery, diamond tools, etc. from diamonds imported from Zimbabwe.

Some people have valued Chiadzwa and Marange diamonds at a staggering $800 billion.  Partnership Africa Canada, a Canadian NGO, estimated that Mugabe earned a staggering $2 billion from his share of the diamond looting in 2012 alone! The looting and plunder going on there is absolutely shocking.

According to the Mail and Guardian report Mugabe was set to approve the Army muscling in on the platinum mining deal. The upshot of that Russian and Zimbabwe National Army consortium would not pay any taxes for the first five years of the project. Not content with the looting and plunder of the diamonds the country’s ruling elite want to loot and plunder the platinum mines too.

International organisation have flatly refused to classify Zimbabwe as a poor country and write off it’s $10 billion debt because Zimbabwe is NOT a poor country. If the country’s wealth and riches were managed properly there is no reason why Zimbabwe should not be one of the richest and most prosperous nations on earth.

One expected the Trade Union Leader to know what inflation is all about. I expected the State University to know what inflation is about and more significantly to know of Zimbabwe’s true economic potential and the criminal waste of resources such as diamonds through corruption and looting.

A delegation of the striking State University lecturers was scheduled to meet a high powered government team headed by Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa and the deputy Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Dr Godfrey Gandawa, to ensure their salaries are paid on time in future. Whilst I would have not expected my Trade Union friend to raise the matter of the criminal waste of the national mineral wealth through corruption and looting, I would expect the lecturers to raise it as a matter of cause because it is the root cause of government’s financial problems.

The Lecturer and government official meeting was chalked to take place on Monday 18th February 2015 I had not seen report on what was discussed; still I am cock sure the lecturers did not raise the issue of corruption and looting. This begs the questions; if University Lecturers do not know that corruption and looting are the root causes behind Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown what hope is there that my aunt in the rural back waters will know that?

 If University Lecturers know that corruption and looting are indeed the root causes behind Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown, in which they too have been not been spared of the economic hardships, but are too cowardly to raise these critical issues with government officials; who do they expect to do so? 

Zanu PF decisions are "no subject to higher court" says Mugabe - what a load of bull!

Mugabe has remained as the leader of his Zanu PF party and head of government for the last 35 years in spite his pathetic and ruinous economic performance and tyrannical and murderous political record. One of the reasons why he has managed to do so is he is a master of double talk; if he does not dazzle you with brilliance he baffle you with bull.  He was clearly at his baffling- with-bull best at the party’s politburo meeting.

Addressing journalists in Harare after a Zanu-PF politburo meeting, the party's national spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo said Mugabe emphasised that internal party disputes should be resolved internally.

“He (Mugabe) said the party has principles, rules and values that are not subjected to higher courts as some believe and if you are a party member, there are structures you must use to get your concerns addressed, but not through the High Court or other institutions outside the party,” Moyo added.

Private parties are encourage to settle their disputes without recourse to the country’s courts but if one of the parties should feel they will not get justice they have a right to ask the courts to hear the dispute and to pronounce judgement. It is totally unacceptable that one party should then unilaterally decide that the nation’s courts have no jurisdiction over the matter and therefore they will not appear before the courts.

“His Excellency, the President, opened the meeting with a clear message that every member of the politburo must be thoroughly familiar with the provisions of the party constitution,” Moyo told the journalist.

It is great Mugabe remembered there was something called the party’s constitution and, better still, he directed every member of the politburo to be “thoroughly familiar with the provisions of the party constitution”. But he would have done best by quoting to all and sentry the exact provision(s) in the Zanu PF constitution that said any internal disputes must be resolved internally and NOT “through the High Court or other institutions outside the party”!

If there is such a provision – there is none of course, it is just Mugabe baffling his gullible and idiotic politburo members – but for the sake of completeness we will say there is a provision in the Zanu PF constitution barring members from seeking redress outside the party; then surely that provision violates the country’s constitution and common sense which created the courts as the supreme arbiter and dispenser of justice.

Of course it is nonsensical that anyone should abrogate unto themselves the powers to judge what matters the courts should and should not hear; that is bulls***t!

When Mugabe returned on one of his many out of the country trip he asked the rhetorical question “Whose Courts and whose judges?” Mutasa would be taking his legal challenge.  It was rhetorical because everyone knows Zimbabwe’s judiciary system is in all but name just another Zanu PF department; there to do Mugabe’s bidding. Still Mutasa should take his case to the courts.

In the 2008 SADC and AU election observer teams for the first time ever, as far as I know, refused to rubber stamp Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections free and fair although they have given their thumbs up to some dodgy elections in Zimbabwe and other countries before and since. The wanton violence in Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections was out of this world, the teams had no choice but to condemn them. Mugabe must be fearing that his court and his judges may be similarly compelled to disregard his wishes and judge in Mutasa’s favour. The speed with which Mugabe changed the party’s constitutional to give himself the power to appoint the two party secretaries who would go on to be the two Vice Presidents in government, for example, blatantly failed to allow for the consultative period called for in the party’s constitution.

Is it not bad enough that Mugabe has corrupted the country’s judiciary but his insistence that his own Zanu PF disciplinary committee, kangaroo court, is now the supreme court of the land must be dismissed with the contempt it rightly deserves. No nation can ever allow that kind of tyrannical arrogance and absolutism.

There is no doubt that the conduct of Zanu PF’s electoral process last year defied all accepted norms in the conduct of democratic elections; this is something Mugabe has become expert in given he has routinely rig national elections for the last 35 years! Mutasa should not allow himself to be bamboozled by Mugabe’s rhetorical bull into accepting that Zanu PF disciplinary committee is the supreme arbiter in this matter and just take his case to the normal court!

 

No amount of propping up by CSO will change the fact that Tsvangirai is an incompetent and failed leader!

“MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai this week received a major boost in his bid to cajole the country’s influential civil society community after they turned up for a key meeting where he appealed for support to challenge President Robert Mugabe’s stay in power,” reported Radio VoP Zimbabwe.

Among the key Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) who attended Tsvangirai’s breakfast meeting were leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CZC), the Election Resource Centre and the Labour and Economic Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ) among other organisations.

Tsvangirai lost credibility after the MDC’s treasonous betrayal of the nation by failing to implement even one democratic reform out of the raft of reforms agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) throughout the five years of the Government of National Unity (GNU). The MDC has been desperately seeking political relevance by offering to host an all stakeholders meeting, “convergence conference”, to discuss the roadmap out of the country’s political and economic mess. The meeting was to try to get the CSOs to back his idea. 

There is a crying need to find a political and economic solution in Zimbabwe; there is no question about that. What is failing to understand is that it was his blundering incompetence in failing to implement the reforms during the GNU that landed the nation in this mess. In any other country with an informed and vigilant electorate he would have been forced to resign a long time ago because he disqualified himself as someone who could ever be trusted to lead again.

The task of getting the democratic reforms implemented now is a lot tougher than it was during the GNU. So what hope is there that Tsvangirai will get the reforms implemented now when he failed to do so during the GNU? None!

The SADC, international community and the whole world would like to help Zimbabwe end this political nightmare of Zanu PF tyranny but after the debacle of the GNU they all walked out in disgust. If we want to be taken serious ever again by anyone then it is for us to show the world that we learnt something from our folly of having elected someone as corrupt and incompetent as Tsvangirai in the first place. By re-electing Tsvangirai to lead in any way shows that we have learnt nothing and are therefore not yet ready to be taken seriously.

Tsvangirai will never deliver any democratic change in Zimbabwe; that is a fact. He can have as many local CSOs as he pleases to his social gatherings that will never change that he is a failed leader who will never add up to much. None of the foreign donors attended the meeting, they all deserted MDC in droves as soon as it was clear MDC was going to take part in the July 2013 elections with not even one reform implemented against the repeated advice not to. They knew then that Tsvangirai would never ever deliver any meaning change and they have since kept they distance.

  Dr Richard Morgan Tsvangirai hosting a “convergence conference” – what would a scatter brain like him do now that he failed to do when he was Prime Minister Richard Morgan Tsvangirai; he failed to do a single thing of any substance then!

Of course Zimbabweans are free to hold on to the belief that we can make a silk purse from a rat's ear but we must not expect anyone else out there to pay any attention to what we say or do much less spend a single dollar supporting such hare-brain schemes! The continued support of failed leaders is not helping our struggle for democratic change but is instead undermining it because it is sending the message that we are not serious.