Biti is seeking coalition with Mujuru on the falsehood he will "wash off the gamatox" later!

Tendai Biti is actively seeking a coalition between his MDC -Renewal with Mai Mujuru’s People First. He is so convinced this is the right move he has dismissed doing otherwise as “idiocy”.

 

Biti and Mujuru can talk until the cows come home the political reality is that both of them are incompetent, corrupt and sell-out; God knows they have proven this beyond all doubt already. Whilst education may cure one of incompetence, there is no known cure for being corrupt and a sell-out other than hang oneself as Judas Iscariot did.

 

They two should have apologized for betraying the people whilst they were in power and then resign from all public life!

They have both their political virtue on Zimbabwe's infamous political gravy train. They have since lost their seats; Biti was in the GNU and lost his seat following the rigged 2013 elections and Mai Mujuru was a senior member in Zanu PF for 34 years only to be kicked out of the party last December. They are both itching to get back on that gravy train so much so they will do or say anything.

As far as the people of Zimbabwe are concerned the single most important task this nation must accomplish is to get all, not just some water down few but ALL, the democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement, GPA, which then gave rise to the formation of the GNU, implemented.

 

The reforms were designed to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship which has allowed the party to abuse state institutions like the public media, the Police, Security sectors, ZEC, etc. and rig elections. MDC failing to get even one reform implemented during the five years of the GNU and hence Zanu PF was able to blatantly rig the July 2013 elections and is set to do so again in future elections.

 

Although Mai Mujuru has been kicked out of the Mugabe faction of Zanu PF that is now in power, as a former Zanu PF member herself she still knows how the Zanu PF dictatorship works. If she was to contest the next elections and win then she will inherit the essential components of the Zanu PF dictatorship lock, stock and barrel!

 

The day Mai Mujuru and her former Zanu PF are returned back to power they would want to quickly consolidate their power base by appointing people loyal to the her in the state institutions and assure them all that it is business as usual. Her political power base is founded on the Zanu PF dictatorship and she would certainly not want that disrupted by someone implementing democratic reforms!

 

As for Tendai Biti and his MDC friends they have never believed they could govern Zimbabwe own their own and hence the reason the readily accepted GNU in 2008 and were not keen to implement the democratic reforms during the GNU years. MDC were quite content to have the Zanu PF dictatorship survive after the GNU provided it changed enough to allow MDC seats on the gravy train.

 

MDC leaders expected Zanu PF to blatantly rig the July 2013 elections but not to the extent of a landslide victory for Zanu PF!

 

Tendai Biti is hoping the coalition with Mai Mujuru will result in the political system MDC had hope would emerge after the 2013 elections; a Zanu PF dominated government but with a number of reserved seats for him and his MDC friends.

 

Many Zimbabweans have been fearful Mai Mujuru and her supporters’ strong Zanu PF corrupt and tyrannical past; a leopard does not change its spots, ever! MDC-Renewal has been quick sooth these public fears by assuring the public MDC-Renewal will “wash off the gamatox” as soon as the coalition is back in power.

 

The gamatox reference comes the time Mugabe was angry with Information Minister Jonathan Moyo he called him a “weevil” that was destroying Zanu PF from within. Didymus Mutasa, Mujuru loyalist, saw Moyo and his faction in Zanu PF as the greatest threat to the Mujuru faction’s bid to position her to take over power from Mugabe. So Mutasa seized the chance to get rid of the competition and offered to bring the gamatox insecticide use to kill weevil.

 

Within six months it was Minister Moyo and his faction that successfully ousted the Mujuru faction out of the party. So it Mutasa himself who ended up covered to his eyes in the gamatox!

So for the sake of winning the next elections MDC –Renewal are willing to put aside democratic reforms and work to Zanu PF modus operandi thus accepted to be contaminated with the gamatox, as it were. The day after the coalition has won the elections MDC –Renewal will want the democratic reforms implemented or wash themselves free of the gamatox.

 

After what all what Mai Mujuru and her Zanu PF has already gone through being kicked out of the party and what they still have to go through to win back power, this lot will have no patience with some political upstart threatening their recovered political power by implementing some democratic reforms. Frankly Tendai Biti and his lot will be chaff to bit that they are back on the gravy train again they will not want to rock the boat by pushing reforms.

 

The bottom line is the Mujuru’s People First and Tendai Biti’s MDC-Renewal marriage of convenience will never ever implement all the democratic reforms; not before the next elections or after those elections.  This proposed coalition is a political distraction, offering the false hope of a way out when it is in fact a cul-de-sac, easy to get in but near impossible to get out.

 

The only way out of this political and economic mess we find ourselves in is by getting all the democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 GPA implemented. Mujuru and Biti are not offering to implement any reforms so forget them.

 

Mugabe’s ZimAsset plan is dead in the water; he failed to get any donors to bankroll the plan. The regime has no plan B to end the worsening economic meltdown. The regime is under increasing pressure to accept meaningful economic and political reforms design to end the corruption, lawlessness, etc. which destroyed local companies and stopped new investment. We must insist on the implementation of all the democratic reforms.

 

Implement all the reforms and the country the polluted political air will be cleared allowing competent politicians and political parties will emerge and flourish. 

 

First things first, get the democratic reforms implemented and that will finally secured the right of every Zimbabwean to free, fair and credible elections plus the host of all the other basic freedoms and rights for all time. Good and competent government and economic prosperity will follow guaranteed!

Mujuru is harmless in a democracy but dangerous in Zim's mudded political waters!

Mai Mujuru is a simple woman, a simpleton, and that shows through and through in what she does.

 

For the best part of her life Mai Mujuru had paid heed to the Mark Twain adage, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Every time she has opened her mouth she has left everybody wonder first “She is a deputy Minister?” then “You are not serious she is a Minister!” and then from 2004 to 2014 “Vice President! No wonder Zimbabwe is in a mess!”

 

In November 2013 Mai Mujuru her open her big mouth to deny the corruption stories in the Premier Service Medical Aid Society were all a pack of lies by the West to further their regime change agenda. She was roundly criticized for the stupid remarks. She then made the mistake of denying that she had said any such stupidity and the video recording of her making the speech went viral.

 

True to her well-trodden way of doing things; after Mai Mujuru unceremonious booting out of Zanu PF last December she has said very beyond thanking Mugabe for having promoted her beyond her level of competence and then booting her out. But the decades of holding high office had clearly made her big headed; the dream of being president, encouraged by her promotion to VP, had not died with the booting out. And she opened her big trap again!

 

She started well by admitting Zanu PF failed the nation it is 35 years in power and apologized for it.

 

 "For my own role in this failure, I am truly sorry and I apologise to my fellow Zimbabweans,” she said. She should have left it at that but old habits never die!

 

"I served faithfully in the government of Zimbabwe until my controversial, non-procedural and unjustified expulsion from both party and government in December 2014. To be discarded by my own party was initially devastating,” she continued.

 

Give a fool a long rope and he will hang himself with it! So the quarrel with her erstwhile Zanu PF colleague was not over the party’s “failures” but that they had kicked her out of the party. 

"I experienced feelings of betrayal and broken trust. However, as many know, it is when we confront our greatest fear that we find personal redemption."

 

"Ndiri mwana wevhu (I'm a child of the soil). I remain loyal to my culture and the ideals of the armed struggle," she concluded in what everyone believe is her own roundabout way of announcing she has revived her political career and dream of being president.

 

If what she has done and stood for the 34 years she was in power is an example of her remaining “loyal” to the ideals of the armed struggle then the ordinary people of Zimbabwe will be most unwise to elect her president for the same corruption and tyrannical oppression of the last 35 years.

 

If one was to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she accepts that in the last 35 years Zanu PF was not loyal to the ideals of freedom, justices, human rights, etc. She too, as a senior member of the Zanu PF governments throughout the 34 years, had not been loyal to these ideals.

 

So for 34 years she had forgotten the ideals and only remembered them after she was booted out of Zanu PF. And she expect the people to take her word that she will not forget the ideals again if she if elected back into office. She really is a simpleton because only a simpleton would believe the people are that naïve and gullible!

 

"The information we are getting is that it is panic stations in the party, going right to the top (Mugabe). Her (Mujuru's) statement made it clear that she is still in the game and that she is going to go for it and this has rattled the party,” a well place source said, according to the Daily News.

 

There are three basic reasons why Zanu PF bigwigs are rattled by the prospect of Mai Mujuru contesting the next elections:

 

1. So far Zanu PF has used the argument it alone had the liberation war record with some of the security top brass boasting that they would not salute someone who did not fight in the war of liberation. Well that will not apply purged members like Mai Mujuru, Rugare Gumbo, etc.
    
2. Zanu PF is unpopular with the electorate and the only way the party can remain in power is by rigging elections. The prospect of former Zanu PF members like Mai Mujuru, who are familiar with how the regime has rigged past elections, is worrisome because there is a real danger of the details of the vote rigging tricks being leaked out. There is a precedence of this; in 1995 Margret Dongo, a former Zanu PF MP and CIO, successful uncovered how the party had tried to rig that year’s elections.
    
3. But what frightens Zanu PF most of all is what the purged party members already know about the party and its leaders. By public admitting to Zanu PF “failures” for instance Mai Mujuru has already taken out the sting out of Zanu PF tried and tested mantra of blaming the West imposed sanctions on all the country’s ills.
    
   As the political temperature rises Zanu PF leaders will revert to their usual dirty tactics this time they will not have it all their way because the purged Zanu PF members have enough dirty on the leaders to hit back. When VP Mnangagwa was out campaign in the on-going by-elections he started de- campaigning Didymus Mutasa. The latter hit straight back warning he would unleash a “treasure trove of damning information” on the VP if he did not shut his trap.

 

Ordinary no one would have cause to fear the entry of a simpleton like Mai Mujuru on the political stage because she will soon tie herself in all sorts of contradictions and confusion. Zimbabwe is not a democracy and there is no need for manifesto or coherent policy on anything.

 

 In Zimbabwe’s mudded political waters of vote rigging, voter intimidation and even murdered only those with the opportunity to play these dirty tricks “win”. However, simpletons too can do very well here as long as they too have learned to see in these mudded waters, that is what makes Mai Mujuru’s re-entry in Zimbabwe politics a frightening prospect for Mugabe and company!

We, the people, are the sheep amongst Mujuru, Biti, et al the wolves, we need to be "as shrewd as snakes" to survive!

The recent avalanche of apologies from former VP Joice Mujuru, apologizing for “her role” in the Zanu PF failures and then Tendai Biti apologizing for “collective foolishness” of the opposition reminded me Jesus’s warning to his disciples.

 

 “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves,” said Jesus in Matthew 10:16.

 

“Suppose there are two men, the first man runs over your son and kills the child,” explained my late father. “The second man steals your cow. Both men offer their apologies. The innocent as a dove person will accept the two men’s apologies and that will be the end of the matter.”

 

“The shrewd as snake person would dig deeper into the two incidents. If the first man was sober as a judge when the accident happened, brought the body of the dead child together with his most sincere apologies; it was probable an accident. It will right and reasonable to forgive him.”

 

“On the other hand if the cow was stolen in the dead of night and you have only found out who the guilty person because you would not rest until you uncovered the truth. A cow cannot just disappear into thin air without trace! It will be right and reasonable to doubt the sincerity of the thief’s apology. This was not an accident but a carefully planned act for selfish gain; the man is apologizing not for having wronged you but for being caught which is not the same thing!”

 

On what basis therefore can one justify accepting Mai Mujuru’s apology for “her role” in the corrupt and oppressive Zanu PF tyrannical rule. It will be naïve and downright stupid to accept that she did not know this was going on; not after 34 years, of course she knew. Indeed she not only knew what was going on, she certainly played her part in the corruption and looting.

 

Mai Mujuru is one of the richest individuals in Zimbabwe with a fortune valued in billions of dollars amassed at the time when many business ventures were closing down and corruption was rampant. She must be a very shrewd business woman or else she is as corrupt as they come! She has denied being corrupt, most jail birds will tell you they are innocent “the lawyer fcuked me up!” She will, no doubt, explain to the world how she made her fortune one of these fine days.

 

If has taken two years of nagging Tendai Biti on when he and his fellow MDC leaders will apologize for betraying the nation and failing to implement even one of the raft of democratic reforms necessary for free and fair elections. Mugabe bribed MDC leaders into doing nothing on the reforms and so after five years of the GNU not even one reform was implemented.

 

Of course Tendai Biti and his MDC friends sold-out during the GNU. MDC leaders “were busy enjoying themselves during the GNU, they forgot why they were there” as SADC heads commented.

“We would like to apologise for the collective foolishness of the opposition and failure to form an alternative political voice in the country,” admitted Tendai Biti.

 

It was not the sudden realization of the tragic consequences of the 35 years of Zanu PF corrupt and tyrannical rule that forced Mai Mujuru to admit the failure and prompted the apology. If she had not been kicked out of the party last December, she would still be playing her role in the dictatorship vehemently denying there was corruption and blaming the economic meltdown on “the sanctions imposed the imperialist West!”

 

Mai Mujuru never saw the injustice of the Zanu PF dictatorship or the tragic human suffering brought by the economic meltdown; she did see any of this for the 34 years she was in power and does not see it now. What she sees now and has prompted her to make this uncharacteristic admission of Zanu PF’s failures is the political reality that she is no longer in power and she sees the admission and apology as necessary first steps in her attempt to regain power.

 

Similarly Tendai Biti’s apology is not because he and his fellow MDC friends have had any “Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus transformative moment”. They are still the same corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent sell-out they were before the rigged July 2013 election that saw most of them kicked off the gravy train. They are apologizing because they too see it as the necessary first step for them to get back into power.

 

Mujuru’s apology has not “cured” her of being the corrupt and tyrannical woman she has been these last 34 years. The apology has not “cured” Biti of the “collective foolishness” he and other MDC leaders showed during the GNU.

 

Zimbabwe is in this economic and political mess because the people of Zimbabwe have been naïve and gullible and treated all our leaders as if they were all incapable of doing anything wrong. Now that the country is in a real mess, it would fool for us to accept at face value that all that went wrong was an accident.

 

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves,” said Jesus. Those words are as relevant to Jesus’s disciples as there are to us today. A healthy and functioning democracy demands an electorate that is as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves!

 

Zimbabwe missed up on the chance to create a democracy in 1980 because we were naïve to trust Mugabe and his cronies. The country had the golden chance to end the Zanu PF dictatorship during the GNU but wasted that chance because we entrusted the task of implemented the reforms to to corrupt and incompetent MDC leaders.

 

The economic meltdown is putting Mugabe and Zanu PF under increasing pressure to accept political and economic reforms. This will be another chance to make sure the democratic reforms are finally implemented. It will be irresponsible of us to waste this chance too by entrusting the important task of getting all the reform implemented to politicians like Mai Mujuru and Tendai Biti who have already proven beyond doubt that they are corrupt and incompetent just because they have said they are sorry!

Zim's good-for-nothing analysts call for coalition in 2018 when it is reform we need!

Zimbabwe’s electoral silly season in once again upon us and the usual political analysts, the connoisseur of electoral nonsense, have set up the stalls and they have started dishing out their respective specialist dish.

 

“Analysts say the only way Zimbabwe could get out of its current political and socio-economic mess would be if the opposition formed a coalition ahead of the 2018 national elections, possibly with former Vice President Joice Mujuru as their presidential candidate, to take on the ruling Zanu PF which has been weakened by its deadly infighting,” wrote Thelma Chikwanha in the Daily News.

 

“As you know, President Tsvangirai has repeatedly spoken about the MDC big tent, so there is already appreciation within the movement (MDC) that a coalition of whatever nature is the way to go in 2018. It is also certainly better to be smeared with Gamatox, because it can be washed off than go solo and lose.” A senior MDC official said; no doubt, excited at the prospect of a coalition.

 

There is a tassel as to which of the two Tsvangirai and Mai Mujuru would constitute a winning ticket.

 

 “Tsvangirai has an established support base, which can be calculated using perception surveys and more importantly previous performances in elections. Mujuru’s support is perceived and a matter of conjecture,” argued McDonald Lewanika of Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition.

 

All this talk is no consequence, hence electoral silly season talk, because come the 2018 elections, as things stand, the Mugabe/Mnangagwa Zanu PF faction will “win” the elections just as they did in the 2013 elections. History has a habit of repeating itself, especially amongst those who never stop to view the past!

 

Throughout the GNU years right up to the 31 July 2013 elections our political analysts set up their stalls, just as they have done now, and assured the nation and Morgan Tsvangirai that he would win the coming elections hands down based on MDC’s “established support base”. Mugabe went on to “win” the elections with a landslide victory regardless!

 

Mugabe “won” the 31st July 2013 elections because he was able to rig the vote and he was able to do so blatantly. He issued his supporters with voter registration slips so they would bussed from one Polling Station to the next casting  multiple votes, for example. On the other hand, nearly one million or 100% of his winning margin, of mainly opposition supporters failed to vote because their names were deliberately posted in wrong constituency. It had to be a deliberate mistake because the regime stubbornly refused to release the voters roll a month before the elections as required by law.

 

MDC’s “established support base” counted for nothing in 2013 because Mugabe was able to rig the vote. Our good-for-nothing political analysts said nothing about the need to get all the democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 GPA implemented. MDC had failed to get even one reform implemented and our analysts, for their, part said nothing on the subject.

 

Of course, it was the holding of elections with no democratic reforms implemented that allowed Zanu PF to blatantly rig the 2013 elections.

 

Our good-for-nothing political analyst are at it again they are producing volumes of commentary on the 2018 elections and yet have said nothing about getting all the democratic reforms implemented. What good is MDC’s mass support if Mugabe has all the leeway to use all the dirty tricks to rig the vote?

 

Tsvangirai has produced a watered down list of eight reforms MDC-T is demanding must be implemented for the party to call off its “No reform no elections” boycott. Even if Zanu PF implemented all the eight reforms; that will not stop the party using violence, a very serious matter as past experience has shown, to rig the vote.

 

The argument that being a former party member herself Mai Mujuru will have inside information on how Zanu PF intends to rig the vote and thus will foil future vote rigging is wishful thinking. Although Mai Mujuru and many of her supporters benefited from the July 2013 rigged elections there is nothing to suggest they knew the details of the scheme. To prove it, there is no doubt that Mai Mujuru and her supporters were completely outwitted and outmanoeuvred in the Zanu PF 2014 party congress that saw her and her supporters booted out of the party.

 

The truth both Tsvangirai and Mai Mujuru are corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent and they have already proven this beyond all doubt – a basic fact all our good-for-nothing political analysts have ignored. Facts are facts they will not change because someone pretended they are not there!

 

For the first 20 years of our independence the people have followed a corrupt and murderous tyrant and his band of thugs; no questioned asked. One had hoped that the people learned the lesson from that folly but clearly they did not as the switched their support from Zanu PF to MDC; a party of corrupt, incompetent and sell-out village idiots.

 

Of course it would be to what “analysts say (is) the only way Zimbabwe could get out of its current political and socio-economic mess,” as Thelma Chikwanha rightly said, that the nation will turn. It is therefore very disappointing that the good-for-nothing analysts should in fact be the cheer leaders in picking the same and proven corrupt and incompetent individuals as the worthy candidates to lead the nation out of the mess!

 

It beggars belief how anyone would consider Morgan Tsvangirai or Mai Mujuru as suitable presidential candidate!

 

The only way out of the political and economic mess Mugabe and Zanu PF have dragged us into is by making sure all the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections are implemented followed by fresh elections. It would have been infinitely easier to implement the reforms during the GNU, sadly that opportunity was wasted. Still these reforms must nonetheless still be implemented because absolutely nothing of substance can ever be accomplished until they are.

 

A democratic Zimbabwe with a freedom of expression and a free media will allow the quality leaders to shine like diamonds and an informed electorate will soon learn to distinguish the diamonds from the stones. Get a healthy and functioning democratic political system and quality leaders and political parties will follow, guaranteed!

 

The democratic reforms are the pre-requisite to political and economic reforms; they are the pre-requisite to good, competent and accountable government and to economic recovery and prosperity. Any political analysis worth its salt must therefore have democratic reforms at its heart and soul!

Party chef in ill-fitting party regalia is comical still we must end the brainwashing culture!

There is nothing more pathetic than a filthy rich Minister wearing an ill-fitting cheap cotton print suit with portraits of President Mugabe. There is nothing fashionable about looking like a circus clown. It is rather a surrender of fashion for the unfashionable; a metaphor for the surrender of one’s individuality and ability to think for oneself to become one with the identical-looking and brainwashed herd.  

 

I have always felt uneasy at the sight of a group of women wearing wrap-on cloth, mazambiya, with the portrait of political leaders be it Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia, Kamuzu Banda in Malawi or our own  Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. The wrap-on were upgraded to dresses with matching head scarf and a sea of these women similarly attired at rallies, grovelling on their knees at the Airport to see off President Mugabe or to welcome him back from his many travels became the norm.

Someone then decided to make man's shirts out of the same cheap cotton print and that was expanded to jackets, trousers and tie – a complete suit complete with a baseball cap to match!

David White Head in Chegutu and Kadoma used to make the cheap cotton print material (used to, who knows with President Mugabe’s look East policy, they must be facing stiff competition from the Chinese) and must have made a fortune.

 

It is not so much that the material is cheap, rough and ready that makes me, even to this day, queasy; that plays only a very small part.

 

There is something utilitarian about the cotton print and the wrap-on it was used for original. The wrap-on was meant to keep the woman’s dress clean just like the labourer’s overall, a doctor’s white coat or a butcher’s apron. Therefore turning the wrap-on into a dress, shirt, jack, etc. was like wearing an overall over nothing!

 

There is something comical about a Ministers, a multi-millionaires in his/her own right from all the years of looting, putting aside their Italian design suits to wear cheap ill-fitting cotton print suit with blurry portrait images of some tyrant! It is normal to see President Mugabe and his wife wearing matching cotton-print shirt and dress and soon many party members will be wearing identical design shirts and dresses.

 

The photograph of Psychology Maziwisa, then Zanu PF deputy spokesman, is his cotton-print suit at the party congress last year; made me laugh. I laugh to myself just remembering it. Talk of singing for one’s supper that was tantamount to singing none-stop all day just for a glass of dirty water!

 

What makes me physically sick at the unsightly uniformity of the sea of party supporters in their cheap cotton print party regalia is their blank faces accentuating the totally brainwashed blank minds behind! The parrot fashion the people will sheepishly repeat the empty meaningless slogans, without ever stopping to ask what the slogan means, will remove all doubt that mentally these people have been transformed from thinking human beings to nothing more than a brainwashed flock of sheep! 

 

We must end this political culture designed to brainwash ordinary people into uniformly dressed conforming zombies there to worship the great leader and do as he pleases! We want a political culture that celebrate and promote the essences of our humanity; our ability to think for ourselves and value the fact that each one of us is totally unique and thus afford the chance be different and leave their own individual foot print.

 

Uniforms are bad enough in school and the army even though they help focus the mind on the task in hand of learning or unity of purpose. Public life, politics is but a variation of public life, should be about debate, informing, educating, etc. the public so they are able to make informed life choices; it is not about brainwashing and forcing people into straitjacket of political conformity!  

Mujuru's admission of Zanu PF "failure" confirm self-destruct gene has kicked in big time!

Zanu PF has always been a party of ruthless thugs united by their greed for absolute political power and the material wealth it brought. It is the party’s ruthlessness, summed up by Mugabe’s boastful “I have degrees in violence!”, that has allowed the party to ride roughshod over the people hopes, dreams, freedoms and human rights including the right to a meaningful democratic say in the governance of the country and even the right to life.

 

The party needed to be utterly ruthless and cold hearted to establish the de facto one-party one-man dictatorship we see in Zimbabwe today and to carry out its destructive economic agenda and murderous political repression for three and half decades without flinching or remorse. Mugabe had done his homework in destroying all the country’s democratic institution by undermining the rule of law and appointing men and women after his own cold heart. He shared with them the absolute power and the looted wealth; they took the all-powerful drugs and their transformation from human with a conscience to cold-hearted monsters was complete.

 

Mugabe and Zanu PF’s greatest strength, ruthlessness, was also its greatest weakness. Just as the Zanu PF dictatorship was renowned for being utterly ruthless with political critics and opponents from outside the party it was equally ruthless with those from within Zanu PF itself.

 

Zanu PF history is full of stories of party members who have forced out of the party because they were unhappy with the autocratic direction the party was going. Simba Makoni, Edgar Tekere, Margaret Dongo and Dumiso Dabengwa have all been forced out of the party. They are the lucky one for lived to tell the tale; others like Hebert Chitepo and Tongogara were not so lucky, they had a brutal and violent deaths.

 

Up to August last year, Zanu PF had eliminated one or two internal critics that changed with the purge of former VP Mujuru and those who had dared support her bid for high office. By firing Mai Mujuru and fifteen other senior party leaders Mugabe’s ruthlessness turned on the self-destruct gene; party members are ruthlessly attacking each other and now the party is imploding.

 

Whilst they were members of Zanu PF Mai Mujuru and her followers had their share of the power and the loot, they never said anything critical of the party for 34 years; the ruthless purge opened their eyes and loosened their tongues. In what some people have already termed her manifesto to launch her fight back former Vice President Joice Mujuru has admitted that Zanu PF rule has been a total disaster and she apologized to the nation for her “role in this failure”.

 

"Now Mujuru wants to apologise? If she had any honour as she claims befitting a revolutionary, why didn't she turn down all those power elevations for 34 years? Even more telling, why didn't she resign?” asked Zanu PF Deputy Secretary for Information and Publicity Monica Mutsvangwa. "She's now pouring scorn on what she enjoyed most, the power and its material rewards, which she's still enjoying."

 

When the pot starts calling the kettle black; rest assured the soot must be getting under their skins! Mrs Mutsvangwa is not denying Zanu PF failed the nation with its insatiable greed for power and loot. What she is questioning is Mai Mujuru’s hypocritical claim to honour which they both clearly lack and never had.

"Our President is a visionary leader and a consummate politician,” continued Mrs Mutsvangwa. No doubt suddenly aware she had admitted too much and so needed to cover her tracks.

 

“He has seen it all over the long years in politics. It's a fatal mistake if power hungry people see it other ways. Zanu-PF will not miss her and, as for her attempt to ride on the immortal reputation of our President Mugabe, we say down with crocodile tears," she added.

 

It is Zanu PF’s own propagandists who keep making the fatal mistake of trying to dig themselves out of a hole.

 

If anyone is power hungry then it must be Mugabe; he is the one who has corrupted the country’s state institutions, tampered with the national as well as party constitution, rigged national as well as party elections, had over 30 000 innocent people murdered, etc., etc. all for one purpose and one purpose only - so he can remain leader of Zanu PF and the country.  

When you are in a hole, stop digging. In the three and half decades of mismanagement and corruption Mugabe and Zanu PF have dug an economic hole so deep they cannot get out.

 

for themselves and the nation an economic hole so deep the Political analyst Goodwine Mureriwa, accused Mujuru of trying to take advantage of the economic challenges facing Zimbabweans to push her selfish agenda.

"I think she's (Mujuru) just trying to take advantage of the plight of the people of Zimbabwe in the face of the economic challenges being faced in the country just like what Morgan Tsvangirai did in the 1990s, when he took advantage of the plight of workers to launch his political career.” Goodwine Mureriwa said, according to Chronicle reporter, Farirai Machivenyika.  

"It's clear that her ambitions are selfish and she simply wants to justify her entrance into opposition politics using the people. She's trying to buy political capital from her expulsion from Zanu-PF, but unfortunately for her, she's bound to fail because people can see her intentions," Mureriwa said.

"She was one of the big wigs to rush to exploit the diamonds in Marange for personal gains and is also sitting on a multi-billion dollar estate left by her late husband that she's refusing to share equitably with other beneficiaries."

Of course Mai Mujuru is taking full advantage of the economic meltdown to expose Mugabe’s decades of misrule and ruthless tyrannical rule. By purging Mai Mujuru Mugabe has made her and all those purged with her his enemies and they know so much dirty things about him to bury him and his cronies alive and that is exactly what they are doing. Whether or not the people will be fooled by her hypocritical apology to elect her back into power is another matter.

 

What matters now is that Mugabe and Zanu PF are stuck in a political and economic hell-hole of their own making; the economy is in total meltdown and the party is split down the middle and the self-destruct gene has kicked in big time. Zanu PF is imploding and there is not anyone can do to stop it. Not that anyone in their right mind would want to stop the implosion; the nation is dying to see the demise this corrupt and ruthless dictatorship and, hopefully, see it replaced with a healthy and functioning democracy.

Zhuwao says Mugabe will contest 2018 elections - economic meltdown will force regime change before that!

President Robert Mugabe's nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, has told the Sunday Mail that Mugabe plans to stand as Zanu PF presidential candidate in 2018 and only step down at the end of his second presidential term, as stipulated in the country’s new constitution, in 2023.

 

Given that Zimbabwe is a de facto one party state, thanks to MDC’s failure to implement even one democratic reform designed to stop Zanu PF rigging elections and the nation’s no expense spared attitude when it comes to securing Mugabe’s longevity; Zhuwao’s statement is not as wishful thinking as it sounds.

 

In a country where life expectancy has plummeted from 68 years in 1980 to 34 years in 2004; one would say a 91 years of age Mugabe is already living on borrowed time and therefore not likely to live another 7 more years. The reality is the nation has already shown its willingness to sacrifice everything and everyone to keep him alive and there is no reason to believe this will stop.

 

Gweru Provincial Hospital is the referral hospital for the whole of Midlands Province with a population of 2 to 3 million and yet it is so poorly funded, it does not have something as basic as a dialysis machine, for example. The same regime that has no money for a dialysis machine Gweru Provincial Hospital has paid for Mugabe’s regular medical check-ups in Singapore. In 2012 alone, Mugabe made no fewer than eight such trips with each costing $ 3 million.

 

What makes Zhuwao’s assertion of Mugabe standing in the 2018 elections, life and health permitting - even the rich will die, laughable is that die-hard Mugabe loyalists like him are ignoring the seriousness of the country’s worsening economic meltdown and its potency as the instrument for change.

 

Three and half decades of mismanagement and corruption have taken a heavy toll on the national economy. After rigging July 2013 elections Mugabe was convinced he would rig economic recovery with his $27 billion ZimAsset plan. Instead of finally doing something to end the criminal waste of resources through misrule, Mugabe planned to throw lots and lots of cash at the wasteful in the hope that some of the money will trickle through and achieve the desired economic recovery.

 

Sadly, Mugabe failed to get any donors to bankroll the plan. Not even his “all weather friends”, the Chinese, would fund such a hare-brain scheme. With ZimAsset is dead in the water and no plan B; the national economy has gone into a dangerous nose dive.

 

Many companies have closed in the last two years with no new companies opening up to take their place. Unemployment has soared to 90%, 16% of our people are now living in abject poverty, the government itself is struggling to pay the civil servant wages let alone pay for everything else, etc. Like it or not the country is facing a very serious economic meltdown and it is laughable that even die-hard Mugabe loyalists would pretend not to have noticed the problem.

 

Even is Mugabe and his cronies pretend not to notice; the reality is unemployment rate of 90%, 16% living in abject poverty, etc. are socially and politically unsustainable. And yet, as long as Mugabe and Zanu PF remain in power, the economic situation is bound to get even worse! It may take a year or two years for the number of those living in abject poverty to double. Will the 32% living in abject poverty trigger the social unrest; nobody knows. What is certain is the present situation cannot last for much longer.

 

Continued Mugabe and Zanu PF rule of the country is no longer socially and politically sustainable.

 

Tsvangirai and his MDC friends failed to bring about regime change. Mai Mujuru and her followers schemed to force Mugabe out of power but they too failed. And yet regime change is now as certain as day and it is the economic meltdown that has brought it about.

 

There is no doubt that this Zanu PF regime will spare no expense to keep Mugabe alive and in power; whether he will live to stand for re-election in 2018 is in the lap of the Gods. The regime’s failure to rig economic recovery had produced a new political adversary for the regime - economic meltdown which Mugabe has failed to bribe and cheat. It is the economic meltdown that is going to force Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs to accept the dreaded accept regime change long before the 2018 elections.