Zim's destiny will depend on road we follow; opposition unity or implement reform.

There is not even one thinking Zimbabwean out there who would disagree that the country is in economic ruins with unemployment a nauseating 90% and 76% of our people now living in abject poverty and denied their freedoms, human rights, human dignity and hope. There is no question about how caused the economic ruins – 36 years of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and lawlessness by the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF one-party cum one-man dictatorship. The public debate is now focused on what should be done to get the nation out of this mess?

There two competing schools of thought as to what the forward should be:

a)     There are those who are saying we should expend all our time, energy and treasure on uniting the country’s opposition; making sure the electorate register to vote and then go out to vote en masse coming voting day. The argument here is that Zanu PF will be defeated if we do not divide the opposition vote and people vote in such big numbers that rigging the vote is impossible.

b)     The second school of thought is arguing that we should expend all our time, energy, treasure, sweat, blood - everything on getting the democratic reforms designed to dismantle Zanu PF’s vote rigging juggernaut so that the next elections are free, fair and credible because only free and fair elections will deliver a compete government. If not a competent government, then at least one with some common sense.

There are several reasons why uniting the opposition and contesting the elections with no reforms is doomed to fail and here is a few of these reasons:

There is no quality in the opposition and quantity is a poor substitute for quality.

It has been long in coming but it is now beginning to dawn on many people that quality matters, that we are in this mess because the corrupt and incompetent opposition let us down. Both Morgan Tsvangirai and Joice Mujuru are corrupt and incompetent, their political track records speaks volumes, and per se they will never accomplish anything of substance.

Tsvangirai had his best chance to implement the democratic reforms during the GNU; he failed to get even one reform implemented. Not even one! To get out of this mess the country must implement the democratic reforms a.s.a.p. and it is naïve to trust Tsvangirai to do so if he was to lead the next government.

“Now, Mrs Mujuru’s genes, her DNA is 100% Zanu PF. We all know that had she not been expelled from Zanu PF, she would still be a vice president aspiring to inherit that coveted throne” wrote Rejoice Ngwenya in Zimeye.

Of course, Rejoice is right, Mujuru is Zanu PF in all but name. If she was elected back into office, she will be looking at carrying on with the corruption and mismanagement where she left off when she was booted out of Zanu PF in 2014. 

A united opposition of Tsvangirai, Mujuru plus many others equally corrupt and incompetent will increase the head count, quantity, but they will still be corrupt and incompetent and therefore will not deliver the political and economic changes the nation needs. It will take quality leadership to get the economy back on track and not just a change of name of who is president.

If you can rig the vote, politics in more than a game of numbers.

Mugabe has always wanted Zimbabwe to be a one-party state and from the word go he has set his mind to establish and retain the de facto one-party cum one-man dictatorship that has misruled this nation these last 36 years and landing us in this mess. As the national economy started to falter and with it his popularity with the people; Mugabe has resorted to all manner of dirty tricks to rig the vote including the use of wanton violence. Mugabe has turned vote rigging into an art, numbers count for nothing. 

In the March 2008 elections Tsvangirai got 73% of the votes, by Mugabe's own admission, but after six weeks of recounting the 5 million votes, Mugabe's ZEC whittled down 73% to 47%.

In the presidential run-off that followed Mugabe launched a military style operation "Mavhotera paps!" (Whom did you vote for!). He deployed Police, Army, CIO and war veterans to punish the people for having voted for MDC in the March vote. The country witnessed its worst ever election violence and over 500 people were murdered. Mugabe got 98% of the vote and ZEC took less than a day to count and declare the result!

In the 2013 elections, the nation was spared the wanton violence but only because Mugabe had devised a very sophisticated vote rigging scheme. He paid an Israeli company NIKUV a princely sum of US$ 10 million to corrupt the voters roll so that nearly one million voters (Mugabe’s winning margin that year was just over one million) were denied the vote because their details were posted in some other constituency than the one they expected. 

Two days before the elections the number of polling station was increased from 2 000 to 9 000 and hooded Zanu PF youths were seen on Youtube videos being bussed from one polling station to the next casting multiple votes. 

The law of the land says the voters roll must released one month, at least, before voting day; Mugabe refused to do so. If he had done so, then people whose details were posted in wrong constituencies would have had the chance to have this corrected, for example. In fact to this day, Mugabe still refuse to release the 2013 voters roll; he knows that it is the smoking gun of the blatant vote rigging that took place that year.

Zanu PF’s vote rigging juggernaut is a well-funded machine.

$15 billions of diamond revenue was looted, again by Mugabe’s own admission, in the period 2010 to 2016. He made the surprise admission in February and to date no one has been arrested and Finance Minister has also confirmed that government is still collected revenue from one out of the expected six million carat diamond output; proof that the looting in still going on. It is no secret that some of the looted billions are now being used to fund Zanu PF’s vote rigging schemes.

Vote rigging is the elephant in the room, opposition unity is only the mouse

Many Zimbabweans have developed the knack for ignoring the elephant in the room squeezing everyone else out and talk of the mouse instead. For decades, Mugabe has denied that corruption was undermining national development and the economy. He blamed the drought and sanctions instead allowing corruption to grow and spread. What nation of earth can sustain the haemorrhaging of $15 billions much less one with Zimbabwe’s GDP of $14 billions.

The people of Zimbabwe should have stood firm against Mugabe’s vote rigging shenanigans soon after independence; we did not, allowing the tyrant to develop and perfect his vote rigging dirty tricks. During the GNU, the country had its best chance ever to implement the reforms and end the Zanu PF dictatorship; Tsvangirai wasted that chance.

The task of stopping Zanu PF rigging elections has become progressively more and more difficult because the regime has had all these years to entrench itself into power. But just as the cancerous corruption has grown and spread and now poses a serious threat to the economic life of the nation and therefore cannot be ignored any more. So too is the vote rigging; Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is socially and politically unsustainable and political reform is the key to unlock economic reform. This nation cannot afford yet another rigged elections and thus delay economic recovery.

Why we need the NTA to implement the democratic reforms

Tsvangirai and other opposition leaders in the Nation Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) have been calling on Zanu PF to implement electoral reforms, without even bothering to discuss the merits of these reforms, it is naïve to expect Zanu PF to president over reforms designed to dismantle the party’s political power base. Senior Zanu PF leaders like Professor Jonathan Moyo and VP Mnangagwa have already public stated that the party will never do any such thing.

There are rumours that Tsvangirai is negotiating with Zanu PF to enter yet another GNU. Since the primary task of the new GNU would be to implement democratic reforms leading to free and fair elections, the same task the two parties failed to get even one reform implemented last time. The two parties failed to get even one reforms implemented for various selfish reasons, those reasons are still there today. It would be naïve to trust Mnangagwa and/or Tsvangirai to implement all the reforms thoroughly and expeditiously.   

The task of implementing the democratic reforms must be given others who played very little or no part in the failed GNU or the Zanu PF dictatorship of those last 36 years. A National Transition Authority (NTA) is one such political body that could formed and tasked to implement the reforms.

The last GNU was a product of the political crisis born out of the wanton violence and vote rigging of the 2008 elections, we do not need to have a repeat of another rigged elections of social upheaval in the country to justify the NTA. The present economic situation is socially and politically unsustainable and we should embrace change now without inflicting any more suffering on our people much less shed another drop of blood in street protests or political violence.

Taking part in 2013 elections with no reforms was foolish it will be folly to do so again

SADC leaders warned Tsvangirai not to take part in the 2013 elections with no reforms implemented. Tsvangirai thought he had the numbers on his side to overwhelm any vote rigging by Mugabe. He was wrong as we know and the nation has paid dearly for it. Taking part in any future elections without implementing any reforms is sheer folly.

Demanding free, fair and credible elections is NOT asking for too much

It was the Greeks who, 2500 years ago, came up with democracy as a just and stable system of government, the ante-dote to autocracy and tyranny, in which everyone had a meaningful say in the governance of the country. We know that the de facto Zanu PF dictatorship has not worked, we do not need someone else to tell that or that we need change. They are those who are pretending not to know what constitute free, fair and credible elections and are asking us to sweep all evidence of vote rigging by this regime under the carpet. We must ignore them and demand, not in a shy way but firmly, the implementation of all democratic reforms to ensure the next elections are free, fair and credible.

Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs portray themselves as the nation’s liberation heroes when all they did was remove the white colonial oppressors with the new oppressors – themselves. It is right and proper that we look the tyrant in the eye and demand free and fair elections as our birth right, that is not asking too much, even of a seasoned corrupt and murderous tyrant!

"We were used to prop Mugabe," complain Mujuru's war vets - they now prop her. By N Garikai

“Mwana wabata moto unodzidza juti unopisa, benzi ibenzi rinozvibvura!” So goes the Shona adage. (The child who touches fire soon learns that it burns, the fool never learns and so will roast himself!)

After 34 years at the very heart of the Zanu PF dictatorship plus two years cooling-off period one would have thought Mai Mujuru and her ZPF followers have finally learned something. Sadly, they are the same blunder idiots they were in 1980, remained so throughout the 34 years in Zanu PF and are set to continue blundering into the future!

“We want to apologise to the masses of Zimbabwe because we dumped them soon after independence. We are saying we are coming back to you. We want to listen and we want the problems that people are facing resolved,” said Elliot Kasu, the interim chairperson of the ZPF Freedom Fighters Council (FFC).

“After the liberation struggle we were dumped and we continue to be dumped. So, we are saying let us go back to the 1980s.”

In one breath, he acknowledges that war veterans betrayed the people but has clearly not thought through as how that happened, specifically the role Joice Mujuru and other ZPF leaders played and war veterans like him played. In the next breath he is back to his and Mai Mujuru’s favourite theme blaming Mugabe and those still in Zanu PF for “dumping” them!

Frank Badza, who is Secretary General of FFC said the same thing in different words.

“The revolution was derailed following the liberation struggle and it continues to go off the rails up to this day. So, we have been figuring out where we went wrong,” said Frank Badza.

“We entirely accept the blame for the fall of this country and the abandonment of the values of the liberation struggle. We did not realise our objectives because some of the forefathers were not there at the end and it was hijacked by some who wanted to build their names, yet their contribution was far less.

“As freedom fighters, we realised that if we follow People First, we will remove people from this dictatorship. We were used to put Mugabe in power and we were used to prop up his rule and maintain it until 2014 when we were hounded from the party.

Again the same thing, a quick acknowledgement that the Zimbabwe is in a serious economic mess and the most sorrowful and sonorous words of regret they were “hounded from the party”.

Joice Mujuru, who attended the press conference above, has given a number of press interviews herself since December 2014 has to apologized to the people of Zimbabwe for the mess the country is in. She has been a cabinet member for 34 years, the last ten of which she was President Mugabe’s number two and yet she accepts no responsibility for anything. She saw nothing, she maintains, because “puppies do not open their eyes the day they born”.

Well Kasu, Badza, Mujuru and the rest of these ZPF people have not been listening or they are all stone deaf because if they have been listening they would know by now that;

a)     they have all been at the very heart of this Zanu PF dictatorship and, after 34 years, they cannot walk away and pretend they saw nothing, heard nothing and they as dumb as the moon. They are all as guilty of landing the nation in this mess as President Mugabe, Mnangagwa, Jabulani Sibanda and all the others.

b)    There is a lot more to this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship than the one or two individuals that has allowed it to take firm root in Zimbabwe; it is the ethos that shared by most freedom fighters that by being a freedom fighter they know best and therefore everyone else must listen to them and do as they say. Well, history has shown that war veterans do not have the monopoly of knowledge, the nation would not be in this economic and political mess if they did.

c)     And, more significantly, if we are serious about ending the mess then it is not enough to just remove Mugabe and one or two others from power and change the name of the party from Zanu PF to ZPF. We must dismantle the whole dictatorship edifice including the erroneous belief that war veterans know best on which the dictatorship is grounded.

What Zanu PF has done since independence in April 1980 is systematically corrupt the nation’s democratic institutions so they served the party’s selfish interest of remaining in power at all cost. Security Chefs were brainwashed into announcing that they would not salute anyone “with no liberation war credentials”.

The war veterans were brainwashed into believing all opposition parties were sponsored by the West to bring about regime change. So, the regime granted them carte blanche powers to abuse the people denying them their freedoms and rights including the right to free and fair elections in the name of stopping regime change.

The sheer stupidity of both the security chefs and the war veterans was exposed by their failure to see that this no regime change mantra was incompatible with the regime’s claim that elections were free, fair and credible. If they had any common sense at all they should have also realised that the country’s failure to have a democratically accountable government was the root cause of the country’s economic decline!

“We know as war veterans that if we win elections it will be difficult for them to deny us power as they did with Tsvangirai,” said Badza.

In other words, he and his FFC friends still believe in they know best.

Chris Mutsvangwa who is leading the other group of war veterans who have remain in Zanu PF are right now in the middle of a serious power struggle in which Mutsvangwa and company still maintains the view that as war veterans “they are the stockholders of Zimbabwe” and thus wield the veto when it comes to deciding who rules the country.

Kasu, Badza, Mutsvangwa, Sibanda and all the other war veterans be you members of Mujuru’s FFC or Mugabe’s WNLWVA, it real does matter; President Mugabe, VP Mnangagwa, former VP Mujuru and all the other Zanu PF buffoons brainwashed you lot into believing that they, by virtue of having been the leaders in the liberation struggle, knew best. Well the truth is they are just as fallible as everyone else and the country would not be in such a mess if they were infallible.

The only way the country is ever going to get out of this mess is by completely dismantling the Zanu PF dictatorship and ending this political lie that freedom fighters are special. Twitting the dictatorship by change one or two leaders and/or changing the party name is not enough. Zimbabwe’s next elections must be free, fair and credible – that is negotiable! 

Mugabe's claim to revive the economy is as hollow as the owl claiming it has horns. By P Guramatunhu

Ever since Zimbabwe attained her independence President Mugabe and his Zanu PF henchmen and thugs have ruled this country with an iron fist. Even with the overwhelming evidence that their economic policies were not delivering the mass prosperity they promised the nation the regime has continued to stake its claim as the only ones competent to rule Zimbabwe.

After 36 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruptions under the corrupt and tyrannical Mugabe rule the country’s economy is in total ruins; unemployment has soared to 90%, millions now live in abject poverty, health and education have all but collapsed, the regime is struggling to pay the civil servants’ wages let alone everything else, etc. With the economy in ruins; it has been hard to keep poverty and his companions, hunger, disease and death, at bay.

For millions of Zimbabweans poverty and his companions are such regular visitors in their home, the dogs have stopped barking at them. Dogs bark at strangers, poverty seized being a stranger to many homes years ago.

With so many people now living in abject poverty it is not surprising that many of the Zanu PF ruling elite too have not been spared economic hardships. One does not need to ask, the tell-tale signs that poverty, hunger, disease and death are no stranger here are there for all to see.

It was common to see manicured lawns and two nice cars parked outside a beautiful house in most low-density suburbs the first decade of independence. Today the lawns are all gone, there is a beaten up ramshackle car resting on bricks and the house has all the signs of rot and decay. You do not ask the occupants of the house, how is work, the chances are none of them are in regular employment.

“Vari kupona nehwaku mukwaku se guguvo!” as my late mother would say. (They are surviving by hopping around like a crow!)

War veterans with no regular job in the security services, government or some such patronage job are some of the Zanu PF ruling elite who have been hopping around like crows, many are as poor as a church mouse. Poverty and his champions are such regular visitors; the dogs do not bark and they just walk straight into the house without bothering to knock!

It has taken years of hopping around like crows before most of these war veterans finally admitted that Zanu PF was delivering mass poverty instead of the promised mass prosperity. Of course, it is disappointing that it was taken these crows all these years and the country to sink this deep in the abyss before it finally dawned on them that things were not right. But as if their slow take of Zimbabwe’s economic situation was not bad enough; they have failed to see the economic meltdown as proof of the failure of the system but only as the failure of one or two individuals in the system. They have been demanding that President Mugabe and some of G40 leaders must go!

“If he (President Mugabe) announces his retirement date, the economy will improve because there is nobody who will invest his money where the future is uncertain. Nobody will lend money to a 92-year-old and if he does not step aside, 2018 will be the most difficult year to campaign for us, as war veterans,” they said in July.

Mutsvangwa’s, like his mentor President Mugabe who still insist on staying in power to sort out the economy, self-assured arrogance has become intolerable!

“We are masters of the succession plan. We know it so well so we have no lesson to learn from Jonathan who deserted the war,” boasted Mutsvangwa in an interview with VOP.

Mugabe and Mutsvangwa’s boastfulness reminds me of a the childhood fable of the horned owl who forced all the other birds to accept him as their king or he would inflict wounds on them with his “horns”. One day the owl dozed off whilst Nhengure (Fork-tailed drongo) was pruning him. Nhengure discovered that owl’s “horns” were not horns but turfs of feathers! The owl had to fly away and hide; never to be seen again in the light of day!

“This is why, to this day, Nhengure, will chase and mob the owl if he ever ventures out during the day,” concluded the fable.

Only an arrogant and sadistic tyrant like Mugabe would still think he is the only competent to revive the Zimbabwe economy when it was his failed leadership that has dragged the economy deeper and deeper into despair.

Mutsvangwa and his war veterans are the one who have done a great job imposing Mugabe on the nation all these last 36 years; it is therefore laughable that he should still consider himself a “master” when it comes to electing leaders.

After 36 years with the country in a real mess, there is no doubt that President Mugabe is not infallible; the country is in this mess precisely because it has not been possible to change him as leader even when it was clear he is corrupt and incompetent because he rigged elections. People like Mutsvangwa who have help impose President Mugabe as leader on the nation should hang their heads in shame because they were imposing a corrupt and murderous tyrant on an innocent nation.

Zimbabwe is in this economic mess that has brought so much suffering and costed so many human lives because we did not have free and fair elections forcing failed leaders to be held to account. We need free and fair elections if we are ever to get out of this mess.

By Robert Ballard

We must boldly claim our right to free and fair elections and be masters of our own destiny. To fail to do so on basis Mugabe’s insistence there will be no-regime change because he is infallible is as inexcusable as birds living in fear of the owl’s “horns”!