"I have very right to be minister," says Perrance Shiri - for once, let the people decide N Garikai

One must hold public office out of a sense of providing a service to the commonwealth and not out of selfish gain.

"When I was in the military I was under (the) ministry of defence, which is part of government and who says military should never be politicians," new Minister of Agriculture and Lands and former Air Marshall, Perrance Shiri, told reporters after he was sworn-in.

"I am Zimbabwean, I have got every right to participate in the country's politics," he said.

Yes, Minister Shiri, you are a Zimbabwean and you have every right to participate in the country’s politics but not to abuse your position for selfish gain?

Can you deny that you have been a member of the notorious Joint Operations Command (JOC), the Junta comprising yourself, other top brass members of the security services and headed by former President Mugabe and assisted by now President Emmerson Mnangagwa. In being a member of the Junta you have played your part in the planning or/and execution of treasonous acts of politically motivated vote rigging and acts of violence including murder for sole purpose of establishing and retaining the de facto one-party, Zanu PF, dictatorship. You have also taken part in the wholesale looting of the nation’s wealth for selfish gain and to bankroll the dictatorship’s no-regime-change mantra.

Minister Shiri, we both know that the coup that toppled Robert Mugabe was unconstitutional and therefore an act of high treason. What did you know of the coup? You can be certain of one thing; the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, will come out one of these fine days!

As Air Marshal, you were duty bound to act in a none-partisan manner and yet you have not done so selfish reasons of securing your own position in the Zanu PF ruling elite. As a member of the Zanu PF ruling elite you have lived a life of opulent luxury and comfort when the overwhelming majority wallowed in abject poverty and heart breaking misery.

Do you know that 90% of the people are unemployed and 72.3% live on US$1.00 or less a day? Zimbabwe now has the singular honour of being the poorest nation in Africa.

Do you know that opulent excessed of the few ruling elite is the root cause of the abject poverty of the majority? This situation is socially, morally and politically reprehensible and cannot be allowed to continue.

You, Minister, and your friends in the Zanu PF dictatorship have rigged past elections to keep yourselves, your families and cronies in power for selfish reasons. This must stop if we are ever going to end the misery of poverty this political system has condemned the majority of our people.

The country is schedule to hold parliamentary and presidential elections next year and there must be no question about the elections being anything other than free, fair and credible.

The people’s right to free and election is sacrosanct, Zanu PF has usurped that right; it must be restored by implementing all the democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement. Zimbabwe is in this political and economic mess today because the nation has been stuck with an incompetent and corrupt regime.

The nation could to remove Zanu PF from office these last 37 years because the party rigged the vote. You, Minister Shiri have played your part in the vote rigging.

In the next elections, it is the people of Zimbabwe in a free, fair and credible elections who will decide who will rule the country. The demand for free, fair and credible elections is not negotiable!

Let me be perfectly blunt with you, Minister Shiri; it is clearly necessary to be blunt because the decades of unearned and excessive luxuries have atrophied your brain, you cannot see what is blatantly obvious - that the Zanu PF dictatorship has failed and it must be completely dismantled. Your right to be Minister, so you can continue to loot, is the antithesis the rights of millions of povo to free elections and right to life itself!

Let me, repeat so there is no room for misunderstanding; next year’s elections must be free, fair and credible. The days of you and your Zanu PF buddies rigging elections are over, Minister Shiri!

'Zanu PF is a party of thugs,' Tim Sebastian tells party apologist on Conflict Zone W Mukori

“Rinemanyanga hariputirwi!” (Evil can never be hidden forever, it will always come out!) so goes the Shona saying.

There is no doubt that Robert Gabriel Mugabe and his Zanu PF regime have done a lot of evil things during the last 37 years and counting of their corrupt reign of terror. Robert Mugabe, he has led from the front on this, has shamelessly falsified or denied of facts and glossing over those he could not deny for the single purpose of portraying his evil dictatorship as God’s greatest gift to the people of Zimbabwe.

Nick Mangwana, Zanu PF’s representative in the UK and Europe, is a die-hard Zanu PF apologist who has learned the art of denying and falsifying historic facts at the grandmaster Mugabe’s feet and learnt it well. But there is only so much even a seasoned apologist like Nick can rebuff. In a recent Conflict Zone interview, the presenter, Tim Sebastian bombarded Nick with the historic facts of Zanu PF’s ruinous reign of terror the Zanu PF apologist melted like bee wax in the midday African sun.

The truth historic facts of Zanu PF past in coming out bit by bit and soon the trickle will turn into a flood. No one, not Mugabe himself much less his acolytes, apologists and propaganda specialists can stop the flood or deny the truth. Tim Sebastian had done his research and was spoilt for choice of what historic bombs to lobby at the Zanu PF apologist seating before him! The two subjects Nick tried to deny was that Zanu PF destroyed the Zimbabwe economy and that the replacement of Mugabe with Mnangagwa has changed nothing. See video of the full interview on Bulawayo 24.

In his 37 years in power Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs have completely destroyed the country’s economy. 90% of our people are out of work and many have never held a formal job for 20 or more. Zimbabwe is now the poorest nation in Africa and 72.3% of the population live on US$1.00 or less a day. Basic services like clean running water have all but collapsed.

Meanwhile Mugabe and the few ruling elite have lived in unparalleled luxuries and have amassed wealth that even mega Movie Star will not match. Mugabe’s has 15 large farms, business interests all over the world and his Blue Roof mansion is valued at US$ 2 billion.

The Mugabe regime has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans to establish and retain the de facto one-party, Zanu PF, dictatorship. The coup last month was about removing one dictator, Mugabe, to replace him with another, Mnangagwa; the dictatorship itself has remained untouched, if not reinvigorated.

Mnangagwa was not only Mugabe’s right hand man all these last 37 years but his chief enforcer. It is Joint Operation Command (JOC); a Junta, comprising the top brass in the Army, CIO, Police and Prison Services, a select few from party and government and headed by Robert Mugabe and deputized by none other than Mnangagwa; that has ruled Zimbabwe with an iron fist all these years. It was JOC that has masterminded and executed all corruption, vote rigging, political murders and all the other mischiefs and treasonous acts by the dictatorship.

The coup was a precipitous act by the Junta to stop Mugabe handing over the presidency to his wife Grace instead of passing it to Mnangagwa, a JOC member. Although Mnangagwa was out of the country, running for his life, he has himself admitted that he had “remained in touch with the coup plotters throughout”.

The coup was code named “Operation Restore Legacy”, said General Chiwenga, the coup ringleader. The only legacy the coup has restored is the supremacy of JOC. It came as no surprise, that many of the Junta members are today ministers, special advisors, deputy ministers, etc. in President Mnangagwa’s new administration. No doubt General Chiwenga and General Phillip Valerio Sibanda will be appointed to fill the two VP positions after the Zanu PF congress this coming weekend.

The key Zanu PF dictatorship players in will finally move out of the shadows of the shadowy JOC into the full limelight of cabinet and thus restoring thugs’ secretive brotherhood bond, the legacy Chiwenga was talking about, that JOC members will rule Zimbabwe forever.

Of course, Tim Sebastian was right to call Zanu PF a party of “thugs” and Zimbabweans “deserve better”.

Mugabe lost the March 2008 vote to Morgan Tsvangirai who polled 73%, by Mugabe’s own inadvertent admission. After six weeks of recounting, ordered by Mugabe himself, ZEC had reduce this to 47% to force the run-off. The Junta had contrived to use wanton violence to force the people to vote for Mugabe.

“What was accomplished by the bullet cannot be undone by the ballot!” Robert Mugabe had thundered to spar his thugs on to beat, rape and even murder innocent Zimbabweans.

And yet we still have apologists like Nick Mangwana, stoically insisting that Zimbabweans “voted for Zanu PF and deserved Zanu PF”. The poor idiot still thinks that his stubborn denial of the historic facts can, somehow, turn rigged elections into free, fair and credible elections, thugs into democrats, etc.

President Mnangagwa is a thug, he owes his elevated position to his fellow Zanu PF thugs and they are in his government for no other reason other than to claim their own share of the spoils of power. Zanu PF’s past-history of corruption, vote rigging and tyranny and his own part in it are all coming out in the open and there is nothing anyone can do to stop or deny these facts. The Zanu PF thugs and the many evil things Zanu PF has committed are all coming out, a milestone round Mnangagwa’s neck that will drag him and his presidency into the abyss.

“Will Zimbabwe ever have justice under Mugabe’s party?” Tim Sebastian asked.

The answer is NO!

Zimbabwe is due to hold parliamentary and presidential elections next year. The pressure is mounting to make sure the elections are free, fair and credible. If the elections are indeed free and fair, they will be the country’s first ever. Zimbabweans would want to boot out Zanu PF and to quickly implement the democratic reforms to another dictatorship rising from the ashes of this Zanu PF dictatorship to haunt them.

General Sibanda ask soldiers "to desist harassing citizen" - dressing iron fist in velvet glove N Garikai

“The Commander Zimbabwe National Army Lieutenant General Phillip Valerio Sibanda has called on the national army to be disciplined and to desist from harassing citizens,” reported Bulawayo 24.

“Lieutenant General Sibanda was addressing a pass out parade of 590 recruits at Battlefields in Mhondoro Ngezi.

“Discipline and patriotism are very essential in the military because of the extreme duties that the armed forces carry out, he told the recruits.”

The sheer hypocrisy of it all is astonishing! So, the General was aware that the Army has been harassing citizens. Of course, he was aware of the harassment and worse; after all he played his part in devious plans and in their ruthless execution!

General Valerio Sibanda is a senior member of the Joint Operation Command (JOC), the shadowy Junta cum Mafia cum Freemason that has ruled Zimbabwe with an iron fist all these last 37 years. He knows the small details of the 2008 Operation “Mavhotera papi” (Whom did you vote for), for example, in which the Army played a pivotal role in not just the harassment of civilians but in the beating, raping and murder of innocent people to force them to vote for Mugabe in the presidential run-off.

The now deposed Robert Mugabe publicly acknowledge and thank the war veterans and the security services top brass for the role they all played in restoring him back into State House when he had in fact lost the popular vote.

The full details of what role the top brass in the Army, Police, CIO and other organs of State are still to be properly investigated and documented but there can be no doubt that General Sibanda play a role. It is rich therefore for him to now be talking of discipline and patriotism when the red alert of the military coup he was involved is still bright red!

There is talk that General Sibanda will be appointed one of the two VPs, his reward for carrying out his fair share of the Junta’s mindless barbarism, debauchery and betrayal of the people and the ZDF uniform. Even if he does not get the VP post he is certainly one of the Zanu PF ruling elite, by virtue of his position in the Junta, who have profited from the wholesale looting by the Zanu PF dictatorship.

The Zanu PF dictatorship was thrilled and relieved to see the hundreds of thousands of ordinary civilians come out in the street in support of the military coup. The Mnangagwa faction’s worst fear was that the people should see the coup was just an internal matter in Zanu PF that does not resolve their real demand for meaningful democratic reforms to end the dictatorship itself.

Indeed, most people are only now coming round to realising that supporting the coup was but a foolish thing to do because President Mnangagwa and his gang have taken the support to mean the people are happy with the removal of Mugabe and that is all they have ever wanted.

General Sibanda’s hand of friendship to the citizens of Zimbabwe is just part of the charm-offensive by this Mnangagwa administration to get the people to forget that the cabal now in government is the same dictatorship, except for the removal of Mugabe to replace him with Mnangagwa, that has looted, rigged elections and ruthlessly oppressed them.

The country’s political temperature is already hotting up and as the people’s good will after the coup is freckle, it is starts to wear-off already. Zanu PF’s prospect of winning next year’s election may be looking good now, hence the regime’s charm offensive, but in three or four months’ times things will be very different. Will General Sibanda still be calling for the Army not to harass the citizens and allow the country to finally have its first free, fair and credible elections? Knowing fully well that should Zanu PF be booted out of office, he too will lose his share of the loot from Marange and, worse, have his dark past uncovered for all to see!

The Zanu PF dictatorship is the same corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and ruthlessly oppressive juggernaut the people of Zimbabwe have known these last 37 years. The change of from one dictator, Mugabe, for another, Mnangagwa, has not change the dictatorship itself. The removal of Mugabe has, at best, allowed key players in the Zanu PF dictatorship to mount a charm-offensive to fool the naïve and gullible into believing the ruthless Zanu PF dictatorship of Mugabe days died with the demise of the old tyrant.

The Zanu PF charm-offensive has successfully dressed the Zanu PF iron fist in a velvet glove. With not even one democratic reform in place, the iron fist is still there, as those foolish enough to expect next year’s election will be free, fair and credible, will soon learn. When Zanu PF’s hold on power is under serious threat General Sibanda may still continue to publicly call for the Army not to harass civilians but in private order the soldiers to show no mercy to all those threatening regime change. An iron fist in a velvet glove is just as deadly as a bare-knuckle iron fist; the glove is a disguise and not a cushion!