"Mujuru will win 2018 if elections are not rigged," says PRC - knowing fully well they will be rigged N Garikai

“Mujuru will come first if there is no abuse of State machinery and resources to campaign for a factional Zanu PF,” PDP (breakaway faction of the Tendai Biti PDP) VP Sikhumbuzo Ndiweni told Southern Eye.

“The taking over of reins (of power) is guaranteed by the fact that PRC (People Rainbow Coalition), Zimbabwe, SADC, South Africa and the international community can’t afford a successive third coup in a row, first Tsvangirai in 2008, Mugabe in 2017; in 2018 (Zimbabwe) Defence Forces have no ace card.”

There are far too many ifs for this to ever come true!

“If the military stays out of the elections!” A big slice of President Mnangagwa’s coup cabinet is already made up of ex-military people who have first-hand experience in vote rigging. They are the ones who carried out the harassment, beating, raping and even murder of civilians during elections, particularly since 2000. The ex-military people who have just been promoted to join the cabinet are being rewarded for the pivotal role they played in the November 2017 coup that ousted Mugabe. They know they will lose their cabinet post is Zanu PF was to lose the elections. After decades of rigging elections for the benefit of others, it is naïve to think these thugs are not going to rig elections for their own benefit!

“If there is no rigging!” How stupid is that? Not even one democratic reform has been implemented since the rigged July 2013 elections; so why would Zanu PF, for no apparent reason other than the opposition’s wishful thinking, risk losing power by holding free and fair elections?

Indeed, Zanu PF’s vote rigging juggernaut is already in overdrive already, the elections are being rigged as we speak! By unduly delaying the voter registration exercise, started in September 2017 when it should have started in January 2015 at the latest, the regime knows that ZEC will have no chance of producing a verified voters’ roll in time. There no limit to the vote rigging shenanigans the regime, with the help of the Israeli company NIKUV, can play as happened in the 2013 elections.

SADC leaders advised Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends not to contest the July 2013 elections without first implementing democratic reforms. “If you go into elections next month, you are going to lose; the elections are done,” SADC leaders had warned at the time.

The warning not to contest flawed elections is just as relevant today as it was back in 2013.

If Mai Mujuru and her Rainbow Coalition partners decide, as they are clearly determined, to contest this year’s elections knowing, and have been warned repeatedly, the elections will be rigged; then they cannot complain afterwards that Zanu PF rigged. By insisting in contesting the flawed elections the opposition are, per se, demonstrating their confidence of winning regardless of all the vote rigging shenanigans. Having defied all the advice and logical reasons not to contest, the opposition cannot then complain that Zanu PF rigged the elections just because their strategies to win rigged elections failed.

There is another reason why the opposition keep contesting flawed elections – greed. Zanu PF rigs elections to secure the presidency and the two thirds majority in both parliament and senate but for the process to have any credibility the party knows it must allow the opposition to win the remaining one third of the seats. It is these seat that the opposition are after and they will contest the elections regardless how flawed and illegal the process may be.

The international community and more significantly SADC leaders will declare this year’s flawed elections null and void and force Zanu PF to implement the reforms, just as they would have done in 2013, but on one condition – the people of Zimbabwe must show their iron determination to have meaningful free and fair elections. We, Zimbabweans, must heed SADC’s advice not to take part in elections with no reforms. We must demonstrate our resolve to free and fair elections by refusing to take Zanu PF’s bait of the one third gravy train seats.

The opportunists in the opposition must not just pay lip service to “No reform, no elections!” They must mean it! They must not be allowed to sell-out on the national agenda of free, fair and credible elections for the sake of the scraps of a few gravy train seats.

It is, not just Zanu PF who are denying us our freedoms and basic human rights including the right to free and fair elections; the opportunistic opposition parties are selling us out too. By their continued participation in flawed elections the opposition are giving Zanu PF the excuse to resist implementing meaningful democratic reforms!

Even if Ndiweni’s prediction was to come true and Mai Mujuru or Tsvangirai was to win this year’s elections; we can be certain neither of them would implement the democratic reforms to ensure future elections are free and fair. The present undemocratic system favours the incumbent ruling party; given that both MDC Alliance and PRC have mediocre leadership, they will only be too glad to take advantage of the system to consolidate their own grip on power.

So, an opposition victory will not guarantee free and fair elections in future. We will have just kicked the can down the road.

Zimbabwe is in this nightmare situation of economic meltdown and political paralysis of military coups, Zanu PF imploding and the opposition in shamble because we are stuck with the corrupt, vote rigging and tyrannical de facto one-party dictatorship. The only way to end the dictatorship is by implementing the democratic reforms designed to dismantle the dictatorship brick by brick and replace it with a democratic system of government.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, of any substance will ever be accomplished until we rid ourselves of the dictatorship and hold free and fair elections! Nothing!

“Mujuru will win if elections are not rigged!” What a stupid thing to say when you know the elections will indeed be rigged and you are contest knowing that to be the case because you are the one blocking all the efforts to end the vote rigging!

Fight for wannabe Zanu PF MPs is hotting up -no chance of free primary and no hope of free national elections. P Guramatunhu

With unemployment rate at a nauseating 90% and ¾ of the population living on US$1.00 or less a day it is not surprising to read that the competition for public office within Zanu PF itself is hotting up already. When the only sure ticket for a meal going in the country is to be an MP, Senator or at the very least a councillor and abject poverty awaits all those who fail to secure the gravy train seat; the fight for a seat is a life and death matter.

“Several other internal developments point to difficult times ahead for sitting Zanu PF members of Parliament and senators,” reported the Daily News. Reporters do not stab to kill but cannot resist the stab in the buttocks, just to make the individual suffer.  

Here is the growing list of demands all Zanu PF wannabe MP or senator will have to negotiate this year:

·       Zanu PF Youth League is demanding 30% of the seats.

·       Zanu PF Women’s League are demanding a 50-50 representation in both Parliament and local government

·       The war veterans were definitely at the coal face in the war to stop Robert Mugabe booting them out of Zanu PF to give the party to his wife and her G40 upstarts. They told Mugabe to his face that they, the liberation war fighters, were the “stockholders of Zanu PF and Zimbabwe and the party leaders and povo were Stakeholders to be hired and fired by the stockholders”. Now that the G40 faction has been vanquished or driven underground or exile, the war veterans will now want a share of the spoils of power. Many of them have lived in abject poverty for decades and they will see this as their last chance to finally join in the looting.

·       The top brass in the Army, Police and CIO who played the key role in the military coup, the ones who delivered the coup de grace, that finished Mugabe and G40 have already been helping themselves to the choice cuts, as Ministers, VP, etc. They will not be giving up their new post in a hurry. With Minister of Finance, Patrick Chinamasa, announcing that the regime will be forcing all government employees above the retirement age to do so; many, many more securocrats will be looking at going into politics to escape poverty.

Zanu PF is a party of thugs and for 30 years or so Robert Mugabe managed to keep the peace in the party ranks by dolling out the country’s looted wealth, patronage jobs, the seized former white owned farms, etc. The criminal waste of human and material resource this entailed was not sustainable and it is not surprising that as the amount of looted wealth available started to fall the infighting in Zanu PF started. Looted wealth was the glue that held Zanu PF thugs together, take away the wealth and the thugs are at each other’s throat; fighting over the scraps like hyenas.

Unlike Mugabe who inherited a very rich and prosperous Zimbabwe in 1980, President Mnangagwa is inheriting an impoverished Zimbabwe and a party already fighting each other for the scraps. Mnangagwa is desperate to consolidated his own Zanu PF political base and, sadly, for him has precious little to give away to the ever demanding but wasteful Zanu PF members! The members know they best chance of escaping poverty, which has already claimed so many Zimbabweans, is to win a seat on the gravy train!

President Mnangagwa has talked of 2018 as the year of the people and the country holding free, fair and credible elections. It is just talk! There is going to a free for all, no holds barred, in Zanu PF’s primary elections to select the party’s candidate for the national elections. If he cannot enforce free, fair and credible elections in his own party what hope is there he will rein in those party thugs who consider Zanu PF members stockholders, ordinary Zimbabweans stakeholders and opposition members agents of regime-change foreign powers!

"2018 should be year of free elections," says Mnangagwa - should must be will and must

Zanu PF is a party of thugs, there is no question about that. Nothing showed the party for what it really is – a party of thugs – than the dog-eat-dog factional fighting that started in earnest with the “baby dumping”, as Grace Mugabe put it, of Joice Mujuru and a truck load of senior party members in 2014.

Mujuru amassed the support of 8 out 10 provinces in the up-coming contest for VP position, that would have made her Mugabe’s heir apparent. Grace Mugabe and Mnangagwa were eyeing the same VP position and so had to stop Mujuru and, in a party of thugs, anything goes. Poor Mujuru was accused of “factionalism, being lazy, corrupt and, most serious of all, plotting to assassinate Mugabe”. The last change was dropped with no one ever arrested as soon as Mujuru was booted out of the party. As for being corrupt and lazy; who in Zanu PF is not corrupt and lazy? How soliciting for the support of party members can be a crime beggars belief!

Emmerson Mnangagwa was appointed VP in 2014 making him the target of Grace Mugabe’s fire; she wanted that position for herself. President Mugabe supported his wife and her G40 faction and poor Mnangagwa was in trouble, everything he did or say was judged wrong. The factional war came to the head with the firing of Mnangagwa for disloyalty which the later countered by staging the coup.

Whilst Zanu PF indulged themselves in their factional fighting they completely ignore the running of the nation’s affairs. The economic has been in total meltdown triggered by the violent farm seizures, “njambanja”, in 2000, which cause the collapse of the agricultural sector and the reckless printing of money which fuelled the hyperinflation peaking at 500 billion per cent in 2008 when the Z$ was scrapped. Unemployment has been 80% plus for the last 15 years and ¾ of Zimbabweans now live on US$ 1.00 or less a day. The Zanu PF thugs were too absorbed in their fighting for power they did not care that the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans were suffering and dying of poverty, hopelessness and despair.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, has exposed Zanu PF for being a party of ruthless thugs than the staging of the coup and the total indifference the party has shown to the suffering and anguish of the ordinary Zimbabweans these last four years.

Only now that President Mnangagwa and his faction have won the factional war and have their hands firmly on the wheels of power have their turned their attention on the ordinary people’s suffering.

“Government will continue to work tirelessly to create a peaceful and stable political and socio-economic environment which will enable us to be a prosperous nation and to realise our full potential. 2018 should be the year of all Zimbabweans, 2018 should be the year of progress. 2018 should also be the year of credible, free and fair elections,” said President Mnangagwa in his New Year message to the nation.

This would be highly commendable if only he meant it!

How can 2018 be the year for “credible, free and fair elections”, when you have done nothing, absolutely nothing to implement even one democratic reform necessary for free and fair elections! Zanu PF has rigged elections ever since the nation attained her independence but, as one would expect from a party of thugs, has always claimed the elections were free, fair and credible. Even the 2008 elections which not even SADC and the AU, known for endorsing some dodgy elections, condemned; Zanu PF claimed were free and fair and has maintain that position to this day.

So, Mr President Zimbabweans have to ask you whether the elections will be judged free and fair to Zanu PF 2008 standards or the international accepted standards?

Zanu PF, this party of ruthless thugs, has systematically denied the ordinary Zimbabweans their freedoms and basic human rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections for 38 years now. Enough is enough. We demand the implementation of all the democratic reforms BEFORE elections to ensure free and fair elections. To hold elections with no reforms is just a waste of time and resources because such elections cannot be free and fair.

“2018 should also be the year of credible, free and fair elections!” That is simply not good enough; we should have had free and fair elections from 18 April 1980! No “2018 will and must be the first year of many years to follow of credible, free and fair elections, period!