"I will deliver free elections," promise new ZEC chair. Can you produce verified voters' roll?

Newly appointed Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) Chairperson Justice Priscilla Chigumba says she will deliver a credible, free and fair election this year.

“It is a great honour and privilege to be asked to serve as ZEC chairperson. I want to promise Zimbabweans that I will deliver a free and fair credible election. Certainly, we will look into the questions and issues raised because it is our intention to deliver a free, fair and credible election.

“ZEC is an administrative body emanating from the Constitution and the Electoral Act. My mandate as an umpire is to make sure there is fairness in the process of electing leaders by the people. It is a clear mandate that I intend to discharge fully.

“The commission’s doors are open for those who want to come and engage us.”

To say I was disappointed to hear that is an understatement! I was disgusted, shocked and angry to hear that. If she was serious about delivering free, fair and credible elections then she must know that it was not just a simple matter of replacing one ZEC Chairperson with one “who promises” to deliver free and fair elections and Wala! The nation has free and fair elections.

ZEC only started the voter registration exercise in September last year, for example; there is no way it was going to register 7 million voters from scratch in the allocated five months. Last month ZEC officials admitted they will register only 5 million. So, nearly 30% of the eligible voters are being denied the vote because ZEC started the registration late.

To make matters worse, ZEC will not have time to down load the data and produce a verified voters’ roll before the elections. A verified voters’ roll is a common sense and legal requirement. As the new ZEC Chairperson, Justice Chigumba, must know that it was the failure to have a verified voters’ roll that made it impossible to stop such blatant vote rigging shenanigans as stopping hooded Zanu PF youths who were bussed from one polling station to the next casting multiple votes.

Even if ZEC Officials, under the able leadership of the new Chairperson, should decide to stop these hooded youths from casting multiple votes; can ZEC do this without the cooperation of the Police who, alone, have the power to investigate, arrest, detain, etc.!


“I promise to deliver free and fair election!” Are you going to add another 10 working hours to each day for the rest of the year to election day so can register the 2 million missed in the current voter registration exercise, to produce a verified voters’ roll, etc., etc.? If you cannot do these things then stop talking nonsense, just shut up.

"I forgive Mugabes, they were tricked by Mnangagwa," says Mujuru - one loser consoling another N Garikai

“He (Mugabe) called me and I obliged. He was telling me what happened (her being “baby dumped” out of Zanu PF in 2014, as Grace Mugabe put is so crudely) was wrong, he was misinformed,” said Mujuru in an interview with the Voice of America (VOA).

 “They (Mugabe, his wife Grace) were tricked, and mind you the same people who are now in control are the very same people who went and tricked Mugabe,” said Mujuru, in apparent reference president Emmerson Mnangagwa.

“So, they knew what they wanted to do – they wanted me out of the way first, so that they will be able to get to Mugabe easily.”

God bless the simpletons, they live in their own cloud-cuckoo-land a far cry from the real world. Only a simpleton like Mai Mujuru would believe all this hogwash.

Let us just restate the historic facts for the record; our cloud-cuckoo-land sister and her equally naïve followers can accept the facts and come down to earth or reject and continue to live in their make-believe fairy world.

Zanu PF was heading for an elective congress in December 2014 which was going to elect all the other party positions other than First Secretary, all Provinces had already endorsed their support of Robert Mugabe for that post as was normal practice. Mai Mujuru had the backing of eight out of the ten Provinces for the first Second Secretary post. Everyone knew that whoever win that post was in poll position to succeed the old and frail Robert Mugabe.

Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mujuru’s main challenger in the race, had only managed to get the support of the remaining two Provinces. There is no doubt he played a part in getting Mai Mujuru booted out of the party long before the party congress elected her.

Grace Mugabe, the country’s First Lady, had woken up to the reality that if her husband was no longer President, she will no longer be First Lady and therefore would no long be entitled to the lifestyle of unparalleled leisure and luxury she now enjoyed. She knew there was only one thing she must to safe guard her lifestyle and all the family’s amassed wealth should Mugabe seize to be president for whatever reason – she must be President herself. She knew that if Mai Mujuru was elected first Second Secretary at the December congress – that would slam the door shut to her ambition.

So, it was not only Mnangagwa but Grace Mugabe as well who had their beady eyes on the first Second Secretary post. Of course, two cooperated in their bid to oust Mai Mujuru. When exactly the penny had dropped only she will say.

 Of course, Robert Mugabe, knew of his wife’s presidential ambitions and he facilitated his wife’s anti-Mujuru rallies designed to denounce the latter. Robert Mugabe joined in and openly criticized Mai Mujuru for her 2008 election treachery which nearly cost him the presidency. Mai Mujuru and her late husband had hatched the Operation “Bhora mushango!” (Kick the ball into the bush!) in which Zanu PF supporters were instructed to vote for the party’s parliamentary candidate but vote for the MDC presidential candidate, Tsvangirai, not Mugabe. Mugabe was not the thug ever to forget or forgive such treachery. To rewarding the treachery with his own crown, even after fulfilling his own lifetime ambition of being life-president, was clearly a not over my dead body matter!

If Mai Mujuru and her supporters had not been so breathtakingly incompetent and naïve, they should have foreseen the character assassination campaign to stop her being elected coming. In 2004, it was Mnangagwa who was set to win the same Second Secretary race then. Mugabe, unconstitutionally, introduced a clause demanding that one of the top four posts in the party must be occupied by a woman. The moved cleared the way for her to take that position. It clearly never occurred to Mai Mujuru that Mugabe would be up to his usual electoral shenanigans and she might be at the business end of the whip.

Mai Mujuru and her Nation People Party supporters were attacked in Harare a few days ago. A number were seriously hurt but no one was killed, thank God.

“Everybody must know that this government is not a people’s government,” commented Mai Mujuru. “It came by force and if they see people doing things in peace, they are not happy.”

Here is someone who was a senior member of the corrupt, vote rigging and murderous Zanu PF regime for 34 years who allowed all these things to happen and never once lifted a finger to stop them. Only now, after she was baby dumped from the party she pontificates about Zanu PF being “not a people’s government”.

““They (Mugabe, his wife Grace) were tricked!” Yeah right! No Mai Mujuru, you tricked the Mugabes and Mnangagwa; Mugabes tricked you and Mnangagwa; Mnangagwa tricked you and Mugabes. Zanu PF is a party of thugs and it thugs are thugs, the only rule they all live by is never to miss the opportunity to trick the others because they will do the same to you.

It has been the cursed lucky of the people of Zimbabwe have been stuck these Zanu PF thugs as the government! The November coup remove one dictator but only to replace him with another dictator, the dictatorship is alive and thriving. The corruption, vote rigging and the murderous oppression is set to continue as before. The torment, the suffering and despair of knowing there is no future as long as the Zanu PF thugs remain in power, is certain to continues.

“I forgave him a long time ago, including the, the wife,” said Mujuru, reporting on her recent visit to see former President Mugabe.

Just one losing thug consoling another losing thug! One hopes that the thugs do not expect the nation to forgive them for dragging the nation into this mess in the first place. The people of Zimbabwe will never ever forgive Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs for all the suffering and deaths they have cause; at least, not whilst some of the Zanu PF thugs still remain in power to rub salt and chill into the open wounds the regime has inflicted!

The problem of corruption, vote rigging and murderous oppression by Zanu PF thugs is the root cause of the country’s economic collapse resulting in unemployment soaring to 90% and 72.3% of our people living on US$1.00 or less a day. This nation cannot afford another rigged election this year. We to end the Zanu PF dictatorship as a matter of cause, this year! We cannot afford the sentimental nonsense of people like Mai Mujuru who continue to view corrupt and murderous tyrants like Mugabe as fallen heroes whatever wrong they did was because he was misinformed!

UK in overdrive to re-engage Zanu PF which is in overdrive in vote rigging N Garikai

“Britain is looking forward to working closely with Zimbabwe’s new administration led by President Mnangagwa in various areas, including opening a new page where investments beneficial to both countries can be made,” reported Zimeye.

“British Minister of State for Africa Harriet Baldwin said this after meeting Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Lieutenant-General Sibusiso Moyo (Retired) in Harare yesterday. She is scheduled to meet the President today.”

The single most important issue in Zimbabwe today is that the country must hold free, fair and credible elections. The country is in this economic mess with unemployment soaring to nauseating heights of 90% and 3/4 of our people living on US$ 1.00 or less a day. The poor are living cheek and jowl with the filthy rich ruling minority whose mansions, wealth and extravagant lifestyles are a crying injustice against man and God Almighty Himself! 

For nearly four decades now, the nation has been stuck with this corrupt and incompetent regime unable to remove it because it rigged elections, used violence including mass murder and stage coups to remain in office against the democratic will of the people. 

The internal factional fighting within the ruling party, Zanu PF, resulted in the removal of the one tyrant, Robert Mugabe, but only to have him replaced with another tyrant, Mnangagwa. President Mnangagwa has promised free and fair elections but has not implemented even one democratic reforms agreed with SADC leaders during the GNU, the last time the regime was censored by the regional group for failing to hold free and fair elections.

Zimbabwe’s economic recovery is totally dependant on the country holding free and fair election and thus get rid of this corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging Zanu PF regime. The British government must not re-engage this Zanu PF, not until the regime has delivered on its promise to hold free and fair elections.

“Now, following Zimbabwe’s apparent change of leadership last year, many in the international community are eager to invest (in Zimbabwe). The United States and other long-time supporters of Zimbabwe’s democratic forces should not, however, fall for a poorly veiled charade of a military junta,” wrote Todd Moss, a former USA deputy assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, in Zimeye.

“The rush to assist a country as it emerges from the clutches of a brutal dictator is understandable, even praiseworthy. In such situations, the United States and its allies should support the forces of freedom and economic opportunity. This was the response in many places across Africa, including Ethiopia after the fall of Mengistu Haile Mariam, Liberia following the ouster of Charles Taylor, and most recently in Gambia. These were true historical transitions. Zimbabwe’s is not.

“In November 2017, Mugabe was placed under house arrest and ultimately ousted by his own army. Thousands of people flooded the streets, alongside tanks and uniformed soldiers, to celebrate. But this was no popular uprising restoring democracy; rather, it was a well-orchestrated coup designed to maintain the status quo. In Zimbabwe, sadly, the dictator may be gone, but the dictatorship remains.”

There have been many cases, far too many as far as I am concerned, when successive British governments have found themselves on the wrong side of history as far as the people of Zimbabwe are concerned. The British government of the day should have acted more decisively to rein the rebel white minority regime of Ian Smith; it did not. The British government had its military advisors on the ground; they turned a blind eye to Robert Mugabe’s Gukurahundi massacre, “moment of madness”, as the tyrant has since admitted. The British government will hang its head in shame if it restored normal relations with the Zanu PF thugs in Harare and at the very time the regime is going into overdrive on its vote rigging activities!