Zanu PF got away with vote rigging because it was "blest with fools for opposition"!

In a court of law, everything that Nathaniel Manheru (the Herald columnist, many believe is Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba) says would be struck off the record because everyone knows he is one of Mugabe’s well paid propagandist s and pathological liars. He is guilty of everything under the sun to qualify him as untrustworthy. It would, therefore, be a great miscarriage of justice to condemn anyone on the strength of Manheru’s testimony.

He is the type who will swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth and proceed to lie through and through!

“Thank God, Zanu-PF is always blest with fools for opposition. Even after exposing itself so disastrously, Zanu-PF gets by way of oppositional response a Morgan Tsvangirai who asks from a British Africa Minister for intervention in Zimbabwe,” wrote Manheru in his latest Herald column.

He did not swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God before he wrote that. And yet there it is; the truth from the pathological liar! He has just proven the old adage that even the devil will tell the truth. In this case Manheru is saying the obvious truth that only the blind MDC loyalists have been denying even with the benefit of hindsight!  

In blatantly rigging the July 2013 elections Zanu PF did indeed “expose itself so disastrously”.  Even someone who had never followed Zimbabwe politics was surprised to see all those bussed voters on TV. Why would so many young men and women be bussed in to vote when none of the old voters needed such assistance? And why was it that only the opposition were concerned about this and not the Police or other elections officials?

Our casual observer was surprised to hear that one million voters had failed to vote because their names, although on the national voters roll, had been posted in another constituency roll and not where they expected. The casual observer’s suspicions was roused when he/she learnt that Zanu PF “won” by a margin of one million! Suspicion turned into outrage when they learnt that Zanu PF had failed to produce the voters roll although they were legally obliged to do so at least a month before the elections.

 It is now a year since the elections and still the regime has failed to release the voters roll.

The voters roll is the smoking gun in Zimbabwe’s July 2013 rigged elections.

Yes, it is possible for the names of few hundred voters to be posted in the wrong constituencies but not one million or 30% of the cast votes! A close scrutiny of the voters roll would high light other mysteries like how a country of 12 million ended up with 6 million registered voters. The only logical explanation for all the irregularities and mysteries is that there was systematic and blatant vote rigging!

Yes, in rigging the 2013 elections, Mugabe and Zanu PF left themselves seriously compromised and exposed.  The only reason they have got away with all this electoral fraud is the breath-taking incompetence of the opposition.

Our casual election observer would have been disgusted to know that the MDC led by Dr Morgan Tsvangirai had agreed to take part in the elections without implementing even one of the reforms that would have stopped Mugabe rigging the elections. MDC had been warned about the need to implement the reforms repeatedly throughout the five year life of the GNU but paid no heed.

Yes, MDC, agreed for the elections to go ahead without a voters roll!

“Thank God, Zanu-PF is always blest with fools for opposition,” sighed our devilish propagandist Manheru.  One can only imagine how many, many times Mugabe and his cronies have said the same over the years.

It is one thing acknowledging the incompetence of the opposition amongst themselves but quite another to do so publicly. The thrust of Manheru’s article was in fact to castigate Deputy Justice Minister, Fortune Chasi, who last week broke the party’s cardinal rule by admitting the party rigged last year’s elections. Manheru accused the deputy minister of astonishingly deciding “to acknowledge and validate” the vote rigging.

“We have overwhelming numbers of opposition figures who have acknowledged defeat which we seem now keen to deny them ourselves,” argued Manheru. In other words Zanu PF has the great fortune of having opposition fools who have foolishly given credibility to an otherwise discredited electoral process the party should cash in on their foolishness.

The basic reality that our devilish propagandist is overlooking is that Zimbabwe is not an island; the rest of the world too saw the blatant vote rigging and they are not as easily bamboozled into accepting such fraudulent acts as the MDC fools. The single message that has come through ever since Zanu PF won the elections a year ago is that the donors and investors have all lost confidence in a Zanu PF ruled Zimbabwe as a country they can do business with.

The world’s vote of no confidence in Zanu PF is exemplified by the mockingly empty ZimAsset begging bowl in spite of a whole year of frantic begging by Mugabe and everyone in Zanu PF. Not even Manheru, the chief spin-doctor, has spun a plausible explanation why even the Chinese have flatly refused to contribute even one Yuan with which to rattle the bowl!

If Zanu PF cannot rig economic recovery the same way it rigged electoral victory then the party’s continued hold on power will be shaky. A year after the rigged elections and the economy got progressively worse, not better, and the prognosis is that it will get even worse. It seems that it will be easier to keep an ice cube in one’s hand from melting than for Mugabe and Zanu PF to hang on to power in the face of the economic meltdown Zimbabwe is going through! Being “blest with fools for opposition” will not save Mugabe and Zanu PF; not this time!

Zanu PF minister admit 2013 elections were rigged but naive to think nation can "move on"!

DEPUTY Justice Minister Fortune Chasi on Wednesday admitted that the last general election controversially won by his Zanu PF party last July had some serious discrepancies, according to a New Zimbabwe report. The whole world knew that already, all the nation has been waiting for is a chance to establish the full facts of the vote rigging.

Everyone in Zanu PF must know that there will be a thorough investigation in which not stone will be left unturned to establish the full details of how the 31^st July 2013 elections were rigged.

The nation will establish why MDC leaders failed to get even one reform implemented in their five years in the GNU. The spotlight will then turn on Mugabe and Zanu PF. The investigation will have the name, the age, what they did, how much they were paid and by who, where did the money come from, etc. of everyone involved in the vote rigging from those who masterminded the plan right down to the Border Gazi trained operative who implemented the plan at village level.  

Those involved in vote rigging threaten the very stability and survival of the nation and they are therefore committing high treason. It is high time this nation treated this crime with the seriousness it deserves. All those found guilty vote rigging will be dually punished.

We already know that there were foreigners involved like Nikuv and that the Israeli Government was warned of this devious company’s activities but chose to ignore the warning. The investigation will dig deep, real deep, into this area. Zimbabwe will demand to know who gave Israel the right to aid and abet the commitment of treason in our country?

Israel’s indifference to the suffering of black Africans is well documented. The Israelis was the only democratic nation to continue working hand in glove with the apartheid regime in South Africa right up to the day Nelson Mandela was freed, for example. It is a matter of national pride that Nikuv’s role in rigging of 2013 elections is exposed and the princely $ 13 million the company received is recovered!

In typical school bully style Minister Chasi urged Zimbabweans to accept the status quo and move on. How can the nation move on?

The country is suffering from the ill-effects of three decades of misrule by the Zanu PF regime and last year the national economic has taken a dangerous nose dive. The regime thought it could rig economic recovery but has clearly failed to do so as exemplified by the mockingly empty ZimAsset begging bowl after a year of frantic begging.

Accepting the status quo is to ask the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans now living in abject poverty without work and even something as basic as clean running water to accept that as their lot. The Zimbabwe people have been very slow to react to situations, painfully slow, but Zanu PF will be making a terrible mistake to mistake slowness for inactivity. Zimbabweans are not going to accept a political system that has stripped them of hope and human dignity forever; that much of I am certain.

It is naïve on the part of the Zanu PF ruling elite to think the rank and file riot Police Officers, for example, will continue to brutally repress those protesting against the lack of basic services by day and go home to face the same problems themselves and never see the absurd futility of it all! The Officers may be stupid but not that hopelessly stupid!

Zanu PF has resisted change for over three decades now but, like it or not, change will happen. This nation will only move on, as contrast to be stuck in this hell-hole Mugabe and Zanu PF landed us, when the rights and freedoms of all Zimbabweans are honoured and guaranteed. And to make sure that is so, we must start by punishing those guilty of vote rigging in last year’s elections; that is the surest way of insuring these will be the last rigged elections in Zimbabwe! 

31 July to be a solemn remembrance day of dangers of rigged elections

Today Mugabe and Zanu PF are celebrating marking the day, a year ago, they rigged the elections. This nation owes it to itself and posterity to thoroughly investigate how the elections were rigged and punished those responsible. In future the nation must mark 31^st July in remembrance of all the weakness in our society that allowed Zanu PF to rig the elections so that the curse of rigged elections is banished for all time.

National Constitutional Assembly spokesperson Madock Chivasa said July 31 reminded him of the day Zanu PF and the two MDCs put to the test a flawed constitution that ricocheted straight into the faces of the former coalition partners to Zanu PF.

On the surface, yes the two MDC factions were the apparent loser of the rigged elections. Indeed one can even say the likes of Dr Morgan Tsvangirai did not lose much really since he has managed to hold on to the $ 4 million mansion, his bribe price from Mugabe for MDC not implementing the reforms.  Dig below the surface and without doubt the greatest losers on that fateful day of 31^st July 2013 were the ordinary Zimbabweans. It is easy to blame MDC’s their great misfortune by the people have only themselves for being so naïve and gullible as to allow themselves to be so easily misled by someone as corrupt and incompetent as Tsvangirai in the first place!

The Zimbabweans played their role in approving the flawed Copac constitution by a whopping 95% in the March 2013 referendum, for example.

Zimbabweans prefer farming the plateau with its sandy soil which is easier to turnover with the hoe and the weeds do not grow vigorously to farming the valley with their rich and deep clay where the elephant grass grows. When it comes to the mental effort they definitely prefer to farm the desert where nothing grows!

Zimbabweans accepted the flawed Copac constitution on the strength of what Tsvangirai told them – that is was an “MDC child” guaranteed to deliver free and fair elections. The constitution was in fact “dictated by Mugabe” as MP Paul Mangwana, the Zanu PF co-chairperson on the parliamentary committee who wrote the document, boasted. Of course the new constitution failed to deliver free and fair elections as the events of the dreadful day of 31^st July 2013 confirmed.

The point is, with a little effort, there is no doubt that the Zimbabwean electorate would have realized that the Copac constitution was indeed flawed and demand a better constitution and thus saved the nation the consequences of another rigged elections. Just as there is price for farming the sandy soil – poor harvest – there is price for approving a flawed constitution – rigged elections and having the same corrupt and oppressive Zanu PF government.

"Yes, there are challenges. Of course there are. But today, we are assured of a more focused, partisan-free government that will do anything to make sure national interest triumphs ahead of partisan interests." Was what Zanu PF Deputy Director of Information, Psychology Maziwisa had to say about 31^st July 2013. It is to be expected from a party that has always put party interest above national interests.

Of course Zanu PF rigged the vote and has been careful to hide all the evidence including the voters roll. Nikuv was paid a princely sum of $13 million to corrupt the voters roll but did such a con-job the regime has refused to release the voters roll so the nation does not see how the vote was rigged.

Mugabe and Zanu PF can be assured of one thing – there will be a though investigation of how the 31^st July 2013 elections were rigged. All those involved in the vote rigging will be punished. The nation will commemorate 31^st July in remembrance of the dangers of absolute power in the hands of a corrupt and murderous dictatorship, the dangers of a corrupt and incompetent opposition and the dangers of a naïve and gullible electorate.

31^st July is to be called “Nikuv Day” or “Rigged Elections Day” in memory of the con-Jewish company that helped Mugabe rig the 31^st July 2013 elections and since in Zimbabwe Nikuv has become synonymous with cheating or rigging.

“Nikuv Day” or “Rigged Elections Day” will be a solemn and sober day of remembrance. The nation will not drink wine or beer and will not eat a hot meal in memory of the millions of Zimbabweans whose lives Mugabe and Zanu PF have made a totally misery from the day of the rigged 31^st July 2013 elections to the day the regime will finally be forced out of power following free, fair and credible elections. Above all the nation must remember to never again allow this curse of rigged elections happen!

Mashakada proposed council to solve economic crisis is a waste of time!

Former Economic Planning minister Tapiwa Mashakada has called for the establishment of an all-stakeholder National Economic Council (Nec) in order to arrest Zimbabwe’s economic collapse.

The trouble with people like Tapiwa Mashakada is that they lack common sense much less imagination expected of someone in a leadership position.

Zimbabwe's economic nightmare is not because Zanu PF did not know there was corruption and that it was destroying the nation's economy, for example. Of course Mugabe know there was corruption and has denied it because it was an integral part of his patronage system that helped keep him in power and he was himself the chief beneficiary. In recent years corruption has become so rampant it is sucking the very life out of parastatals like PSMAS, ZESA, City Council across the land in obscenely high salaries and allowances paid to the top managers and board members. Mugabe has done nothing to stop this looting because he is himself just as guilty of the looting.

Mugabe had a $1 million birthday party, a $ 5 million wedding for his daughter held in his $ 20 million Blue Roof mansion, spent $ 5 million on bronze statues of himself, etc. all spent in two months. He cannot tell any of his cronies to stop looting; they are catching up with him!

The root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic crisis is the lack of political will to do the right thing!

Tapiwa Mashakada should know what lack of political will means, as an MDC leader in the last GNU he too was involved in the party’s decision not to implement any democratic reforms. Of course all the MDC leaders knew the reforms were important, they were reminded of that a thousand times. They also knew that implemented the reforms would upset Mugabe, he had allowed the MDC leaders to enjoy the benefits of being in power and they did not want to be seen to be ungrateful.

“MDC vadzidza kudya vanyerere!” (MDC leaders have already learnt to enjoy life on the gravy train and not rock the boat!) was the pithy remark from one Zanu PF official six months into the GNU! True enough, MDC never mustered any political will to even get one democratic reform implemented.

Ever since the rigged July 2013 elections in which MDC was kicked off the gravy train people like Mashakada, Tsvangirai and all the other MDC leaders have been looking for an excuse to get back on the gravy train.

Mashakada said the council will “sit down and work out modalities of recovering the economy … and reversing the economic decline”, which he alleged, “cannot just be done by Zanu PF alone”.

What is required here is a council or interim administration with the political will to implement the democratic reforms and make sure there are free and fair elections. The government to emerge out of the free and fair elections will have the political will to address the problem of rampant corruption and all the other teething economic problems.

Mashakada’s proposed council is just another stupid idea from MDC and a waste of time! 

Corruption has been so rampant Mugabe must not keep the Blue Roof mansion or Tsvangirai the Highlands mansion!

“In April National Pharmaceutical Company Managing Director, Florah Sifeku, revealed that government last bought drugs in 2008 during the Zim dollar era. Sifeku said 98 % of the medicines in public health institutions were supplied by donors and only 2%, mostly ARVs, by the National Aids Council,” reported S W Radio Africa.

So the nation has no money to buy something as basic as medicine for millions of our people and for decades have had to depend on donor generosity and yet we have been splashing $1 million on Mugabe’s birthday, $ 5 million of his daughter’s wedding, $ 5 million of two bronze statutes of Mugabe himself, $ 3 million plus each for the eight times a year Mugabe has been going to Singapore for an eye check-up, to say nothing of the billions he and his wife have spent on all manner of luxuries including the $20 million Blue Roof mansion. This is just looking at Mugabe alone and not those behind him.

Mai Mujuru is believed to have a fortune of $3 billion. Then there is an army of the so called small fish, like Philip Chiyangwa, Minister Chombo and Minister Obert Mpofu whose individual amassed wealth is counted in hundreds of millions of dollars. Even the MDC leaders are in on the looting!

Former Prime Minister Dr Morgan Tsvangirai is refusing to leave the $4 million Highlands mansion he was given during the GNU years; he has attached himself to it like a barnacle to a rock. Other MDC leaders have publicly condemned the chaotic seizure of white owned farms but gladly accepted a looted farm as a bribe to stop them implementing the democratic reforms or otherwise rocking the gravy train.

When millions of lives are put at grave risk whilst the ruling elite are spending the nation’s wealth on luxuries this nation need to express it disapproval in a pronounced and tangible way. All looted wealth must be recovered from the ruling elite and their descendants and use to rebuild the nation’s shuttered economy and the lives of the millions forced to live in abject poverty and without hope all these years.

This nation must have a serious cleansing process where the obscene wealth looted from the poor is returned to the rightful owners, the masses.

After all he has done to this country, Mugabe or his family do not deserve to keep the Blue Roof mansion and all the other looted wealth. No more than Tsvangirai deserves to keep the Highlands mansion, his bribe price for not implementing the reforms that would have stopped Mugabe rigging the July 2013 elections!

Signed. Wilbert Mukori

Secretary General

Zimbabwe Social Democrats

zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.com

Source: http://www.swradioafrica.com/2014/07/25/public-hospitals-run-out-of-drugs/

UK MDC renewal in demo against Tsvangirai to ask stupid questions

Dr Richard Morgan Tsvangirai will be in UK and will present a paper at Chatham House, London tomorrow followed by some public rally and dinner in Birmingham. Some MDC members, backing the MDC renewal splinter group led by Tendai Biti, are planning to stage peaceful demonstration(s) against the MDC-T leader.

 “Members of the Zimbabwean community especially those who are MDC members have genuine questions that need answers from Tsvangirai,” said a spokesperson of those behind the demonstration(s).

“The members in the UK still remember the misappropriated funds, the corrupt handling of elections which led to the fielding of a controversial team in the 2013 national elections.” French Connection UK (fcuk) me! Are these really the burning questions of our time?!

Do any of these would-be demonstrators not know that the national elections were rigged? Between you and me and the brick wall, they do; it is just the full ramifications of the rigged elections have not sunk in yet. No, not really.

The demonstrators are bitter that MDC candidates, cheated in the MDC primary, should have been the ones blatantly cheated by Mugabe and Zanu PF in the 31st July 2013 national elections. They do not mind that Mugabe rigged the national elections denying the whole nation a meaningful vote but they are furious that a handful, 10% at most, of the MDC parliamentary candidates’ party-primary selections were contested.

The fact that most of those “controversial” MDC candidates plus many others beside went on to lose the elections, cheated, in what has become a monumental vote rigging scandal of our time have all been water off a duck’s back to the MDC demonstrators. It is the denial of the free vote of the supporter of the handful of cheated MDC candidates that matters and not the denial of the free vote on millions across the land!

Our MDC demonstrators are the quintessential group who would talk endless about the side issues without ever bring up the real big issue, the elephant in the room. The demonstrators are chaffed with themselves that they have had the courage to stage the demo at all; a monumental achievement for these MDC supporters schooled to follow leaders without ever asking a question.

Having mastered the courage to stage a demonstration against the former leader has left the demonstrators mentally drained they could not think of a single hard-hitting question in the face of all the big blunders Tsvangirai has made, the most obvious and serious one being why MDC failed to implement the reforms.

MDC had the majority in parliament and in cabinet and five years to implement the reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections. And yet not even one reform was implement and thus allowing Mugabe to blatantly rig the vote!

In failing to implement the reforms Tsvangirai proved beyond all doubt that he was corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent; get rid of him. How can anyone in their right mind still think, even now with the benefit of hindsight, such a man can still be trusted to lead the nation is itself a measure of just how shallow the person is.

Demonstrating about irregularities in MDC-T’s party primary elections is like fussing about the ticks on the elephant’s back. Kick the elephant out of the room and the ticks, flies and dandruff will go with it!

What is disappointing about these MDC renewal demonstrators is not only have they failed to pick the real big burning issue worthy of the public demo, the failure to implement the reforms; the MDC renewal is itself founded on a falsehood. On this issue and many others blunders MDC has made, the leaders in the renewal team are as much to blame as Tsvangirai and those around him.

Implement the reforms was not a one day or one week affair but covered a period of five years; so no one in MDC can honestly say they were no aware that no reforms were being implemented. They were all aware or should have been aware if they had been paying attention.

The decision to go ahead and take part in the elections with no reform was also a collective leadership decision as MP Samuel Sipape Nkom, one of the renewal team leaders, has admitted. “The whole world advised us not to get into the elections without reforms,” he said.

So if those MDC supporters backing the renewal team are real serious about leadership “renewal” then they must they must not just kick the one elephant, Tsvangirai, but the whole herd of elephants; Biti, Mangoma, Ncube, Coltart, Eddie Cross, the lot! For they have all proved beyond all doubt that they are corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent.

Frankly, all MDC supporters need a kick in the backside; if they had not followed Tsvangirai blindly like sheep over the years then the reforms would have been implemented. We would have had free and fair elections and not be in this mess!

Maybe I should stage a one-man demo against the MDC renewal demonstrators; of all the many burning questions to ask Tsvangirai why ask the stupid ones only? 

Chinamasa says scraping Z$ damaged the economy. Is he minister of nonsense!

Is Patrick Chinamasa the Minister of Finance or the Minister of Nonsense because to say the scrapping of the Z$ in 2008 damaged the economy is nonsense!

“The migration from hyperinflation to multi-currency did a lot of damage to our economy. It pitched our cost structure too high and unsustainable,” he told a parliamentary committee on finance.

Remember the nation was not facing a two or three percentage digit inflation rate but world record inflation of 500 billion%. Prices were changing so fast that if you picked a product from the shelf by the time you got to the till to pay for it the price would have doubled. Was it any wonder the shelves were empty, it was impossible to do any business for shop owner and customer alike.

Things were so bad that Bank imposed a limit to how much their customers could withdraw a day, which was not even enough to pay the bus fee back home! What a life!

Minister Chinamasa tells us the workers were over paid after the scrapping of the Z$, what a load of rubbish. Civil servants were paid an “allowance” of $200; even government was too embarrassed to call such pittance a wage or salary. Many civil servants still earn $400 or so today six years later, why government call that a wage is a complete mystery.

How the likes of Cuthbert Dube, the CEO of PSMAS, have come to earn $ 500 000 a month and some Ministers have become multi-millionaires, literally overnight, is something Minister Chinamasa should have left no stone unturned and had rooted out. In the end he failed to stem much less stop this criminal haemorrhaging of public funds by the top managers and board members whilst the institution is so starved of funds it cannot carry out even the most basic service it was created to provide and the lowly paid workers are not paid for months on end!  

We all know the Zimbabwe economy is in a dangerous nose dive because of the decades of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and an all-out looting spree of the last fifteen years. Donors and investors have shied away from Zimbabwe because they know the regime cannot be trusted to uphold the rule of law; they fear being the next victims of the looting brigade.

The country’s economy is in the ICU because this Zanu PF regime has denied there was no corruption, etc. allowing these cancers to grow and spread. We need these cancerous tumours removed now or the economic meltdown will continue and drag with it millions of our people into new depths of grinding abject poverty and despair.

Zimbabwe needs a Minister of Finance who will tackle the country’s economic problems and not one who spends the day daydream solutions to imaginary problems. Of all the feeble excuses given by this corrupt and incompetent Zanu PF regime for the country’s economic woes blaming the scrapping of the Z$ in 2008 sure takes the biscuit.

“Multi-currency did a lot of damage to our economy”! Indeed! What are you; minister of nonsense?!