MDC to boycott elections after another by-election trouncing but to what end!

A Zanu PF candidate has won the Chitungwiza council by-election trouncing the MDC-T candidate 993 to 91.

In August 2014, following a string of similar trouncing, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai said his party would no longer take part in any by-election in the country due its skewed electoral systems.

So it had taken MDC until August 2014 to finally realise that Zimbabwe's electoral system is "skewed"? Everybody else had seen this a long time ago; the democratic reforms agreed during the GPA in 2008 were meant to address this very problem. MDC had five years during the GNU to implement the reforms and failed to get even one reform implemented. Not one!

"We are maintaining the position that we are not going to participate in any by election until the electoral reforms are done and one of those reforms is that we want a voters' roll," said MDC-T spokesman Douglas Mwonzora.

Now MDC tells the nation the party will not take part in future elections unless the electoral system is reformed; Tsvangirai does not say how the system will be reformed because he does not have a clue how that can be done now that the chance to do so has been lost! 

Zimbabwe's best chance to end this Zanu PF dictatorship was during the GNU and the chance was wasted because of MDC's breath-taking incompetence. Now the nation is paying dearly for the folly of electing MDC. Anyone who follows MDC after this only shows that they are incapable of learning from the past mistake!

Boycotting elections will not achieve anything because there will always be some other opposition party who will be only be too glad to get the scraps Zanu PF give them.

The vote is the only weapon in the ordinary person’s armoury with which to fight off those who are hell bend on denying him or her their democratic right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country and how its wealth and riches are shared out. The Zimbabwean voters have been denied a meaningful vote by this Zanu PF regime for all these 34 years; sometimes because the regime devised at sophisticated vote rigging scheme the ordinary villager could not counter, as happened last year. But when the voters through voter apathy chose not to vote; that is the waste case of the voter shooting themselves in the foot because no one in their right mind would give up their only weapon and let the thugs run riot.

An MDC boycott will result in increased voter apathy but the electorate must know they are as much to blame for this as the incompetent MDC leaders who created this problem by their failure to implement the reform because it was the voters themselves who elected these incompetent MDC leaders. The single import thing here is for the electorate to learn from their folly of following blindly. What better way to prove that they have indeed learnt the lesson than by refusing to follow MDC down this dead end of boycotting elections.

The people must show they are more determined than ever to have a meaningful vote and will cast a spoilt vote rather than not vote at all! This will make Zanu PF work even harder than ever to rig future elections. Cheating Tsvangirai and his wildebeest herd of followers who hardly know their left hand from their right is easy as we have seen. Cheating a savvy electorate who know the true value of their vote and are therefore more determined than ever that their vote will count – even as a spoilt vote – is a totally different kettle of fish!

Zimbabwe is in this political and economic mess because the people, the electorate, have been naïve and gullible to elect Mugabe, a corrupt and murderous tyrant, and then Tsvangirai, a blundering and incompetent idiot. What the nation needs to get out of the mess is a savvy electorate; smart enough to elect leaders with some common sense at least; smart enough never to give up their vote, their only means to ensure they have a meaningful say in the governance of the country!

Tsvangirai’s call to boycott elections until the “skewed” electoral system is put right without offering any solution how that is going to be done is a call for voter apathy – the worst thing the country should be doing! MDC should have implemented the reforms to ensure the electoral system was not skewed but having failed to do so the party is blundering around making a bad situation even worse. Boycott to what end and purpose? Voter apathy will not get us out of this hell-hole but smart thinking will!  

Vince Musewe: political power is not about numbers, MDC has had the numbers but not the power!

@Vince

Your articles have become the compulsory “must read” for all serious political thinkers and this article is no different. I, for one, would like to thank you for you great contribution to the national discourse.

“Simply because Tsvangirai has failed in the past does not make him an undesirable choice for the millions of Zimbabweans out there who want to see the back of Mugabe,” you said.

“Of course we have academics world-wide who have written Tsvangirai off, but we must always remember that these are theoretical or academic analysts and most have not done any practical research on the ground to measure the extent of Tsvangirai’s support or lack of it. So we should not hurry to conclude that these analyses are correct, it would be dangerous for us to do so.”

What is dangerous here is the failure to write off Tsvangirai not just because he “has failed in the past” but, more significantly, how he failed. Tsvangirai had the majority in parliament and in cabinet; had the support of SADC Heads, the guarantors of the GPA, for the democratic reforms agreed in the GPA which everyone agreed were necessary for free, fair and credible elections would be implemented and he had five years to get these reforms implemented. And yet not even one reform was ever implemented. Not one!

Tsvangirai was warned of the need to implement the reforms repeatedly throughout the five years of the GNU but MDC paid no heed.

There are no other rational reasons why Tsvangirai failed to implement even one reform and then fail to pay heed to all the advice given to him on this matter other than that he is corrupt and incompetent.  Mugabe laid a honey trap for the MDC leaders and once they tasted the honey they forgot their promised of bring democratic changes and refused to be reminded.

There is no doubt that Tsvangirai believed in his heart of hearts that MDC would still win the elections even if Zanu PF tried all their dirtiest tricks to rig. Tsvangirai literally challenged Mugabe to rig, like the boxer who asks his opponent to hit him with his best shot! Last year’s vote rigging was blatant in that no voters roll was ever produced, the number of polling stations was increased from 2 000 to a staggering 9 000 just two days before the elections, Mugabe bussed in voters, etc. Mugabe did hit Tsvangirai with his best shot – a sledge hammer – knocking him stone cold.

Of course inviting Mugabe to rig the elections showed just how breathtakingly incompetent Tsvangirai and his MDC friends are!

What should be remembered is the fact that the only way Zimbabweans are ever going to see the back of Mugabe is be implementing all the reforms first and then holding free, fair and credible elections. If Tsvangirai because he is corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent failed to get even one reform implemented during the GNU, when he had all the trump cards, it is naïve to think that he will do so now when it is Mugabe and Zanu PF who have the trump cards.

“No credible opposition has emerged to occupy the vacuum left by the disappointment of millions in the last elections and by Tsvangirai’s uninspiring behaviour on issues of accountability and fidelity,” you argue. “Questions on his “suitability” still remain, but the masses hardly use the same criteria as we do when it comes to electing their leaders.”

Yes millions of Zimbabweans were disappointed with MDC’s poor showing in last year’s elections but how many of them were disappointed with MDC’s failure to implement the reforms? Even now, with the benefit of hindsight and a year for the reality to sink in very few Zimbabweans appreciate the critical importance of the reforms and the seriousness of MDC’s failure to get even one reform implemented.

I agree, “the masses hardly use the same criteria as we do when it comes to electing their leaders”. In this case the criteria the masses use has failed to make them see Tsvangirai for the corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent leader he is. This is not a matter of just some “academics world-wide” saying so it is so, this is the political reality.

Of course if Zimbabweans want a corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent  leader, even one who has just proven to be just that beyond all reasonable doubt, it is their democratic right. Just as it was their democratic right to have elected Mugabe, a tyrant before that. The people must know that they is a dear price to be paid for election a corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent Tsvangirai again; it is almost certain that he will NOT deliver any meaningful change.

“After all political power is about numbers and not theory,” Mr Musewe tells us. That is not true in Zimbabwe because Tsvangirai has had the numbers but has never had the political power! 

Mudenda sheds crocodile tears over Gukurahundi but will not resign over rigged 2013 elections!

Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Mudenda, confess to witnessing the Gukurahundi atrocities.

 “I went there with other politicians and found soldiers beating up people. I asked them why they were beating people and they told me that they were looking for dissidents,” he said. But why now?

Jacob Mudenda was the Matabeleland North provincial governor, appointed by Mugabe on a Zanu PF ticket. In terms of political support PF Zapu was the dominant party in the province. Gukurahundi targeted PF Zapu supporters and therefore the political gains to Zanu PF and governor Mudenda himself were obvious.

Mudenda said he asked senior politicians, among them the late Vice-President Joseph Msika, to help stop the massacre, but they refused.

No doubt Mr Mudenda is now keen to recast his own role in this tragic story as the good guy who tried to stop the beatings and murders. It is all nonsense, he did not even try.

The murders were not a one day affair involving a few people; the beatings, rapes and murders happened over a period of four years and 20 000 people were murdered, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands beaten and raped. If Mudenda could not stop this madness in all this time as governor then he should have done the only sensible thing then – resign in protest! 

“The wounds are there and they need reparation. We confess as the government and this is the reason why Mugabe has said it was a moment of madness,” continued Mudenda. “We don’t want that to happen again.”

But Mr Speaker, you have allowed this to happen again and again and again! What do you think Zanu PF has been doing by rigging elections if not denying the people their basic human right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country.

The main aim of the Gukurahundi massacres was to destroy PF Zapu, and to send a warning to any other opposition party that might follow, so there will be no political threat to Zanu PF’s political ambition of ruling until “donkeys have horns” as Simon Khaya Moyo has so aptly put it. The political intimidation, threats, beatings, rapes, murderers and vote riggings have continued even after Zanu PF and PF Zapu signed their unity accords.

The people of Zimbabwe have paid dearly for established and maintained this de facto one-party dictatorship – they paid with the denied basic freedoms and rights, stolen hopes and dreams of having even the bare necessities of life, broken limbs and with many human lives. Mugabe and Zanu PF have continued to extort more from the nation to feed their insatiable appetites for power and wealth.

“We must confess our wrong doings and if we haven’t admitted to them, it is impossible to achieve peace. As the State, there are things that need to be confessed,” Mudenda told his listeners.

If Mr Mudenda is sincere in wanting to confess then he should start by confessing what is relevant here and now. Was last year’s election free, fair and credible?

As the Speaker of Parliament, does he not see it as his duty to the nation to have this important, urgent and critical matter of free, fair and credible elections addressed properly?

Assuming you have tried (no doubt you will confess that at some convenient date in the future) but after a year and given the critical importance of free, fair and credible elections (Nothing, absolutely nothing, of any substance will ever be accomplished as long as those in power remain accountable to no one else but themselves!) should you not resign now in protest over the rigged 2013 elections?

Jacob Mudenda airbrushing the image of the fat, mean, corrupt and indifferent Jacob Mudenda, Matabeleland North provincial governor, we all know so well off our collective memory to replace it the completely fictitious meek and peacemaker Jacob Mudenda. One thing is clear; the Zanu PF ship is sinking and the rats are hightailing ashore! The nation must be careful not be fooled and overwhelmed by the antics of these very late-day saint Jacob Mudenda.

US Ambassador tell Mugabe economic collapse is due to tyrant's own incompetence not sanctions!

Mugabe did not mince his words when he address the UN General Assembly and once again blamed the “illegal sanctions” imposed on his regime by the “evil West” for all Zimbabwe’s economic problems. The US hit right back and told the tyrant, in no uncertain terms, that Zimbabwe’s economic woes are due to his incompetence!

 “Zimbabwe is a great country with potential to build its own good future. It has the capability and it has the primary drivers that are able to take the country to another level, but the problem lies in the policy and decision makers,” UNITED States ambassador to Zimbabwe, Bruce Wharton said.

The Ambassador is not telling us something many thinking Zimbabweans do not already know and have not said a thousand times already but when you live in a country where the only voices that are heard and count are those of Mugabe and his cronies, saying the same thing a thousand times again is all one can do. What else can one do when faced with the brick wall of totalitarian autocracy!

There is a new voice, a new kid on the block, the economic meltdown; Mugabe has turned a deaf ear to that voice but for how long?

The Zimbabwe economy is facing the most serious economic meltdown because of the rampant corruption - ignored for decades and thus allowed the time and cover to grow and spread and now the chickens in red-billed quelea numbers have come home to roost - and the lack of the much needed foreign investment. The economic meltdown will only get worse as long as this incompetent Zanu PF regime remains in power.

The economic meltdown has its python coils wrapped round the economy and it is squeezing tighter and tighter; companies have been closing down and the python has taken up the slack depriving the remaining ones the customers and suppliers – the oxygen – and thus forcing them to close in turn.

The economic meltdown is the one voice Mugabe will find impossible to ignore because it is hitting everyone including the hard core Zanu PF loyalists. Zanu PF grandees like the late Nathan Shamuyarira died a pauper; if poverty was lord of the manor is his home poverty is worshipped like a God by the rest!

A recent UNICEF report said 62% of Zimbabweans are poor and 16% or 2 million now live in abject poverty. Count hard core Zanu PF loyalists will be amongst them. The situation is getting worse and the count is going up!  

The only way out is for this Zanu PF regime to step down, allow ALL the democratic reforms that should have been implemented during the GNU to be implemented and the hold free, fair and credible elections. If this has been said once, it has been said thousands of times and will be repeated a million times again because it is the truth and is the only way out.

The Mugabe regime must step down now and not wait till 2018; the nation cannot afford another day of this economic meltdown induce slow death by strangulation.

“In the wake of 2013 elections, we remain concerned the democratic process is still subject to political pressure. But at the same time, we don’t want to wait five years for another election to sort of go through this process again,” said the Ambassador.

Indeed if the nation does not implement the reforms before the next elections be there in 2018 then the whole process will be a futile rerun of the 2013 rigged elections!

Of course Mugabe can afford to ignore the economic meltdown. When one has lived in the palatial comforts and luxuries for decades they develop a disconnect from reality, the “let them eat cake” Marie Antoinette disconnect. The 2 million and counting Zimbabweans living in abject poverty, on the coal face of the economic meltdown, will be reminded of their miserable existence every hour 24/7; hunger knows not day from night! They will be forced sooner or later to tell Mugabe what they are going through, force him to reconnect with reality and force him to go!  

MUGABE TO REINTRODUCE Z$ IN VAIN ATTEMPT TO AVOID REGIME CHANGE!

Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa is proposing introducing a special Zimbabwe coin to compete with the basketful of other foreign currency in use in the country already. The regime is so desperate to avoid regime change it is even reintroducing tried and failed policies! This is reintroducing the Z$ by stealth and we will be back to the days of 500 billion per cent hyper-inflation in no time!

This is reintroducing the Z$ by stealth and it will not be long before we are back to the 500 billion per cent hyperinflation. Printing money to fill the ever growing chasm left by ballooning public expenditure in the face of fast shrinking revenue is a foolish policy that had disastrous consequences before and will have equally disastrous consequences now.

Mugabe is running out of options of what to do to end the economic meltdown gripping the nation. The only real way out of this mess is for him to step down and allow free elections – in short regime change. He cannot fathom regime change and hence the reintroduction of a tried and failed policy of printing money.

One meets their destiny by path they took to avoid it. Companies are closing down and 2 millions of our people are already living in abject poverty because of the serious economic problems such as corruption and the lack of direct foreign investment. Hyperinflation will of see goods disappear from the shops as happened before making life even harder for everyone.

Whilst the system of political patronage in which Mugabe rewarded those willing to ride roughshod  of the people’s freedoms and basic human rights including the right to a free vote and the right to life has delivered his primary objective of keeping him and Zanu PF in power for all these years. He must now admit the system has a down side; it is the root cause of mismanagement and corruption. The years of vehemently denying this have only helped these problems to multiple and spread. After 34 years the chickens have come home to roost in their red-billed quelea multitude!

The criminal wastefulness of human and material resources due to the decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption are economically unsustainable. The economic meltdown gripping the nation today is a manifestation of this economic reality.

The only way to end the economic meltdown is by ending the mismanagement and corruption which in turn can only be ended by ending the political patronage system. There is no more effective way of ending political patronage than holding free, fair and credible elections.

Of course Mugabe and Zanu PF cannot be certain of winning free and fair elections which is why Mugabe had adopted the political patronage system in the first place. Indeed in the present setting Zanu PF is certain to lose in a free and fair election.

Ultimately Mugabe and Zanu PF will be forced to accept the political reality that avoiding regime change is politically unsustainable or be it by the circuitous route of being force to accept the economic reality that rampant corruption is economically unsustainable.

Mugabe is reintroducing the Z$ in a desperate attempt to avoid regime change not knowing this certain to fast forward the day of regime change.

The only way out of this economic and political hell Mugabe and Zanu PF have landed us is through the door marked “REGIME CHANGE”! There is no other way out! 

Chinamasa admit economic meltdown but has yet to admit Zanu P resigning is the only solution.

It was a matter of time before this Zanu PF regime finally acknowledged that the economic meltdown affecting Zimbabwe is real, is getting worse and, most significantly, that the regime does not know what to do to stop this runaway train. The regime went China hoping to get some hard cash for budgetary support and the Chinese told President Mugabe to his face that he was “a bad debtor”, according to Minister Chinamasa who was there with him.

Mugabe needed the budgetary to civil servant wages let alone pay for everything else. 

"I am embarrassed that our wage bill is some 76 percent of whatever revenue we receive. It's not good, it's not sustainable," Patrick Chinamasa told business leaders in Harare on Tuesday.

The very next week following his return from China empty-handed, Finance Minister Chinamasa announced to the impoverished and over taxed nation that taxes on fuel, mobile phones and everything else he could. Companies are closing and unemployment is a soaring 85% plus; the revenue base is shrinking fast increasing taxes therefore will not increase collected revenue.

Every rural boy knows that milking the cow three times a day will not increase the quantity of milk. The Zimbabwe cow is now being milked every hour on the hour!

After rigging the July 2013 elections President Mugabe was warned that unless he can rig the economic recovery too his hold on power will be tenuous! It is now over a year and the ZimAsset begging bowl has remained mockingly empty; a testimonial of his failure to rig the economic recovery.

The party has tried to pretend the mega-deals it signed with China and Russia will somehow make up for the empty ZimAsset begging bowl. The economic meltdown was not so easily fooled.

The solution to ending the economic meltdown is simple and straight forward: end the rampant corruption and restore the lost confidence of donors and investors alike in the country’s commitment to the rule of law. Since Zanu PF rigged last year’s elections this Zanu PF regime will never convince anyone it can be trusted to uphold and guarantee property rights, which is what the donors and investors want.

How can a regime that will contemptuously disregard the constitutional rights of millions of its own citizens to a meaningful free and fair vote be trusted to uphold the property rights of a foreigner? It should be noted here that the said regime has committed the treasonous act of rigging elections a number of times in the past just as it has violently seized the properties from foreigners and locals alike in the past.

The solution here is therefore first and foremost a political one; President Mugabe and Zanu PF must step down to allow the full implementation of the democratic reforms, that should have been implemented during the GNU, followed by the holding of fresh free, fair and credible elections. The government emerging from these elections will have the political mandate to do what is necessary to end corruptions and the confidence of donors and investors alike.    

“As to the solution... we have to create the necessary political climate, build consensus in order to tackle the issues. I can assure you that we are working on this issue," Chinamasa said without elaborating.

Just remember two things Minister; one, another political fudge like the last GNU is a waste of time. Two, the economic meltdown is affecting real people; 2 million Zimbabweans are living in abject poverty already and that number is increasing every day. Get on with it!

Root cause of Zimbabwe's mess is Mugabe's dictatorial tendencies!

Former Minister of Education Sports and Culture, David Coltart said that it was thanks to President Mugabe that Bulawayo was hosting the African Union Sports Council Region Five Under-20 Games to the city. The games are set for 4 to 15 December 2014 and government has already set aside $14 million to pay for the games. What was really revealing here was the decision was made! 

"After arguing the case for Bulawayo, it was clear to me that I was losing the argument because an overwhelming majority were against it coming to Bulawayo, including certain heavyweights, and I assumed that it was a lost cause. I said as much and it was then that President Mugabe intervened for the first time saying that I needed to be bolder in advancing my argument and that he agreed it should be held in Bulawayo. The moment he disclosed his hand all the opposition coming from a few Zanu-PF heavyweights evaporated and a final decision was made to hold it in Bulawayo," said Coltart in his statement.

Putting aside the merits or demerits of the matter at issue here; it is disheartening to note the complete arbitrary way the decision to hold the games in Bulawayo was made. A decision costing $14 million is an important decision and therefore should not have been an arbitrary one. From Mr Coltart’s statement, Mugabe did not advance any arguments one way or the other, the moment he disclosed his hand all opposition “evaporated”.

A few weeks ago Rugare Gumbo, Zanu PF spokesman, gave us an insight into how Mugabe is regarded by his fellow Zanu PF leaders.

“Unoda kuti ndipikise zvarehwa nevakuru? Zvinenge zvataurwa nevakuru hazvipikiswe. (Do you want me to dispute a position taken by higher offices? What high offices say stands),” said Zanu PF party spokesman Rugare Gumbo.

He was responding to the question that had dogged Zimbabwe politics; why Mugabe had managed to parachute his wife, Grace, into the women league, central committee and politburo leadership positions in direct violation of Zanu PF’s party rule forbidding anyone taking up any leadership position unless they have held a provincial position for at least 15 years first. Grace has never held any party position until now.

In a health democracy there should be a health debate in cabinet and parliament so that all aspect of the matters affecting the nation are thoroughly reviewed from all possible angles. It is this lack of meaningful debate and discussion that explains why the country has pursued some really stupid policies.

There could not have been an serious debate in government before the regime let lose the then governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Gideon Gono, into his money printing scheme, for example. A serious debate would have revealed that the scheme would fuel inflation and it would have been shelved long before inflation soared to the nauseating height of 500 billion per cent!

It is this “Zvinenge zvataurwa nevakuru hazvipikiswe” mentality that has turned Zanu PF into a de  facto one-party dictatorship and then into something a lot worse – a one-man dictatorship. When the truth of the country’s history of the last 34 years comes to be told it should not be surprising that key decisions like the plundering of the diamonds in Marange or the Gukurahundi massacres were all largely the dictate of a few individuals without any meaningful peer review. 

When Zimbabwe gained her independence on 18 April 1980 the nation was euphoric with excitement to see the end of the nightmare of the civil war that had turned the lives of all upside down causing so much suffering and the deaths of over 300 000. The euphoria was made a double dose because the event closed one door and opened another; the door into a bright tomorrow of freedom, liberty and economic prosperity for all.

In 1980 Zimbabweans were confidence the nation would avoid the pitfalls of greed, incompetence and love of power that many other African countries that had attained their independence before us had fallen into turning their dreams of building justice and prosperous nations into the  nightmare. And yet today Zimbabwe’s economy is in ruins; the economy shrunk a staggering 84% in the six-year period 2002 to 2008 alone and has never to recover. A recent UNICEF report said 2 million of our people are living in abject poverty.

Zanu PF has ridden roughshod over the people dream of freedom and liberty denying them basic rights like the right to a free vote and even the right to life. In 34 years the party has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans in cold blood to establish and maintain this de facto Zanu PF dictatorship. In a dictatorship it is the will of those in power that matter; the rule of law counts for nothing.

The rule of law is the only guarantee of freedom, liberty human rights and economic prosperity. Whilst there is rule of law nations have prospered; remove it and nations have suffered. Zimbabwe’s spectacular political and economic decline since independence can be attributed the disregard of the country’s democratic constitution by Zanu PF and Mugabe to put the party and the tyrant above the rule of law.

We need to restore the basic tenets of democratic accountability at all levels of public life: starting at the top, cabinet carry out its duty of thoroughly digest government policies in meaningful debates and hold the president to account, and stop the current practice of rubber stamping his wishes. MPs must use the special parliamentary powers, such as the power to call upon anyone to testify under oath, to ensure that no stone is left unturned in the search for what is in the best interests of the nation and it is their duty to hold the executive to account. It is the duty of the electorate to hold the executive and all public officials to account through free, fair and credible elections.

We must restore the notion that Zimbabwe will uphold rule of law at all times and to never again be ruled by the whim of a dictator.