Dabengwa first to call 'postponement' of 2018 elections - more nak3d Emperors will follow

May I be the first person to salute Dr Dumiso Dabengwa for being the SECOND of our, otherwise morbid, corrupt and incompetent opposition politicians given to burying their heads in the sand and talking nonsense, politicians to talk sense. He has finally seen the madness of contesting flawed elections and is calling for next year's elections to be postponed.

"The continued involvement of the Joint Operations Command (JOC) in the running of the country's elections is likely to work against the fight for free, fair and credible polls, Zapu president, Dumiso Dabengwa, warned this week," reported Bulawayo 24.

"Dabengwa's statement comes after he recently called for the postponement of the 2018 elections, saying events on the ground indicated that ZEC was not yet ready to conduct a credible election."

The inability of this Zanu PF regime to hold free, fair and credible elections was settled beyond debate in the 2008 elections when the regime demonstrated the reach, audacity and brutality of its vote rigging activities. There is overwhelming evidence that Tsvangirai had won the March 2008 vote by more than the minimum 50% plus one and not the 47% to President Mugabe's 43% as announced. The regime withheld declaring the result for six weeks because it had to revisit each polling station to doctor the figure to suit.

In the presidential run-off that followed the regime used some brute force, beating, raping and over 500 opposition supporters were murdered, to make sure the people vote for President Mugabe. It was the worst political violence visited on the people since the dark years of Gukurahundi; the wanton violence to eliminate PF Zapu, Dr Dabengwa's former party, to create the de facto Zanu PF one-party dictatorship we have today.

No one, not even the see-nothing, hear-nothing and say-nothing SADC and AU election observers would endorse Zimbabwe's 2008 election results as free, fair and credible. SADC would only grant President Mugabe political legitimacy on condition he agreed go into Government of National Unity (GNU) with MDC.

The GNU's primary task was to implement a raft of democratic reforms to dismantle JOC, restructure ZEC, Police, Army and all the other State Institutions; to free them carry out their statutory duties without fear or favour. Sadly, Morgan Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC friends, the partners in the GNU who were supposed to implement the reforms, failed to get even one reform implemented.

With no reforms in place, Zanu PF was free to use any or all of its audacious and brutal vote rigging tricks. And under pressure, Zanu PF was not the party that would hesitate to use all the dirty tricks in the book; everyone knew this, none more so than SADC leaders. The regional leaders called for the 2013 elections to be postpone until reforms were implemented.

"Of course they can be postponed," explained Dr Ibbo Mandaza in a recent interview with Violet Gonda. "In 2013 the Maputo Summit, in June 2013, before the elections, the Maputo Summit was all about having the elections postponed – the SADC summit. I went there.

"I was there at the Summit and Mugabe pretended to agree to a postponement of the elections. If you recall, the postponement was based on the need to reform at least electoral laws, and after that Summit, Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube, all of them were called to a separate meeting by the Heads of State of SADC in the absence of Mugabe, that same evening.

"And they were told; I was sitting there outside the room with Mac Maharaj; they were told ‘if you go into elections next month, you are going to lose; the elections are done'."

The tragedy here is that MDC leaders themselves knew, at least one of them knew, the futility of contesting the July 2013 elections with no reforms. They contested and Zanu PF blatantly rigged the vote as expected. The only reason the morbid and corrupt opposition contested is greed, as David Coltart (the first and only one until now) admitted.

"The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn't now do the obvious – withdraw from the elections," explained Senator Coltart.

"The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility."

Since the rigged July 2013 elections, the MDC-T, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, have come up with a party resolution that they will not contest future elections until the reforms are implemented. "No reform, no elections!" The party has boycotted all the by-elections that followed and so has all the other MDC factions.

However, Tsvangirai and company have all since changed their minds; they are going to contest next year's election even though nothing has changed, not even one reform has been implemented. They have tried using the coalition as an excuse to contest but this too has fallen through as the grand coalition has never materialised.

The only reason the opposition are contesting these flawed elections is greed pure and simple. The opposition know Zanu PF is giving away a few gravy train seats, bribes, to those who participate in the elections regardless how flawed and illegal the process happens to be. Now that the truth is out the opposition politicians are exposed, they are the nak3d Emperor hiding behind the imaginary gold robes.  

Dr Dabengwa is the first to rightly call for 2018 elections to be postpone, he will not be the last. Tsvangirai & co. sold-out during the GNU; they are now trying to do so again. Game on!