Ramaphosa sending envoy back to Zimbabwe - waste of time, hamstrung to do right thing

President Cyril Ramaphosa is planning to send back the special envoy to Zimbabwe in a determined effort to find a solution to Zimbabwe's worsen economic and political crisis. Last the time the envoy met President Mnangagwa and he refused the envoy permission to meet anybody else. SA want the envoy to meet all the other stakeholders including the country's opposition politicians.

"The NEC welcomed government efforts to engage the situation in Zimbabwe, in particular the deployment of special envoys. It emphasised the importance of the envoys engaging with all stakeholders in the country to assist in addressing the current situation. ANC and government processes must complement each other," reads the ANC NEC resolution.

We once again ask President Ramaphosa to think through this. What exactly does he consider to be the solution to Zimbabwe's crisis?

We believe the solution is a complete overhaul of Zimbabwe's rotten to the core political system. A new GNU in which Zanu PF is given a role will never overhaul the system because Zanu Pf will never reform itself out of office.

Zanu PF must step down to create the political space for the appointment of other independent players to carry out the important task of overhauling Zimbabwe's political system.

"Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies will never agree to step down," many would say.

Well Zanu PF must step down for two good reasons:

Zanu PF rigged the July 2018 elections, the regime does not have any democratic mandate to govern, it is illegitimate. You cannot have free, fair and credible elections when 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora were denied the vote, ZEC failed to produce a verified voters' roll, etc.

Yes, by participating in droves the MDC A and the rest of Zimbabwe's corrupt, incompetent and opportunistic opposition politicians gave the flawed and illegal election process credibility but that is not to say gave the result legitimacy.

Zimbabwe is standing at the very edge of the precipitous abyss; the economic, political, health and social situation has pushed millions of Zimbabweans beyond the limit of human endurance and hundreds of thousands are dying of corona virus; the situation cannot be allowed to go on. To address all these economic, political, corona virus, etc. challenges, the country must first end the curse of rigged elections and bad governance!

The country needs to implement the transformative democratic reforms and Zanu PF has stopped that happened in the past and must not be allowed to hold the nation to ransom any more.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, ANC, SADC and AU must accept they endorsed Zimbabwe's July 2018 elections as credible and therefore the Zanu PF regime as legitimate. "The election went well!" said President Ramaphosa.

President Ramaphosa cannot flip-flop now and condemn the July 2018 elections to justify why Mnangagwa must step down.

On the other hand a solution in which Zanu PF is allowed to stay in power is a waste of time.

SA, SADC and AU made a very big mistake two years ago by endorsing Zimbabwe's rigged elections, the mistake has rendered them powerless to rein in Mnangagwa. They must admit the mistake and step aside. The UN or some other organisation should take up the responsibility of supervising Zimbabwe's transition from the present illegitimate state back to legality.