News / National
Tsvangirai 'stop marching up hill and down again and implement reforms - if not now, when?' ask Zimvigil.
26 Mar 2017 at 18:01hrs | Views
"It is cold out there!" said Professor Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe's best known political turn-coat. It is a catch phrase on par with the historic "Dr Livingstone, I presume!" Any of Zanu PF members, used to the pampered material comforts and criminal impunity of the Zanu PF ruling elite, have found life outside the party a different ball game. Kudakwashe Bhasikiti and his ZimPF friends would readily testify to just how insightful Moyo's words are.
Ever since the day Mugabe booted out Bhasikiti from the party, he has lost his MP for Mwenezi and Masvingo Provincial Minister salary and allowance, he has found himself being haunted off a commercial farm he owns, he was landed with an astronomical electricity bill of over $133 000, etc. Last year, Joice Mujuru said many of the ex-Zanu PF bigwigs who were booted out of the party with her were suffering from stress related illnesses. Such is the political pressure these ex-Zanu PF bigwigs are under; they are desperate to escape, as one might well imagine.
So, when the opportunity to escape his political and economic trials and tribulations presented itself should he win back his old Mwenezi East MP seat, Bhasikiti seized it with both hands! He desperately needed to win that seat back and yet, even before the campaign period was over, he was forced to give it up. He was forced to withdraw from the race citing voter intimidation and vote-buying by Zanu PF.
Bhasikiti is not a novice to Zanu PF's dirty political games; he was one of the party's enforcer of the 2008 wanton violence in Masvingo. He dished out the violence liberally but could not stomach any of it himself!
"It's no longer a threat (to withdraw)," announced Bhasikiti to the world. "Combined with the deadlock we declared against ZEC (on Tuesday) as opposition political parties, we have no business participating in anything managed by the current partisan ZEC."
Zimbabwe's politicians have all promised free and fair elections but have all failed to deliver. This is a theme Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), a local Human Rights NGO and the London Based Human Rights Campaign group, Zimvigil, have picked on.
"We are worried by the unfolding events in Mwenezi East," said ZPP report, "and more concerned that with each by election conducted the same issues were being raised, but no one was taking any action to ensure that the electorate exercises its political rights in a conducive environment free of intimidation and other malpractices."
"Like the Grand Old Duke of York, Morgan Tsvangirai marched his men up to the top of the hill on Wednesday," wrote Zimvigil, referring to the 25 March 2017 protest in Harare. "And, as goes the English nursery rhyme, he promptly marched them down again.
"'Circumstances dictate the situation and today is not the day to stage street protests', he told supporters in Harare campaigning for electoral reforms. But, the Vigil asks, if not now, when? Yes, the police had predictably placed last minute obstacles in the way of the protest. Can anyone see the day coming when they won't?"
The people of Zimbabwe are caught in a vicious political cycle:
Zimbabwe's political vicious cycle.
The only losers in Zimbabwe's vicious political cycle are the ordinary people, povo, who are the one paying dearly, in lost treasure and in human suffering and deaths, for all the decades of Zanu PF's corrupt and tyrannical rule. The opposition are helping Zanu PF stay in power by promising the people that they will deliver change but in fact doing nothing about it.
Breaking the vicious cycle is ease and straight forward once the cycle itself is understood. From Zanu PF, people must demand free, fair and credible elections and refuse to accept anything else. Zimbabweans have waited for 37 years since independence for free elections, why should they wait another day longer!
From the country's corrupt and incompetent opposition parties, the people must demand that they too put free and fair election top of their agenda and honour their resolutions not to contest any elections until reforms are implemented! If Tsvangirai had known that he would be starved of grass root support, he would have implemented the democratic reforms during the five years of the GNU.
It took 20 years or so for most Zimbabweans to accept that Mugabe was a corrupt and murderous tyrant and from that point on they have embraced the need for democratic change. For the last 17 years the nation has trusted Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends to deliver the democratic change. Since MDC's failure to deliver free, fair and credible elections at the end of the GNU, many people have, rightly, started to question MDC's leaders' commitment to democratic change and/or political competence to deliver that change.
Knowledge is power; people know Mugabe is the leader of a corrupt and murderous regime. They also know Tsvangirai and his friends in opposition camp are corrupt and incompetent. If the country is ever going to end the de facto one-party dictatorship and have a health and functional democratic system of government then it is the people themselves who will have to spear head the political transformation! Not Tsvangirai and much less Mugabe!
Ever since the day Mugabe booted out Bhasikiti from the party, he has lost his MP for Mwenezi and Masvingo Provincial Minister salary and allowance, he has found himself being haunted off a commercial farm he owns, he was landed with an astronomical electricity bill of over $133 000, etc. Last year, Joice Mujuru said many of the ex-Zanu PF bigwigs who were booted out of the party with her were suffering from stress related illnesses. Such is the political pressure these ex-Zanu PF bigwigs are under; they are desperate to escape, as one might well imagine.
So, when the opportunity to escape his political and economic trials and tribulations presented itself should he win back his old Mwenezi East MP seat, Bhasikiti seized it with both hands! He desperately needed to win that seat back and yet, even before the campaign period was over, he was forced to give it up. He was forced to withdraw from the race citing voter intimidation and vote-buying by Zanu PF.
Bhasikiti is not a novice to Zanu PF's dirty political games; he was one of the party's enforcer of the 2008 wanton violence in Masvingo. He dished out the violence liberally but could not stomach any of it himself!
"It's no longer a threat (to withdraw)," announced Bhasikiti to the world. "Combined with the deadlock we declared against ZEC (on Tuesday) as opposition political parties, we have no business participating in anything managed by the current partisan ZEC."
Zimbabwe's politicians have all promised free and fair elections but have all failed to deliver. This is a theme Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), a local Human Rights NGO and the London Based Human Rights Campaign group, Zimvigil, have picked on.
"We are worried by the unfolding events in Mwenezi East," said ZPP report, "and more concerned that with each by election conducted the same issues were being raised, but no one was taking any action to ensure that the electorate exercises its political rights in a conducive environment free of intimidation and other malpractices."
"Like the Grand Old Duke of York, Morgan Tsvangirai marched his men up to the top of the hill on Wednesday," wrote Zimvigil, referring to the 25 March 2017 protest in Harare. "And, as goes the English nursery rhyme, he promptly marched them down again.
"'Circumstances dictate the situation and today is not the day to stage street protests', he told supporters in Harare campaigning for electoral reforms. But, the Vigil asks, if not now, when? Yes, the police had predictably placed last minute obstacles in the way of the protest. Can anyone see the day coming when they won't?"
The people of Zimbabwe are caught in a vicious political cycle:
Zimbabwe's political vicious cycle.
The only losers in Zimbabwe's vicious political cycle are the ordinary people, povo, who are the one paying dearly, in lost treasure and in human suffering and deaths, for all the decades of Zanu PF's corrupt and tyrannical rule. The opposition are helping Zanu PF stay in power by promising the people that they will deliver change but in fact doing nothing about it.
Breaking the vicious cycle is ease and straight forward once the cycle itself is understood. From Zanu PF, people must demand free, fair and credible elections and refuse to accept anything else. Zimbabweans have waited for 37 years since independence for free elections, why should they wait another day longer!
From the country's corrupt and incompetent opposition parties, the people must demand that they too put free and fair election top of their agenda and honour their resolutions not to contest any elections until reforms are implemented! If Tsvangirai had known that he would be starved of grass root support, he would have implemented the democratic reforms during the five years of the GNU.
It took 20 years or so for most Zimbabweans to accept that Mugabe was a corrupt and murderous tyrant and from that point on they have embraced the need for democratic change. For the last 17 years the nation has trusted Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends to deliver the democratic change. Since MDC's failure to deliver free, fair and credible elections at the end of the GNU, many people have, rightly, started to question MDC's leaders' commitment to democratic change and/or political competence to deliver that change.
Knowledge is power; people know Mugabe is the leader of a corrupt and murderous regime. They also know Tsvangirai and his friends in opposition camp are corrupt and incompetent. If the country is ever going to end the de facto one-party dictatorship and have a health and functional democratic system of government then it is the people themselves who will have to spear head the political transformation! Not Tsvangirai and much less Mugabe!
Source - Wilbert Mukori
