Opinion / Columnist
Tsvangirai has his forlorn hope of Zanu PF rigging the vote and losing election
22 Mar 2017 at 21:33hrs | Views
Tsvangirai and his MDC friends are hopeless simplistic and naïve as Chief Chirau who thought that he, Chief Chirau and a band of black MPs whose very political existence was by the grace of Ian Smith would get the cunning and devious Smith to hand over political power to Chirau! Tsvangirai in his sickly and childish mind accepts Zanu PF rigging elections as a reality we must accept in the hope that one day the regime will rig the elections and lose!
MDC leaders have told us before the March 2013 referendum on the new constitution that it was the "best constitution in the world and that it would deliver free, fair and credible elections". We quickly learned that was a lie as Zanu PF went on to rig the July 2013 elections. MDC leaders admitted the elections were "stolen", as Tsvangirai put it.
It was only after the rigged July 2013 elections that MDC leaders admitted that was need to implement reforms to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. This raises four questions:
1) The GNU was meant to last 18 months but in the end it lasted five years; are we saying MDC did not have enough time to draft a democratic constitution and implement all the existing laws required to ensure free and fair elections? SA managed their own transition from apartheid in less than five years and they had free and fair elections.
2) If MDC leaders realised that there was need to implement reforms to ensure free and fair elections, then why did they contest the 2013 elections before the reforms were implemented? It is a matter of historic record that SADC leaders begged Tsvangirai and company not to contest the elections with no reforms in place.
3) If the new constitution is as good as MDC leaders say it is; then why is proving so difficult to evoke the constitution so it overrides all these other secondary laws? As the supreme law in the land it is absurd that four years after it was signed into law the people should continue to suffer and be denied their rights and freedoms guaranteed in the new constitution.
4) If all the opposition politicians agree that not even one meaningful reform was implemented since the July 2013 elections; then why are they all huffing and puffing because they cannot wait to contest the coming elections? If Zanu PF stole the 2013 elections, what has been done to stop them stealing the 2018 elections?
There is no doubt in my mind that Zimbabwe's opposition politicians do not care about restoring the basic freedoms and human rights of the people including the right to free and fair elections and the right to life itself. All these politicians care about is to get a seat on Zimbabwe's political gravy train – it is no secret that the country's ruling elite have unfettered access to the country's resources and the higher you go up the political ladder the richer you become.
Zimbabwe's opposition politicians queuing to contest flawed elections are no different from those few black window dressing MPs, Thomas Zawaira, Chief Chirau, Chief Ndiweni, etc. Ian Smith had in his parliament. President Mugabe has cunningly created a political system designed to deliver a landslide victory to Zanu PF with a sprinkling of totally useless window-dressing. There are simpletons in the opposition with the same there-is-nothing-I-cannot-do arrogance of Chief Chirau to complete Mugabe's copycat.
Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube, etc. are telling us we can end the Zanu PF dictatorship next year all we must do is "mobilize the people to register as voters and then to go out and vote!" Tsvangirai, just like Chief Chirau before him, and his company have, ever since they got into politics and power, become big-headed so big-headed they cannot listen to their own voices let alone reason!
Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have since accepted that Zanu PF rigged the July 2013 elections. The facts speak for themselves; Zanu PF had more voter registration units in Mhondoro, a rural area with a population of 100 000, than in Bulawayo and Harare, with 20 times or so as many people each, for example. It is no secret that Zanu PF has more influence in rural areas than in urban areas.
On voting day nearly one million Zimbabweans, mainly opposition supporters, were denied the vote because their personal data was not in the constituency voters roll their expected it to be. Again, this was clearly a deliberate and calculated move since this would have been discovered and put right in time if the regime had released the voters roll at least a month before polling date as it is legally obliged to do. To this day, the regime has stubbornly refused to release the 2013 voters roll!
There are reports of people who joined the queue to vote at 4 am and by10 am the queue was a mile long and still not even one person had voted although voting was supposed to start at 7 am. Needless to say, this was very common in opposition stronghold areas.
We can continue to listen to people like Tsvangirai asking us to work even harder to register to vote and then to vote knowing fully well that this is a race we will never ever win because Zanu PF has an infinite number of ways to deny us the vote. The truth is this is a rat race we are destined to lose every time; after 37 years of being denied our freedoms and basic human rights, we must now have the common sense to say no.
Chief Chirau was convinced that he and his handful of hand pick Uncle-Toms black MPs will use their token political power to outwit Ian Smith and end white colonial rule. If the nation had believed him we would still be ten generations away from achieving majority rule. By the same token, Tsvangirai is asking us to contest flawed elections in the hope that Zanu PF will rig the vote, trip itself and end up losing the election; a forlorn hope of the hopeless.
We want free, fair and credible elections; we know what constitutes free, fair and credible elections; we must demand free and fair elections, not as a privilege but as a birth right! We must reject Tsvangirai's methodology of putting ourselves at the total mercy of Robert Mugabe, grovelling to him and bargaining our basic rights and freedoms like mangoes at the market.
MDC leaders have told us before the March 2013 referendum on the new constitution that it was the "best constitution in the world and that it would deliver free, fair and credible elections". We quickly learned that was a lie as Zanu PF went on to rig the July 2013 elections. MDC leaders admitted the elections were "stolen", as Tsvangirai put it.
It was only after the rigged July 2013 elections that MDC leaders admitted that was need to implement reforms to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. This raises four questions:
1) The GNU was meant to last 18 months but in the end it lasted five years; are we saying MDC did not have enough time to draft a democratic constitution and implement all the existing laws required to ensure free and fair elections? SA managed their own transition from apartheid in less than five years and they had free and fair elections.
2) If MDC leaders realised that there was need to implement reforms to ensure free and fair elections, then why did they contest the 2013 elections before the reforms were implemented? It is a matter of historic record that SADC leaders begged Tsvangirai and company not to contest the elections with no reforms in place.
3) If the new constitution is as good as MDC leaders say it is; then why is proving so difficult to evoke the constitution so it overrides all these other secondary laws? As the supreme law in the land it is absurd that four years after it was signed into law the people should continue to suffer and be denied their rights and freedoms guaranteed in the new constitution.
4) If all the opposition politicians agree that not even one meaningful reform was implemented since the July 2013 elections; then why are they all huffing and puffing because they cannot wait to contest the coming elections? If Zanu PF stole the 2013 elections, what has been done to stop them stealing the 2018 elections?
There is no doubt in my mind that Zimbabwe's opposition politicians do not care about restoring the basic freedoms and human rights of the people including the right to free and fair elections and the right to life itself. All these politicians care about is to get a seat on Zimbabwe's political gravy train – it is no secret that the country's ruling elite have unfettered access to the country's resources and the higher you go up the political ladder the richer you become.
Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube, etc. are telling us we can end the Zanu PF dictatorship next year all we must do is "mobilize the people to register as voters and then to go out and vote!" Tsvangirai, just like Chief Chirau before him, and his company have, ever since they got into politics and power, become big-headed so big-headed they cannot listen to their own voices let alone reason!
Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have since accepted that Zanu PF rigged the July 2013 elections. The facts speak for themselves; Zanu PF had more voter registration units in Mhondoro, a rural area with a population of 100 000, than in Bulawayo and Harare, with 20 times or so as many people each, for example. It is no secret that Zanu PF has more influence in rural areas than in urban areas.
On voting day nearly one million Zimbabweans, mainly opposition supporters, were denied the vote because their personal data was not in the constituency voters roll their expected it to be. Again, this was clearly a deliberate and calculated move since this would have been discovered and put right in time if the regime had released the voters roll at least a month before polling date as it is legally obliged to do. To this day, the regime has stubbornly refused to release the 2013 voters roll!
There are reports of people who joined the queue to vote at 4 am and by10 am the queue was a mile long and still not even one person had voted although voting was supposed to start at 7 am. Needless to say, this was very common in opposition stronghold areas.
We can continue to listen to people like Tsvangirai asking us to work even harder to register to vote and then to vote knowing fully well that this is a race we will never ever win because Zanu PF has an infinite number of ways to deny us the vote. The truth is this is a rat race we are destined to lose every time; after 37 years of being denied our freedoms and basic human rights, we must now have the common sense to say no.
Chief Chirau was convinced that he and his handful of hand pick Uncle-Toms black MPs will use their token political power to outwit Ian Smith and end white colonial rule. If the nation had believed him we would still be ten generations away from achieving majority rule. By the same token, Tsvangirai is asking us to contest flawed elections in the hope that Zanu PF will rig the vote, trip itself and end up losing the election; a forlorn hope of the hopeless.
We want free, fair and credible elections; we know what constitutes free, fair and credible elections; we must demand free and fair elections, not as a privilege but as a birth right! We must reject Tsvangirai's methodology of putting ourselves at the total mercy of Robert Mugabe, grovelling to him and bargaining our basic rights and freedoms like mangoes at the market.
Source - Nomusa Garikai
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