Dr Mandaza, 'a SADC shadow ZEC' will not stop coup Zanu PF rig elections - just implement the reforms

One of the reasons Zimbabwe is this political and economic mess is because we do not like dealing with our unpleasant and tough problems decisively, even when we get the golden opportunity to do so. We prefer to pretend the problems are not there, kick the can down the street, anything and everything else we can do just to avoid dealing with the problem. Of course, problems do not disappear because you ignore them, they are like weeds in a field, they grow worse and spread!

Zimbabwe is in this economic mess which has seen unemployment soar to nauseating heights of 90%.

Basic services like health have all but collapsed; the ruling elite like Mugabe and his family have been going to Singapore for even something as routine as an eye check-up. President Mnangagwa, supposedly in the spirit of the new dispensation of post November coup has confirm that government will continue to pay the US$ 3 million per trip check-ups for the Mugabes; some years he had as many as 12 trips. Tsvangirai has a similarly generous retirement package the $4 million Highlands mansion is now his to keep and the nation will pay for his SA hospital bills.

The $36 million wasted on Mugabe's health trips alone could build, equip and staff a five-star hospital which Mugabe, Tsvangirai and all the ruling elite can then be using and not have to waste another dollar of sending them outside the country for a flue jab! Whilst they are using the five-star hospital, other lesser mortals would. Some of the money saved could then be used to buy incubator for babies and keep x-ray machines working - luxuries items in even the big referral hospitals like Mpilo and Harare Hospitals.

¾ of our population now live on US$ 1.00 or less a day. Zimbabweans are now the poorest people in Africa. We have all known the root cause of our economic meltdown - four decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption. We could not remove the incompetent and corrupt Zanu PF regime all these years because the regime blatantly rigged the vote and even used wanton violence and, worse still, stage a coup in 2008, just to remain in office.

We have had many opportunities to end our national problem of bad governance but again and again we wasted them all. The best chance to end the Zanu PF dictatorship was during the 2008 to 2013 GNU where all Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends were asked to do was to implement the democratic reforms SADC leaders had forced Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs to agree to following the 2008 elections which were marred by the wanton Zanu PF inspired violence. MDC leaders failed to get even one reform implemented. We kicked the problem of bad governance to the future, like the can down the road.

SADC leaders asked for the 2013 elections to be postponed until the reforms are implemented. Sadly, MDC leaders paid no heed. Zanu Pf went on to rig the elections and the nation was back to square one - stuck with the Zanu PF dictatorship.

After rigging the July 2013 elections Zanu PF thugs started fighting each other like hyena over a kill for who was going to rule after Mugabe; all calls for the regime to pay attention to the worsen economy were ignored. The fighting started with the "baby dumping" of Joice Mujuru and culminating in the 15 November 2017 military coup which forced Mugabe to resign. The coup resolved Zanu PF's leadership problem, it did nothing to resolve the nation's problem of bad governance. We are still stuck with a corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging regime or be it under new management.

We will be holding fresh election in a few months' time and there is no evidence they will be free and fair because not even one of the raft of democratic reforms have been implemented. What are we going to do?

"Firstly, there must be security sector containment. As a bare minimum this will require a public statement by the heads of security services that they will be non-partisan in terms of the constitution and their enabling legislation," suggested Dr Ibbo Mandaza.

"This needs to be expanded by the removal of security personnel from civilian activities, including command agriculture, and the setting up of multi-party monitoring team to ensure compliance with all of the above."

This is nonsense! How many times did Robert Mugabe promise free and fair elections only for his thugs to blatantly rig the vote? President Mnangagwa has been promising free and fair elections and yet he has gone on to buy the Chiefs the new trucks, bribe for them to play their usual role of intimidating rural voters, has refuse to implement reforms, etc. Even if the top brass in the security services made the public statements Dr Mandaza is demanding, that will not stop them deploying personal in civilian clothing!

"Thirdly, it is critical to ensuring that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) is completely impartial. This can be done either placing a SADC-appointed chair of ZEC or providing a SADC-appointed "shadow" for the Zimbabwean-appointed chair. There are calls for this already," continued Dr Mandaza.

Desperate people do desperate things; calling for a "shadow" SADC commission is an act of desperation. There is a raft of democratic reforms that must be fully implemented and there is no time left to implement the reforms or time for them to take effect. With no reforms in place, it is clear, Zanu PF will rig these elections, the appointment of a SADC shadow commission will do nothing to stop the rigging.

SADC leaders wanted the 2013 elections postponed until the reforms are implemented because it is futile contesting flawed and illegal elections. It was none other than Dr Mandaza himself who wanted this year's elections to be postponed too for the same reason.  

"Of course, they can be postponed," he told 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'."

If President Mnangagwa is not going to implement all the democratic reforms BEFORE this year's elections; then the opposition and the ordinary Zimbabweans must not participate in elections. It is insane to keep contesting elections we all know "are done"! The solution to Zimbabwe's crashing problem of bad governance is staring us in the face, stop the insanity of taking part in flawed elections we all know are going to be rigged.