'Chamisa will win if election is free,' says Mandaza. Horse will win if it is alive - well is it?

The local Daily News reports that Mandaza has predicted a Chamisa victory in the elections as long as the polls are held in a free, fair and credible manner.

In 2008, Zanu PF showed the world the full extend of its capacity to rig elections. The party forced ZEC to recount the March vote and after six weeks of cooking up the figures; Tsvangirai's 73%, by Mugabe's own inadvertent admission, was whittled down to 47%. Enough to force the run-off!

During the run-off Zanu PF unleashed its party militia and war veterans assisted and directed by the Army, Police and CIO onto the defenceless civilians, like wolves in penned sheep. The civilians were harassed, beaten, raped and over 500 were murdered; they were being punished for having rejected Mugabe and Zanu PF in the first vote.

"What was accomplished by the bullet cannot be undone by the ballot!" Mugabe barked, encouraging his thugs in their barbaric work.

Mugabe overturned his 27% or so defeat in the March vote into a massive 84% landslide victory.

The 2008 elections have become a bench mark in that one could honestly say that Zanu PF was unbeatable which is why SADC leaders proposed a raft of democratic reforms which the GNU was tasked to implemented to stop the repeat of the 2008 elections. When the SADC leaders realised that not even one reform had been implemented during the GNU the advised that the elections must be postponed.

"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," Dr Ibbo Mandaza explained to Violet Gonda

"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'."

It is easy to see why SADC leaders were so cocksure taking part in the elections with no reforms was a futile exercise; if you can blatant cheat the count turning 73% into 47% and use violence to boast 27% to 84% you are unbeatable.
 
MDC leaders did not listen to SADC leaders' advice and contested the flawed 2013 elections. Zanu PF, as SADC leaders had rightly predicted, rigged the elections.
 
It is therefore disconcerting that he should be the one talking of MDC winning this year's elections!

"Zanu PF is wounded and it's unlikely to win a free and fair election. The new kid on the block is Chamisa who has captured the imagination of youths, and I see nothing stopping him," said Dr Mandaza.

Zanu PF has been unelectable for decades. Indeed, many people would argue that President Mnangagwa's takeover, with all the baggage of the military coup, has made Zanu PF more electable that it was in 2008 and 2013, for example. And yet the party went on to win regardless but only because the elections were not free and fair.

Dr Mandaza tell us Chamisa will win the elections IF elections are free is as meaningless as telling punter the horse will win the race if it is alive. Of course what the punter would want to know, is the horse alive. What the nation is dying to know is whether there is any hope of the elections being free, fair and credible particularly give Zanu PF's well documented past of rigging elections?