SA will slam door shut to Zimbabwean refugees - all we ask, please stop endorsing rigged elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy

Zimbabwe is a textbook case failed state – a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent and lawless thugs who have rigged elections to cement their iron grip on power. 42 years of criminal waste of the nation's human and material resource have left the country's economy in ruins.

Many Zimbabweans have left the country as economic and political refugees. There are over a million Zimbabweans in South Africa, some are there legally others illegally. What matters is their welcome in that country is wearing out!

"When it comes to the issue of Home Affairs, and you were saying maybe we are sending Zimbabweans back to starve, as the African National Congress (ANC) we believe that all countries need to take responsibility of their citizens," Minister Lindiwe Zulu told Jacaranda FM.

"First and foremost, we take responsibility of our citizens, we make sure that despite the challenges that we have of poverty, unemployment and inequality, we shouldn't be having South Africans leaving South Africa with almost nothing,

" … leaving South Africa and going to neighbouring countries to go and look for greener pastures when they aren't even that much of the greener pastures that we can talk about."

Lindiwe Zulu, social development minister and chairperson of the ANC's (S A's ruling party) international relations sub-committee, this means a very significant policy shift by the government. Zimbabwean economic and political refugees are no longer welcome in South Africa.

Anyone, anyone at all, who has followed the political intrigue during the 2008 to 2013 GNU in Zimbabwe will tell you that Lindiwe Zulu was the one SADC official who nagged Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends the hardest to get them to implement the democratic reforms.

Anecdotal story tells of Lindiwe Zulu reminding MDC leaders to implement reforms. The MDC leaders reported the otherwise private and confidential advice to Zanu PF leaders. Robert Mugabe, the Zanu PF dictator, whose plan was to bribe the MDC leaders so they forgot about the reforms was clearly working, was furious at the prospect of Ms Zulu foiling his plan.

Mugabe was so furious with Ms Zulu he called her an "idiotic street woman"! Mugabe had a foul mouth!

Of all the SADC leaders Ms Lindiwe Zulu has good reasons to be disappointed with Zimbabweans, especially MDC for failing to implement even one democratic reform during the GNU, end the Zanu PF dictatorship and with it the curse of rigged elections and bad governance.

As much as Minister Zulu has causes célèbres to be disappointed with Zimbabweans for selling out on implementing reforms; still in her more cerebral moments she too must admit that SADC's decision to endorse Zimbabwe's rigged 2013 (all others thereafter) as "substantially free and fair" and thus giving Zanu PF legitimacy was:

a)    Was a foolish move as it did nothing to end the Zanu PF dictatorship. Indeed, by giving Zanu PF legitimacy guaranteed, the regional body has given the regime the confidence to ignore all calls from ordinary Zimbabweans, EU, Commonwealth, etc. to implement reforms before elections.

b)    Zanu PF is blatantly rigging the 2023 elections. The regime will be forced into a new GNU arrangement if SADC denied Zanu PF legitimacy as happened in 2008. There are many competent Zimbabweans who can be trusted to implement the democratic reforms and get the nation out of this economic and political mess.

So, the people of Zimbabwe are not asking South Africa to continue its open-door policy to allow Zimbabwean economic and political refugees, Zimbabweans would have no cause to be refugees if the country finally sorted it problem of rigged elections. All we are asking is that South Africa must stop giving Zanu PF legitimacy for blatantly rigged elections and thus perpetuate the dictatorship and pariah state.