MDC-T are using Khampepe report as scapegoat just as Zanu PF used sanction

The trouble with people with little or nothing to offer is that they easily get carried away; MDC – T is getting carried away with the Khampepe report just as Zanu PF got carried away with the sanction. What we must not allow these narrow minded people to think they are carrying us away with them!

The Zimbabwe economy was already in serious trouble after the two five-year Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes of 1990 to 1995 and 1995 to 2000 failed to produce any meaningful economic recovery. The violent seizure of white owned farms by Mugabe and his cronies that started in 2000 was more like the avalanche that buried the camel. The farm seizures destroyed the agricultural sector, the engine of the Zimbabwe economy, sending the economy into a spiral free fall from which it has never recovered.

The Western countries imposed target sanctions on Mugabe and a few in his inner circle in protest at his regime's failure to hold free, fair and credible elections in 2002 when the economy was already in free fall. Mugabe took the sanctions as God-sent, the regime and its propaganda machine swung into action and for the last 12 have blamed all, and I mean ALL, Zimbabwe's economic problems on "the illegal sanctions imposed by the British imperialists and the western allies".

Ever since last year's rigged election MDC-T led by Tsvangirai, MDC led by Ncube and the break-away MDC-Renewal have all been at sixes and sevens as to what to say about the elections. Tendai Biti is on record denouncing the elections as fraudulent only to revise his statement to say Zanu PF won because they had a better campaign. Everyone knows that Mugabe rigged the elections, what has made it so difficult for MDC leaders to come out and admit it is that they will also have to admit that they failed to implement the reforms necessary to stop Mugabe rigging the vote!

The last release of Khampepe report has been as God-sent scapegoat as sanctions were for Zanu PF.

The Khampepe report concluded that the 2002 Zimbabwe elections were not free and fair. Successive SA governments have refused to make the report public until know. MDC – T led by none other than Tsvangirai himself – no doubt with one eye for another Usan Bolt dash to the Netherland Embassy at the first sign of trouble – have seized on this delay and now blame it for the rigged 2013 elections as if to say if MDC had known Mugabe rigged elections they would have implemented all the reforms. Nonsense!

All the Election Observers to Zimbabwe's 2008 elections released their reports within days after the presidential run-off elections and their findings were unanimous – the election were not free, fair and credible. Mugabe and Zanu PF accepted that and it was the basis for the GPA to which Tsvangirai as leader of one MDC faction and Arthur Mutambara as the leader of the other faction are the other two parties in the agreement. The GNU was tasked, above all else, to implement a raft of democratic reforms to ensure the next elections would be free, fair and credible.

So the GPA shows MDC leaders knew, if they did not know already, that Mugabe and Zanu PF will rig the elections again just as they had done in 2008. After 2008, the Khampepe report, would not have added anything new that the world did not know already.

Mugabe was able to blatantly rig the 2013 elections because MDC leaders failed to get even one democratic reform implemented in all their five years in the GNU. Mugabe granted MDC leaders a seat on the gravy train and they promptly forgot about the reforms.

"MDC vadzidza kudya vanyerere!" as one Mugabe crony cynically remarked at the time. (MDC have learnt to enjoy the gravy train good life and not rock the boat!) Ever since Tsvangirai got his $ 4 million Highlands mansion to which he has now superglued himself like a binnacle to a rock he never said or did anything to upset Mugabe for the rest of the GNU. Talking about implementing the reforms would have send Mugabe into volcanic rage!

Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC friends believed that even without one reform implemented they would still win the elections and so they confident went ahead disregarding SADC's advice not to. Within hours of voting starting, MDC leaders and supporters were running around like headless chickens; the vote rigging was massive and blatant. In failing to implement the reforms MDC leaders showed that they are breathtakingly incompetent!

MDC leaders owe the people Zimbabwe and our SADC friends an apology for failing to implement the democratic reforms which allowed Mugabe to rig the 2013 elections landing the nation into this mess.

"SADC turned a blind eye when innocent civilians were being butchered in broad daylight and is therefore to blame for the current economic meltdown in Zimbabwe - the result of an illegitimate regime derived from yet another stolen election in 2013, with the full complicity of SADC, and with South Africa as the chief sponsor of the "free and fair" verdict," said MDC-T UK and Ireland press statement. They are just following Tsvangirai and MDC-T SA in this.

No amount of propaganda by Mugabe has changed the fact that the Zimbabwe's economy is in a mess because of mismanagement and corruption and not sanctions. Indeed by burying its head in the sand the regime has allowed these cancerous problems to grow and spread and today they are as big as tennis balls and are killing the economy.

Similarly, no amount of scapegoating by MDC will change the fact that their breath-taking incompetence has costed Zimbabwe the best chance in a generation to end the Zanu PF dictatorship. Indeed these MDC leaders and their supporters' continued barking up the wrong tree if not just annoying it is costing the nation support. The world would like to help Zimbabwe end this Zanu PF dictatorship but first the nation has to demonstrate that it is serious; how can anyone think we are serious if we endorse stupid statements from Tsvangirai blaming others for his own incompetence!