Opinion / Columnist
Hailstone storm has broken on Mugabe's parade!
05 Mar 2015 at 06:13hrs | Views
Rugare Gumbo and Didymus Mutasa, have bitten the bullet and submitted the Court challenge of legality of Mugabe's rigged 2014 Zanu PF party elections. Many people were beginning to fear the two would never do it out of fear of increasing threats from Mugabe, although there is all the evidence the elections were rigged. The two lodged their challenge with High Court on Tuesday 3 rd March 2015; a great day for Zimbabwe.
Like everyone else in Zanu PF, Gumbo and Mutasa have played their dirty parts in the establishment this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship and in keeping it power for 34 years till December 2014 when they were "illegally" kicked out of the party, as they claim. But you know what; I would happily forgive them for all the lying, the beatings, the brutal repression, the looting and corruption, the murders and all the shitty things they have done because of what they did on Tuesday.
For 35 years Mugabe has tempered with the law and rule of law; he has unconstitutionally changed section of the law he did not like or ignored them. The very odd occasion someone dared to challenge his disregard of the law and was lucky to get the highly politicised and compromised Judges to rule against the tyrant; Mugabe has appealed again and again against the judgement until he got what he wanted or simply ignored the Court ruling.
In Mugabe's Zimbabwe it is "normal" for the Police to turn a blind eye to serious human rights violations by Zanu PF supporters. Many opposition supporters have been beaten, raped and thousands have been murdered and yet a tiny minority have ever been arrested.
In 1990 opposition parliamentary candidate, Patrick Kombayi, was shot and seriously injured by Zanu PF operatives in broad day light. Kombayi had the courage and resources to take the matter to court. The two operatives were found guilty of attempted murder but they never even saw the inside of prison; they were granted one of many politically motivated presidential pardons by Mugabe.
In contrast the Police have always descended on the opposition supporters accused of anything like a tonne of bricks. The Police have often arrested and charged the victims of Zanu PF thuggery for disturbing the peace. At one time 29 MDC supporters spent two years in prison, they were denied bail, accused of murdering a Police Officer although the State failed to produce the evidence proving many of the accused were anywhere near the scene of the crime on the day in question.
Mr Rugare Gumbo and Didymus Mutasa are asking the High Court to declare Zanu PF's December 2014 congress and its resolution null and void because the congress was held in breach of the party's own constitution.
"Connected to the illegality of the congress is the unlawfulness and unconstitutionality of certain appointments and decisions that were made and of certain constitutional amendments that were made," Mutasa stated in his affidavit.
He said provincial meetings that were set to conduct party elections and nomination processes for central committee positions were "fraught with intimidation, threats of violence, violent repression and were clearly not free, fair or constitutional".
"In many instances drunken youths and persons claiming to be war veterans were present in these proceedings unleashing serious unlawfulness, fear, duress diatribe," he said.
To the nation, this has been part and parcel of Zimbabwe's political culture for donkey years. The novelty of Mutasa and Gumbo's court challenge is that this is the first time this culture of lawlessness and violence is being challenge in a court of law.
The culture should have never been allowed to take root, Gumbo and Mutasa played their dirty parts in that; now the culture must be uprooted and thrown in the fire so, Gumbo and Mutasa will be doing something constructive and useful for a change.
In this court case, Mutasa and Gumbo are represented by lawyers from Mutumbwa and Mugabe Legal practitioners. Many people were fearful that two would not find any lawyer in the country who with the guts to represent them, such is the fear of what Mugabe might do to challengers and their legal team. The whole nation salutes the legal team.
Mugabe is an extremely brutal and vindictive tyrant; there is no telling what he will do next.
What Mugabe has to realise is the lawlessness is at the very heart of the country economic meltdown and all the economic misery that has brought. The human suffering has now reached the level where it is morally, socially and politically unsustainable; the cup is full to overflowing; the country must find real working solutions to end the economic meltdown. To end the economic meltdown we must first end the country's lawlessness behind it.
Mugabe must now realise that the Zanu PF dictatorship was doomed to fail because it was geared to benefit the few at the expense of the many and that is exactly what it has done. Regime change is now certain and any attempt to use violence or some such dirty tricks to stop regime change may delay it but will never stop it.
The people of Zimbabwe have suffered a lot these last 35 years and still they have kept the peace, they are not been any street protest against the economic hardship they are facing. We should use this opportunity to carry out a peaceful and orderly end to the present Zanu PF dictatorship and replace it with a just and democratic system of government. The window of opportunity for peaceful change will soon close because there is a limit to how much longer/more economic suffering the people can endure before they revolt.
Mugabe and Zanu PF are wrong to think there is no limit to the suffering Zimbabweans can endure! There is a limit and once reached it will release a tsunami wave of anger bottled up all these years that no one will be able to stop. The wave will sweep the ruling elite leaving death and destruction in its wake; this is the end Zanu PF will avoid be accepting peaceful change now.
Mugabe has the choice of accepting not just that the 2014 Zanu PF party elections were rigged but that the 2013 national elections were rigged too. The next step will be to agree to a national body that will be tasked to implement the democratic reforms necessary to ensure free and fair elections.
Zimbabwe's economic meltdown has squeezing Mugabe and it was a matter of time before he was forced to accept regime change. The court challenge of the rigged party elections is going to squeeze him too to accept regime change.
If the court rules against him his position as leader will be untenable. If Mutasa loses the case, he and the others are not coming back; this will mark the split up of Zanu PF into two distinct factions at war with each other. Mugabe's announcement last week that the race for his successor was "wide open" and Mnangagwa is not necessarily on the starting line-up did not go down well with the Mnangagwa faction. They will read in that he is going back on his word that as first VP Mnangagwa as heir apparent.
Mugabe never imagined that Mutasa and Gumbo would have the guts to go through and dare challenge his actions, legal or illegal. If he had, he would certainly not have roughed Mnangagwa and his lot with the humiliating news that he might not even be his successor. Now he has to fight the Mujuru faction with a distrustful Mnangagwa watching his every move.
Meanwhile however much his political problems might distract him they will have no effect on the economic meltdown; companies will continue to close, unemployment will continue to soar, two million are already living in abject poverty – thousands more will join them every month, etc. There will be street protest or worse in Zimbabwe, of that we can be certain and we will not have to wait for long now.
The economic meltdown is squeezing Mugabe hard and he has no cure for it. Zanu PF is imploding before his own eyes and he has no solution for that either. He is old and sickly, he can hardly walk without tripping and falling; he really should have retired and not have to deal with all these economic and political problems. He has always had economic and political problems to deal with but they have been light shower compared to the hailstones the size of footballs falling on him now and he has nowhere to seek shelter.
All Zimbabwe political and economic problems can be traced back to the day the nation stopped being ruled by law and ruled by the whim of a dictator. The last day of Mugabe's tyrannical rule near; his tyrannical past has finally caught up with him -the corruption, the vote rigging, the double crossing, everything!
zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.com
Like everyone else in Zanu PF, Gumbo and Mutasa have played their dirty parts in the establishment this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship and in keeping it power for 34 years till December 2014 when they were "illegally" kicked out of the party, as they claim. But you know what; I would happily forgive them for all the lying, the beatings, the brutal repression, the looting and corruption, the murders and all the shitty things they have done because of what they did on Tuesday.
For 35 years Mugabe has tempered with the law and rule of law; he has unconstitutionally changed section of the law he did not like or ignored them. The very odd occasion someone dared to challenge his disregard of the law and was lucky to get the highly politicised and compromised Judges to rule against the tyrant; Mugabe has appealed again and again against the judgement until he got what he wanted or simply ignored the Court ruling.
In Mugabe's Zimbabwe it is "normal" for the Police to turn a blind eye to serious human rights violations by Zanu PF supporters. Many opposition supporters have been beaten, raped and thousands have been murdered and yet a tiny minority have ever been arrested.
In 1990 opposition parliamentary candidate, Patrick Kombayi, was shot and seriously injured by Zanu PF operatives in broad day light. Kombayi had the courage and resources to take the matter to court. The two operatives were found guilty of attempted murder but they never even saw the inside of prison; they were granted one of many politically motivated presidential pardons by Mugabe.
In contrast the Police have always descended on the opposition supporters accused of anything like a tonne of bricks. The Police have often arrested and charged the victims of Zanu PF thuggery for disturbing the peace. At one time 29 MDC supporters spent two years in prison, they were denied bail, accused of murdering a Police Officer although the State failed to produce the evidence proving many of the accused were anywhere near the scene of the crime on the day in question.
Mr Rugare Gumbo and Didymus Mutasa are asking the High Court to declare Zanu PF's December 2014 congress and its resolution null and void because the congress was held in breach of the party's own constitution.
"Connected to the illegality of the congress is the unlawfulness and unconstitutionality of certain appointments and decisions that were made and of certain constitutional amendments that were made," Mutasa stated in his affidavit.
He said provincial meetings that were set to conduct party elections and nomination processes for central committee positions were "fraught with intimidation, threats of violence, violent repression and were clearly not free, fair or constitutional".
"In many instances drunken youths and persons claiming to be war veterans were present in these proceedings unleashing serious unlawfulness, fear, duress diatribe," he said.
To the nation, this has been part and parcel of Zimbabwe's political culture for donkey years. The novelty of Mutasa and Gumbo's court challenge is that this is the first time this culture of lawlessness and violence is being challenge in a court of law.
The culture should have never been allowed to take root, Gumbo and Mutasa played their dirty parts in that; now the culture must be uprooted and thrown in the fire so, Gumbo and Mutasa will be doing something constructive and useful for a change.
In this court case, Mutasa and Gumbo are represented by lawyers from Mutumbwa and Mugabe Legal practitioners. Many people were fearful that two would not find any lawyer in the country who with the guts to represent them, such is the fear of what Mugabe might do to challengers and their legal team. The whole nation salutes the legal team.
Mugabe is an extremely brutal and vindictive tyrant; there is no telling what he will do next.
Mugabe must now realise that the Zanu PF dictatorship was doomed to fail because it was geared to benefit the few at the expense of the many and that is exactly what it has done. Regime change is now certain and any attempt to use violence or some such dirty tricks to stop regime change may delay it but will never stop it.
The people of Zimbabwe have suffered a lot these last 35 years and still they have kept the peace, they are not been any street protest against the economic hardship they are facing. We should use this opportunity to carry out a peaceful and orderly end to the present Zanu PF dictatorship and replace it with a just and democratic system of government. The window of opportunity for peaceful change will soon close because there is a limit to how much longer/more economic suffering the people can endure before they revolt.
Mugabe and Zanu PF are wrong to think there is no limit to the suffering Zimbabweans can endure! There is a limit and once reached it will release a tsunami wave of anger bottled up all these years that no one will be able to stop. The wave will sweep the ruling elite leaving death and destruction in its wake; this is the end Zanu PF will avoid be accepting peaceful change now.
Mugabe has the choice of accepting not just that the 2014 Zanu PF party elections were rigged but that the 2013 national elections were rigged too. The next step will be to agree to a national body that will be tasked to implement the democratic reforms necessary to ensure free and fair elections.
Zimbabwe's economic meltdown has squeezing Mugabe and it was a matter of time before he was forced to accept regime change. The court challenge of the rigged party elections is going to squeeze him too to accept regime change.
If the court rules against him his position as leader will be untenable. If Mutasa loses the case, he and the others are not coming back; this will mark the split up of Zanu PF into two distinct factions at war with each other. Mugabe's announcement last week that the race for his successor was "wide open" and Mnangagwa is not necessarily on the starting line-up did not go down well with the Mnangagwa faction. They will read in that he is going back on his word that as first VP Mnangagwa as heir apparent.
Mugabe never imagined that Mutasa and Gumbo would have the guts to go through and dare challenge his actions, legal or illegal. If he had, he would certainly not have roughed Mnangagwa and his lot with the humiliating news that he might not even be his successor. Now he has to fight the Mujuru faction with a distrustful Mnangagwa watching his every move.
Meanwhile however much his political problems might distract him they will have no effect on the economic meltdown; companies will continue to close, unemployment will continue to soar, two million are already living in abject poverty – thousands more will join them every month, etc. There will be street protest or worse in Zimbabwe, of that we can be certain and we will not have to wait for long now.
The economic meltdown is squeezing Mugabe hard and he has no cure for it. Zanu PF is imploding before his own eyes and he has no solution for that either. He is old and sickly, he can hardly walk without tripping and falling; he really should have retired and not have to deal with all these economic and political problems. He has always had economic and political problems to deal with but they have been light shower compared to the hailstones the size of footballs falling on him now and he has nowhere to seek shelter.
All Zimbabwe political and economic problems can be traced back to the day the nation stopped being ruled by law and ruled by the whim of a dictator. The last day of Mugabe's tyrannical rule near; his tyrannical past has finally caught up with him -the corruption, the vote rigging, the double crossing, everything!
zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.com
Source - Wilbert Mukori
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