Proof that Zimbabwe opposition has no common sense!

The calibre of our political leaders has been the nation's Achilles heel in our search for democracy and good governance.

Here we are, we have all the country's opposition parties meeting in Bulawayo hosted by Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), Zimbabwe's premier Civic Organisation concerned with delivery of free, fair and credible elections, at great expense. After hundreds of man-days of deliberation and debate they, in all their collective wisdom, tell us that "the ruling party Zanu-PF and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to implement reforms so as to level the political field."

Zimbabwe had its best chance of getting all the 2008 GPA democratic reforms, everyone accepted were necessary for free, fair and credible elections, implemented during the GNU. The task of implementing the reforms fall upon the two MDC factions in the GNU naturally; it was naïve to expect Mugabe and Zanu-PF to want any of these reforms implemented since they would never win a free and fair election.

The GNU was supposed to last 18 months in the end it lasted five years, more than three times as long. Sadly not even one of the reforms was implemented. Not one!

A number of the attendees to the ZESN were senior members of MDC, they are the ones who should have drafted the proposed reforms and approved them in parliament. They did no such thing. Mugabe bribed the MDC leaders with the gravy train life-style, a $4 million Highland mansion for Tsvangirai, and they kicked the reforms into the tall grass to be forgotten until now.

There was a deafening silence from all the other opposition parties, Mavhambo, Zapu, etc., throughout the GNU about MDC's failure to implement the reforms. Where were they, on holiday or fast asleep!

The NGOs and civic groups including ZESN were MDC's cheerleaders, cheering and applauding whilst MDC blundered from pillar to post. Did ZESN not help campaign for a yes vote to approve the Copac constitution in the March 2013 referendum on the basis that it was enough to deliver free and fair elections?

For the opposition parties and ZESN to now call for Zanu-PF to implement the reforms shows just how shallow they all are. Having successfully bribed MDC to do nothing about the reforms during the GNU, Zanu-PF will now consider the matter settled.

To get Zanu-PF to accept that the reforms were never implemented during the GNU is a challenge in its own right. Having done that; it would be naïve, to say the least, to then expect Zanu-PF to implement any of the reforms just as it was naïve to have expected the party to implement them during the GNU.

As for the call on ZEC "to implement the reforms" that shows just how down right stupid the delegates to this ZESN workshop really are; ZEC has no constitutional power to change its modus operandi!

If we are ever to end Zanu-PF's corrupt and tyrannical rule and have our first free, fair and credible elections then we will have to do a lot better than have all these endless opposition talk-shops that come up with totally meaningless and wishful resolutions that everyone ignores.
The deplorable poor quality of Zimbabwe's political leaders is the country's Achilles heel; the country would not have landed in this mess if we had competent and visionary leaders in 1980 instead of the corrupt and the murderous Zanu-PF tyrants. We certainly would have ended the Zanu-PF dictatorship in 2013, if not long before then, if we had competent leaders with some common sense instead of the breathtakingly incompetent and corrupt MDC.

Worse of all, we are not getting out of this hell-hole as long as we have continue to have individuals with no common sense championing our cause for free and fair elections. The ball is in our court, us the people; it is incumbent on us and no one else to remove these absolutely useless, corrupt and incompetent opposition and Civic Society leaders and elect competent leaders!    

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Wilbert Mukori can be contacted at zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.com