Opinion / Columnist
British to re-engage MDC-T after GNU fallout - so what was the MDC-T road to Damascus transformation!
29 Jul 2015 at 10:09hrs | Views
Douglas Mwonzora, MDC-T Secretary General, is heading a party delegation visiting UK, Norway and Australia at the invitation of these nations.
"We are also going to take that chance to meet with our party structures in these countries and intensify our 2018 political campaigns which have already started in earnest," said Mwonzora.
Mwonzora confirmed MDC-T has abandoned its "No reform no elections" stance although he would not say what the party's new strategy would be. This is just another case of the party flip-flopping on key policies.
Zanu PF has panicked at the prospect of the MDC-T's re-engaging with some of the Western countries. MDC lost all political credibility with SADC and most other countries especially in the West after the party failed to get even one democratic reform implemented after the five years in the GNU.
"Firstly, we are worried by the issue of external funding because the whole essence of funding political parties from the fiscus is to develop politics loyal to the nation," threatened George Charamba, Mugabe's spokesman.
"When you have overtly hostile stance hinted by MDC-T, we have to reassess our own re-engagement efforts with the EU. Surely the EU cannot run with hares at the same time hunting with the hounds."
This is just Zanu PF shooting from the hip; MDC has not received a cent of the $3 million the party is entitled on the basis of the 2013 election result because government is broke so the threat to withhold political party funds is a hollow one.
As for the EU –Zimbabwe re-engagement the whole process has stalled because Zanu PF has failed to end the cancer of corruption, scrap the obnoxious indigenisation law and other key economic reforms necessary for meaningful economic engagement.
What is sickening about the Zanu PF over-the-top reaction that the tyrannical regime should make a big song and dance about MDC-T sourcing their own funding when the regime source it funds from stealing for the impoverished people of Zimbabwe!
Years of underfunding have resulted in the collapse of basic services like health and education and most towns and cities cannot supply clean running water because government revenue is not enough to pay wages let alone anything else. During the GNU former Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, complained that government was receiving a fraction of the tax from the diamond mining. Since the rigged July 2013 elections which resulted in Zanu PF resuming total control of all facets of political power tax from the diamond industry has dried up completely.
First finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said there were no alluvial diamonds left in Marange and Chiedzwa. He then changed his story and said government had suspended collecting tax from the industry "to help them through their financial problems". All nonsense of course; the wealth from diamond bounty is going straight into the pockets of the Zanu PF ruling elite and their foreign mining partners, the ordinary people are to have none of it!
Right now millions of Zimbabweans are starving and thousands will die because the country has once again failed to produce enough to feed its own people. Ever since the Zanu PF chefs seized the white owned farms in 2000 the nation has been forced to import food every year; a serious fall for a country that until then was the bread basket of the whole region. Still, the country could buy the food if the wealth from diamonds was not being looted!
It is therefore rich that Zanu PF should be the one making a big song and dance condemning MDC-T for finding someone rich to fund their political activities when Zanu PF is taking bread out of the mouths of starving masses of this country to finance its corrupt and tyrannical activities.
At the end of the day we have to deal with the reality that Zimbabwe is still in this political and economic mess because MDC leaders failed to implement even one reform during the GNU and thus allowed Zanu PF to rig the July 2013 elections. The only reason why no reforms were implemented is because MDC leaders have no "ideology, principles and vision", as Professor Welshman Ncube, one of the leading MDC leaders in the GNU, has since admitted.
So one has to ask the British, Norwegians and Australians what Saul on the road to Damascus transformative moment has befallen Morgan Tsvangirai turning him from the individual with no principles and vision to the competent leader and thus worthy they re-engagement with MDC-T? We are certainly not aware of any such change; indeed Tsvangirai has since the rigged 2013 continued to blunder from pillar to post – as with the recall of the MDC-Renewal MPs only to give the seats away to Zanu PF –, to flip-flop – as with abandoning of the no reform no elections stance -, etc.
Zimbabwe is in this political and economic mess because for the last 35 years the people have made the mistake of believing the nation can enjoy freedom, peace, human rights, economic prosperity, etc. even if the nation's lacked common sense much less principles and vision. The country's serious economic meltdown and brutal political oppression has forced the people to think and the lesson of electing competent leaders was slowing sinking in, finally. The last thing the people of Zimbabwe want is for someone to give them the false hope that the nation can enjoy freedom, peace, etc. by once again electing corrupt and incompetent leaders like Morgan Tsvangirai.
No politician in UK, Norway or Australia with half as bad a track record of corruption and incompetency as MDC leaders would ever be re-elected into public office. So why are these British, Norwegians and Australians abusing their financial muscle to impose these corrupt and incompetent MDC leaders on the people of Zimbabwe?
Source - Wilbert Mukori
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