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RADAR
Zimbabwe is heading for harmonised elections on July 30. The outcome is as unpredictable as it is anticipated.
The world is watching, including those we have ourselves invited to witness the conclusion of what began inauspiciously as “Operation Restore Legacy” on the fateful night of November 14, 2017.
When the nerves are so frayed and the nation is on tenterhooks, political leaders must be extra careful what they say, and more sobriety is demanded of the media who convey the message far beyond their newsrooms and must therefore be even more mindful of the possible effects of reckless reporting on a restless populace.
Remember Mark Anthony’s incendiary address to fellow Romans in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar!
We are standing at a critical juncture in the history of our country. No nation can be said to be stable enough not to leap over the cliff.
Such a catastrophe knows no opposition nor ruling party. It knows no leader nor follower. Nor can the media be guaranteed immunity by claiming to be a mere messenger; right or left wing.
When calamity does strike, we shall all be in it together. That is how we should take it from the beginning: we are in it together. There is no room for phoney philosophising about who defines the national interest and how we regard this country as we approach this epochal election.
President Mnangagwa has been more than too generous is expressing his faith in the elusive thing called democracy.
Let’s all work in good faith towards its realisation in our life time.
The President has called for free and fair elections. He wants them to be credible and beyond reproach.
He has invited foreign observers from across the globe. Zimbabwe has nothing to hide.
Locally, opposition political parties have enjoyed unprecedented and unparalleled freedom to campaign and broadcast their message everywhere, using every conceivable media platform.
His belief, or hope, or prayer, is for Zimbabwe, for the first time ever, to produce, at the least, an uncontested, not uncontestable, outcome.
After all we are only human and anyone can contest the best-run election for a million times two reasons.
For the first time since the Schori debacle in 2002, the European Union (EU) has been given free rein to prowl across the length and breadth of Zimbabwe ahead of our elections.
We have no doubt they can feel the difference from the Mugabe dispensation although they still maintain their sanctions on our fragile economy.
Let’s help them not only to observe our elections, but also to savour the beauty of our country.
We are in no doubt whatsoever that a lot of them are also scouting for investment opportunities — they are not as shortsighted as we seem to be to over-obsess about a utopian democracy they can never hope for back home.
They are European and white, but only human. Let’s help them enjoy their stay and their work.
Media harassment
Zimbabwe has not been a friend of Europe in a long time. We know war began with former president Robert Mugabe rejecting gays; not deliberately-politicised human rights violations.
Things got worse when the same anti-gay Mugabe led Zimbabwe on a crusade to reclaim its land, with it, ownership over its natural resources.
That Mugabe led a party called zanu-pf, it is still in power and its sin has not, might not, be forgiven in a long time. There is no need to stoke that war.
Yesterday media carried a story by something called TellZim claiming a CIO agent caused a scene in Chiredzi after he reportedly harassed two members of the EU pre-election observer mission by “demanding” to see their “passports and identification details”. (We know ‘demanded’ is MDC Alliance language.)
One of the members was said to have confirmed the “harassment”.
She said they had referred the matter to EU ambassador to Zimbabwe Philippe van Damme, who became unreachable to TellZim. The claim of harassment was denied by the District Intelligence Officer for Chiredzi, Joseph Urimbo.
Here is the source of our worry in this tension-filled period. The CIO is key to national security. We are in an election period and prone to acts of destabilisation. Chiredzi is close the eastern border, and there are many reports of violence and civilian attacks across the border.
That means even foreign election observers, regardless of skin colour, are prone to attack, by anybody, including those out to discredit the whole thing, and they need State protection.
Now comes the question: When did asking a person for their passport (if they are foreign) or ID (if they are local) constitute an act of harassment? Has skin pigmentation by itself become some form of passport, to where?
The heading to the story proclaimed; “CIO agent harasses EU poll observers”. It is these cumulative seeming trifles which in the end will be raised to determine if the election was “free, fair, transparent, credible and free of violence”.
Why have we become such a danger to our own national wellbeing? Don’t we have enough Dewa Mavhingas flooding the media with fake videos of violence to fatten their pockets?
Enemy language
Nelson Chamisa is a jolly good fellow. He just loves lying. Vote for him and soon we shall be catching mice using cellphone and employing Europeans as our cattle and donkey herders in rural areas. ED will get a wonderful retirement package.
At the launch of his MDC Alliance manifesto two weeks ago Chamisa promised war veterans, soldiers and the police mouth-watering pay rises.
We know his party has a grievance against zanu-pf for taking back land from white commercial farmers. That’s why compensation is such a big issue. He is angry with war veterans and soldiers whom his party accuses of spearheading that land reform. He is angry that the same soldiers and war veterans thwarted their nefarious efforts in 2008 when they came closest to achieving their goal to reverse the land reform.
The MDC-T has never made a secret of seeing all those it accuses of frustrating its bid for power humiliated before the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Only the most gullible will take him seriously on his promises. He is a liar. The only thing he might be truthful about is that he wants the vote of the gullible.
Which brings us to one genial professor. Otherwise a good man, but used a day when political leaders of some 23 political parties gathered to sign a “Peace Pledge” to tell the world who the MDC Alliance’s enemy is.
Professor Welshman Ncube is an intelligent man. But he has been very conflicted ever since that indictment by one Christopher Dell who thought he had clinched a sell-out unity of the opposition deal with Morgan Tsvangirai ahead the 2008 elections, had Ncube played ball. It was Welshman who kept raising inconvenient questions despite his fingerprints all over the Zidera document.
In the end the unity deal fell through, and Tsvangirai opted to go it alone. A bitter Dell called Ncube “divisive figure” and that seems to have haunted Ncube’s politics to death. When his MDC failed to win a seat in the 2013 harmonised elections his political death was sealed. This was a huge consolation for Tsvangirai and his party who themselves had been pulverised by Zanu PF and Mugabe.
But in the most inconvenient marriage of them all, Ncube has found himself being “resurrected” by Nelson Chamisa. It is a gay marriage for both married men. Its sole and overriding purpose is to defeat Mnangagwa at the very least, but chiefly to remove from power, and destroy Zanu PF. (Zanu PF should never dream for once of becoming an opposition party; it would be finished. Dead forever given the range and bitterness of its enemies – home and away.) No doubt Chamisa is telling Ncube how dearly he loves him.
It is a public secret how deep that love is given what has happened in the distribution of parliamentary seats since the primary elections early in the month and the sitting of the Nomination Court on June 14. But on the day when Zimbabweans committed themselves to a peaceful election, Ncube was forced to declare that their “enemy”, not political rival, is Zanu PF. That’s against ED’s daily exhortations to peace, and asserting that what unites us is greater than what might divide us.
That is why it is important to redefine our politics. Foreign election observers coming to Zimbabwe can only do so much. If we show them we are fools ready to sacrifice our country for the pleasure of global attention, there is little they can do to stop us. After elections they will return to their peaceful abodes. We shall remain here. Fools who refused to build a tower to heaven.
Online Reporter