SADC Toothless To Remove Tyrant Mugabe
30 August 2016
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SADC no power to remove

Patrick Guramatunhu | “In the end, the solution shall not come from Sadc or the UN but by Zimbabweans themselves,” said Farai Maguwu.
Farai is right that SADC, UN and the world at large are looking at Zimbabweans themselves taking the lead in defining why they want to go, especially in the light of the failed 2008 to 2013 GNU. SADC got involved then and Zimbabweans let them down by failing to implement even one reform in five years. MDC leaders including Morgan Tsvangirai even had the chutzpah to blame SADC for their own incompetence.
Zimbabweans have yet to come up with a workable way out that SADC and the UN can support. The two solutions Zimbabweans are supporting in numbers right now are both unworkable. No outsiders will support ever support the call by a number of Zimbabwe’s opposition parties for electoral reforms. None of those parties have ever produced any convincing argument to show that these reforms would change anything because these reforms will change nothing.
Indeed, the call for electoral reforms is nothing but MDC leaders hiding behind their fingers, a carry on from their pathetic performance during the GNU.
Some Zimbabweans have taken to the street protest with zeal. This is an effective way forward when the protesters have a clear view of what is wrong and what should be done to put things to right. The people’s call for 2.2 million jobs Zanu PF promised before the 2013 elections, for example, is too general. After 36 years of corrupt and tyrannical rule the world expects the people’s call for free and fair elections to be as clear as the bell in the morning air.
SADC and the UN would be tempted to support the proposed National Transitional Authority (NTA) but not in the format proposed by Ibbo Mandaza and his friends. The NTA will not deliver any meaningful democratic changes whilst it subject to the authority of parliament and other Zanu PF control institutions, which is what Mandaza is proposing.
Zimbabwe is in this economic mess in which unemployment has soared to the world record levels of 90% and 76% of the population are so poor they cannot afford one decent meal a day. Zimbabwe’s economic mess is at odds with one would have expected given the nation’s rich wealth of national resources of agricultural lands, minerals and a hardworking people. This national tragedy has come to pass because we have had the great misfortune of being stuck with a corrupt and incompetent regime for 36 years, unable to remove it from office regardless of all the evidence of the regime’s disastrous failures.
When the nation attained its independence in 1980 we should not have paid attention only to removing the white colonial regime but also to what kind of government we wanted to replace it. We are in this mess because we did not take the necessary steps to ensure post-independent Zimbabwe was ruling by competent leaders democratically accountable to the people.
After 36 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption that has dragged the nation into the depths of economic despair, we have still not learnt the critical importance of good governance, free and fair elections to demand it for ourselves. The truth is we are not getting out of this economic mess until we take the task of ensuring we have an accountable government with the seriousness and urgency the matter demands. Zimbabweans have to make a conscious decision to democratic change; SADC and the UN will, at best, play a supporting role but never the lead role.

8 Replies to “SADC Toothless To Remove Tyrant Mugabe”

  1. Yeah but when the dictator left the country descended into hell because there were no democratic institutions!

  2. Zimbabwe’s political parties, both ruling and the opposition, have all proven to be corrupt and incompetent; guess who elected these people! Zimbabwe is in serious trouble because of the gross mismanagement and rampant corruption and both the leaders and us the people are to blame for it!

  3. Unfortunately the only time we see true development in situations like this is when you have someone like Ghaddafi (a strongman dictator) with no talk or option for a parliament. He takes over and runs the country as if it’s an image of himself, making it grand and well endowed. Our parliament system doesn’t work, all they do is talk and set up commission after commission, the commissions often conclude that there has been fraud or wrong doing but they have no teeth to do anything about it. In the situation with Libya for instance they had a water crisis as a good part of Libya is in the desert so he used oil revenue to commission the great water project. Can you imagine an African country in the desert have plenty of clean drinking water. Our problem is the money our leaders steal they cannot use it to do anything good otherwise it’s an admission they have stolen, and so we don’t even get a water system like Libya.

  4. SADC has teeth and was prepared to use them too to get Mugabe to honor his half of the GPA. When it was clear that MDC was not interested in implementing any reforms, regardless of the pressure SADC brought to bear on Tsvangirai and his friends to do so, there was very little SADC could do.
    Mugabe bribed MDC to kick reforms into the tall grass and once that was done there was little SADC could do to force them to act. Indeed SADC is loathed to be involved in Zimbabwe’s mess for fear Zimbabwe’s corrupt and incompetent opposition will sell-out again.
    What Zimbabweans have failed to appreciate all along is just how useless their political leaders are, both ruling party and opposition. SADC would want the Zimbabwe crisis resolved once and once for all but they cannot do so on their on, they need competent Zimbabwean leaders to work with. It is for the people of Zimbabwe to elect competent leaders. We have not do so.
    We have nit only elected corrupt and incompetent leaders but have even recycled the same failed leaders over and over again. SADC has teeth but it has the good sense to know it cannot use those teeth on the voters to force them to elect competent leaders!

  5. So what do you think these organisations are supposed to do? Fix the mess you created yourselves? You are now free and independent, remember? 36 years! Freeeeee and independent!

  6. There is talk about about Zimbabweans and political parties as if organisations and people exist outside of each other. In other words are the people demonstrating not the same people who belong to the different political formations?

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