By Nomusa Garikai- “As long as Ramaphosa plays big brother to an illegal president (Emmerson Mnangagwa) then we (Zimbabweans in SA) are staying put and not going anywhere,” twittered Kudakwashe Kadenhe

There is no doubt that Ramaphosa, together with all the other SADC and AU leaders, should have condemned Zimbabwe’s last elections because Zanu PF rigged. Still, Zimbabweans must admit that it was none other than our own oppositions leaders who must take the lion’s share of the blame here.

It is a matter of historic record that Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends failed to implement even one meaningful democratic reform in five years during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Not even one reform!

SADC leaders fought hard to get MDC to implement the reforms, but all their warnings were ignored. The regional leaders made one desperate attempt to have the 2013 elections postponed until reform are implemented but that too failed.

“In 2013 the Maputo Summit, in June 2013, before the elections, the Maputo Summit was all about having the elections postponed – the SADC summit. I went there,” explained Dr Ibbo Mandaza, in an interview with Violet Gonda.

“I was there at the Summit and Mugabe pretended to agree to a postponement of the elections. If you recall, the postponement was based on the need to reform at least electoral laws.

“And after that Summit, Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube, all of them were called to a separate meeting by the Heads of State of SADC in the absence of Mugabe, that same evening. And they were told; I was sitting there outside the room with Mac Maharaj; they were told ‘if you go into elections next month, you are going to lose; the elections are done’.”

As we know MDC participated in the 2013 elections with no reforms and Zanu PF blatantly rigged the elections. History was to repeat itself in 2018, as it always does with those who refuse to learn from the past.

What is particularly annoying here is that MDC leaders know that by participating in these flawed and illegal elections they are giving the process some credibility and Zanu PF some legitimacy; as Senator David Coltart has readily admitted.

“The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility,” confessed Senator David Coltart in his Book The Struggle Continues 50 years of tyranny in Zimbabwe.

So, Zimbabweans like Kudakwashe should not blame outsiders like President Ramaphosa for propping up this illegitimate Mnangagwa regime when it is none other than MDC leaders who are whitewashing the Zanu PF dictatorship and undermining efforts to bring about meaningful democratic change in Zimbabwe.

The solution to Zimbabwe’s political paralysis and economic meltdown is ending the country’s curse of rigged elections. And what better way of doing that than declaring “winners” of rigged elections illegitimate and demanding that the said regime steps down.

We must denounce the corrupt and incompetent MDC leaders who are giving the illegitimate Zanu PF dictatorship legitimacy. MDC leaders have been running with the hare and hunting with the hounds; this must not be allowed to continue.

It is up to us, Zimbabweans, to find the solutions to the myriad of problems we have created for ourselves and should not be blaming outsiders our failures and suffering. We must stop seeing the speck in the outsider’s eye when we cannot see the log in our own eyes!