By Wilbert Mukori- “Unsurprisingly, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)’s 2020 monetary policy statement is more of the same — a tired litany of promises waiting to be broken and targets queuing up to be missed. Governor John Mangudya, who just a year ago promised to “preserve value” has since delivered over 500% inflation and 94% devaluation,” wrote Anthony Hawkins.
“Such active value destruction continues, compounded by the issue of Treasury Bills to institutional investors. Just how issuing TBs at 14% or 15% qualifies as preserving value is beyond comprehension. Perhaps Mangudya will explain?”
“A tired litany of promises waiting to be broken and targets queuing to be missed” and, sadly, those who suffer the consequences of the broken promises and missed targets the most are totally helpless as they have no meaningful political and economic power to hold anyone involved to account. None! This encapsulate the economic and political tragedy that has been playing out in Zimbabwe since the country’s independence in 1980.
Those with the political power do as they please. Whilst government’s failed economic policies have caused untold economic hardships to the ordinary people the latter have no effective means to force those in positions of power and authority to change their policies much less remove them from office. None!
“Seek ye first the political kingdom and all things shall be added unto you,” said Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president.
The people of Zimbabwe thought that was exactly what the nation was fighting for in the struggle to end white colonial exploitation and oppression. “One man, one vote!” was the clarion cry.
Whilst there was a determined effort by some black nationalist leaders to honour the promise to given the ordinary people a meaning vote after independence, notably South Africa. In Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies took a dim view of the country’s Lancaster House constitution and its promise to deliver one man, one vote in a multi-party democratic Zimbabwe.
Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies wanted Zimbabwe to be a one-party, Zanu PF, state. They viewed the insistence on free, fair and credible elections as a ploy to deny Zanu PF the right to rule the country which they had earned through the barrel of the gun.
It came as no surprise then was no surprise then Mugabe did not honour his Lancaster House undertaking to withdraw all his freedom fighters to the designated assembly points to stop them intimidating the electorate. Worse still, Zanu PF’s key message to the electorate was that if the party lost the elections, it would not honour the result and instead rekindle the bush war.
So instead of the first elections being about electing who was to rule the country in free, fair and credible election process, as the people had hoped; it was about electing to end the war. And once in power Zanu PF has left no stone unturned to ensure the party won all the elections that followed.
The nearest the country has ever come to holding free, fair and credible elections was in the March 2008 elections. SADC had put Zanu PF under pressure to a meaningful voting system and, with the economy in ruins, the Zimbabwe electorate were desperate for political change and so voted for the opposition party.
When it was clear that Zanu PF was gong to lose the elections, Zanu PF hardliners supported by the top brass in the Police, Army, CIO and Prison Services stop ZEC declaring the results. For the next six week the hardliners “cooked up” the results to give the opposition a marginal lead in parliamentary.
In the presidential race, they reduced Tsvangirai’s 73%, as admitted by Mugabe in Freudian slip years latter, to 47% and thus force a run-off.
“What was accomplished by the bullet cannot be undone by the ballot!” boasted Robert Mugabe. Zanu PF thugs and rogue war veterans supported by the personnel from the country’s uniformed security services unleash the most barbaric election violence the country had ever seen. Over 500 innocent civilians were murdered and millions had their properties destroy, were beaten and/or raped. The electorate were beaten into submission, Mugabe “won” the run-off with 84% of the vote!
Zanu PF has retain’s dictatorial powers to rig the elections to this day. Without first implementing the democratic reforms designed to take away these dictatorial power it clear Zanu PF rig the 2023 elections just as the party has done these last 40 years.
The people of Zimbabwe lost their freedoms and rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections before the 1980 elections, before they even had the chance to taste.
40 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption have all but destroyed the Zimbabwe economy; unemployment has soared to dizzying heights of 90%, basic services like education and health care have all but collapsed, 34% of the population now live in extreme poverty, etc. As Anthony Hawkins rightly pointed the future is grime because any promises by the regime to revive the economy will never be honoured.
Still, the country’s economic meltdown has sunk so low caused so much human suffering and deaths, this cannot go on for much longer. The cup is full to overflow, there must be change.
By refusing to implement the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections Zanu PF has closed the door to peaceful change. What the party has done is delay change and, more significantly, opened the door to violent revolutionary change. No one can stop change, no one; the choice is always between peaceful and orderly change or violent and chaotic change.
Having imposed the choice of violent and chaotic change on the nation, Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies must know they will be held to account for all the destruction, human suffering and deaths that will follow.