By Patrick Guramatunhu- “I have respect for him (Biti) for his intellectual prowess. Let me say that he is very clever,” Chinamasa told journalists at Zanu PF headquarters in Harare Monday.

“But there you have him doing the bidding for his masters very well where he wrote to the World Bank not to give us Covid-19 related finances and resources and we have not received such resources.

“Zanu PF, therefore, appeals to our people not to be misled by the MDC Alliance malcontents whose preoccupation is to see our people and the economy suffer.”

Chinamasa should know that Zanu PF cannot have its cake and eat it too! He only showered Tendai Biti with praise for the purpose of building Biti as a credible opposition whose words would have influence IMF. The truth is Tendai Biti is a corrupt, incompetent and overrated opposition politician with a well-documented track record of failures. He has no intellectual or political credibility and no political influence. Of all the people, Patrick Chinamasa should know this since he played the leading role in celebrating Biti and his MDC’s friends’ breath-taking incompetence at the end of the 2008 GNU! record better than anyone else.

The IMF, WB and many other international financial institutions stopped giving Zimbabwe financial assistance back in the late 1999 when it was clear the country was failing to service’s mounting debt. Zimbabwe’s reputation as a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging thugs have forced investors and lenders alike to shy away from doing business with the country. It is therefore rich to blame the WB’s recent decision to deny Zimbabwe financial assistance on Tendai Biti.

Chinamasa knows that Tendai Biti is not clever at all! If Biti or anyone of his follow MDC leaders had even the common sense of a village idiot then they would have implemented at least one democratic reform during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Not even the repeated nagging by SADC leaders to implement the reforms could get the MDC leaders to anything.

Of course, Patrick Chinamasa joined his leader, Robert Mugabe, and all the other Zanu PF leaders in celebrating their party’s greatest political revivals. Having signed the 2008 Global Political Agreement, agreeing to the implementation of the raft of democratic reforms designed to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship; no one would have believed Zanu PF would emerge at the end of the GNU with all its dictatorial powers untouched! No one!

When SADC leaders tried a last minute attempt to have the 2013 elections postponed to allow for the reforms to be implemented; it was Chinamasa himself, as then Minister of Justice, who reminded the diplomats that elections could not be postponed to allow reforms when no reforms proposals had ever been submitted in the five years of the GNU. It was MDC’s, not Zanu PF’s, fault that not even one reform proposal had been submitted.

Chinamasa and his Zanu PF cronies celebrated Tendai Biti and his MDC friends’ breath-taking incompetence in failing to submit even one token reform proposal in five years of the GNU. Chinamasa said nothing about respecting Biti’s “intellectual prowess” then!

Zanu PF’s contempt for the opposition is malicious, so malicious the party has stripped all its political opponents of their freedoms, rights and humanity. And all the ordinary Zimbabweans who have dared support the oppositions have been cloaked in the opposition’s colours and in turn stripped of their freedoms, etc. 

“Zanu PF’s relationship with the people is watered with blood, it is unshakable. The party and its leadership will never allow this to happen. We will never allow any malcontents to take over this country,” Chinamasa fumed.

Since granting the ordinary people their right to free, fair and credible elections could resulted in election “malcontent opposition” it is therefore clear why Zanu PF has never ever allowed the people to exercise a free and democratic vote.

Zimbabwe has gone from a middle-income nation in 1980 with a robust and promising economy to one of the poorest nations today. Four decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption has left the country in economic ruins with unemployment a nauseating 90% and 34% of the people now living in abject poverty.

The nation has been stuck with the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF regime for all these 40 years because the party rigged the elections to stop the people removing its leaders from office.

The right to a meaningful say in the governance of one’s country is a birth right, a universal right acknowledged in the UN Universal Human Rights. In Zimbabwe the right to free elections is now more that just a right, it is the only way the nation has to end the criminal worse of the country’s material resources that has left millions in abject poverty and hopelessness and despair. 

After four decades of being denying one’s freedoms and rights, of being treated like a malcontent with no meaningful say in the governance of the country, of being forced into a life of hopelessness and despair; it is high time the people of Zimbabwe stood up to Zanu PF and reclaimed their rights and humanity!

The people of Zimbabwe must stand-up to this Zanu PF dictatorship and demand their right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country. The people must reject continued denial of their freedoms and rights under the nonsensical guise an unshakable “Zanu PF’s relationship with the people is watered with blood!”

Zanu PF does not have a divine or otherwise right to govern the country. The right to govern the country must be derive from the people of Zimbabwe in a free, fair and credible elections and not other source.

Zanu PF failed to hold free, fair and credible elections in July 2018, the party has no mandate to govern, the regime is illegitimate and must step down. After 40 years of holding this nation to ransom, enough is enough. Zanu PF must step down and no amount of Zanu PF threats will deter the nation from demanding change.