SaBuku pamberi, (Zanu PF) district chairman shure navanhu, councillor aripovo. Kwava kunovota.” (Village headman will be in front, (Zanu PF) district chairman behind with the people and the local councillor will be there too. People will then go and vote!) explained President Emmerson Mnangagwa is a leaked audio video. See facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=search&v=1050575252264830

“Tinoziva Polling Station imwe neimwe inemarisuti ayo. Tinoziva kuti paPolling Station vanhu vaabvepi, vapinda napapi. Rufu haruna zhira, a vota anezhira!” (We know the voters registered at each Polling Stations. We also know everyone who votes came from. Death does not leave a tracible track record, voters do!)

Zimbabweans have known that Zanu PF has reduced many voters, especially in the rural areas, into medieval serfs totally beholden to the Zanu PF leaders and their proxy village heads, chiefs, war veterans, etc. Frog marching people to attend Zanu PF rallies and then to vote for the party is just one of the many ways Zanu PF is rigging these elections.

In the watershed March 2008 elections Zanu PF was forced to implement many reforms making these elections the nearest the country had ever come to holding free, fair and credible elections. Morgan Tsvangirai garnered 73% of the votes in the presidential race, according to Robert Mugabe’s Freudian slip. Zanu PF stopped ZEC announcing the results. The results were finally announced after six weeks. Tsvangirai’s 73% had been whittled down to 47%, enough to force a run-off.

The run-off saw the worst cases of election related wanton violence. Zanu PF unleashed party youths and liberation war veterans, foot soldiers, to destroy property, harass, beat and rape the people; punishment for rejecting Zanu PF in the March vote. The heavy duty stuff of abducting and killing was carried out by Police, Army and CIO personal deployed in “Operation mavhotera papi” (whom did you vote for), as the party called it.

“What was won by the bullet cannot be undone by the ballot!” thundered Robert Mugabe, cheering and applauding the wanton violence!

Tsvangirai was forced to withdraw from the race and Mugabe won the one-horse race with 84% of the vote.

SADC and the AU, who had always turned a blind eye to rigged Zimbabwe elections until then, joined the rest of the international community is condemning the 2008 elections for the blatant cheating and wanton violence. No one would recognise Zanu PF as the legitimate government forcing the party to sign the SADC proposed 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA).

Zanu PF agreed to the need for the country to implement a raft of democratic reforms designed to restore the rule of law and stop a repeat of the blatant cheating and wanton violence in future elections. A Government of National Unity (GNU) comprising Zanu PF and the two MDC factions was formed and tasked to implement the reforms.

The GNU failed to implement even one token reform in five years of the GNU. Robert Mugabe bribed the MDC leaders with the trappings of high office and, with their snouts in the feeding trough, they forgot about the reforms.

The failure to implement even one reform in five years and thus waste this golden opportunity to end the curse of rigged elections and bad governance constitutes one of the darkest chapter in Zimbabwe’s history. Worse still, we have clearly learned nothing from MDC leaders’ betrayal because we continue to trust they, blindly.

When SADC leaders realised that not even one meaningful reform was implemented, the advised Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends not to participate in the 2013 elections until reforms were implemented. “If you go into the elections next month, you will lose. The elections are done!” SADC leaders told MDC leaders to their faces at SADC summit in June 2013.

As we know, MDC leaders paid no heed to the SADC leaders’ warning. By participating in the flawed elections MDC leaders have given SADC leaders the excuse to once again turn a blind eye to Zanu PF rigging elections as one of the MDC leaders, David Coltart, confessed in his book.

“The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn’t now do the obvious – withdraw from the (2013) elections,” confessed Coltart, in his Book, The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe.

“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.”

It is nearly one decade since the June 2013 SADC summit and warning of the sheer folly of MDC participating in a flawed and illegal election process. Boycotting the election was the “obvious” thing to do back then; today high treason to continue participating in these flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy and thus perpetuate the people’s suffering and deaths.

As we can see Zanu PF has become even more arrogant in its blatant cheating and use of violence to secure electoral victory. As long as the party knows that the opposition will participate, out of greed, and give the regime legitimacy Zanu PF will continue to blatantly frog marching the voters, denying 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora the vote punishment for the western imposed sanctions, etc., etc.

Here are the three main reasons why continued participation in flawed elections cannot be justified:
1)    When the process is so flawed and illegal and participating produces no significant gain.

2)    When participating gives legitimacy to the flawed process and results and thus help perpetuate the tyrannical oppression, especially after 42 years and counting of Zanu PF rigging elections.

3)    When one is participating out of selfish gain and offering feeble excuses as cover. The argument that CCC must participate or else Mwonzora will and give Zanu legitimacy is nonsense because Zanu and Zapu boycotted Ian Smith’s 1978 internal settlement and denied him legitimacy although Muzorewa and others participated. Mwonzora is just the modern-day Muzorewa. Besides, one will not participate in flawed process out of principles regardless of what others are doing.

All the three conditions are true in Zimbabwe today. What is Nelson Chamisa and his CCC friends’ excuse for participating in these 2023 elections knowing fully well that Zanu PF is blatantly rigging these elections.

There is no denying that MDC/CCC’s failure to implement any reforms and the party’s continued participation in these flawed elections is helping to keep Zanu PF in power. MDC/CCC are supposed to help deliver democratic change and end the dictatorship but are, instead, undermining those fighting for real change. This is insane and CCC participation in these flawed elections must be condemned and stopped!