By Wilbert Mukori| After all the grandstanding and finger pointing by Chamisa following the recall of the party’s elected officials, the case ends with yet another humiliating defeat for CCC. The High Court challenge of the recall ended before it has even began with CCC withdrawing the case and apologising profoundly with their tails tucked between their legs!
“Justice Munamato Mutevedzi of the Harare High Court has reserved judgement in an application brought by recalled CCC MPs and Senators who want the court to declare that Sengezo Tshabangu had no legal authority to cause their recalls. Judge said ruling before November 7,” reported Bulawayo 24.
“The MPs have withdrawn their relief which they sought against the Speaker of Parliament where they accused him of illegal expelling them from Parliament at the behest of the Interim Secretary General Sengezo Tshabangu.”
The people of Zimbabwe have been slow to recognised MDC/CCC leaders for who they really are, the corrupt and incompetent and blundering from pillar to post.
Chamisa dragged the nation into the 23 August elections claiming he had closed all the vote rigging loop-hole. It was all nonsense of course, the voters’ roll was in shambles and he failed to do even something as basic as deploying elections agents at all the polling stations. What mattered is that he managed to con many Zimbabweans to participate giving the process some modicum of credibility.
This High Court challenge of the recalled MPs and Senators is just one more case of CCC’s endless blunders.
The people of Zimbabwe are grateful to the SADC Election Observers (SEOM) who decided to look at the evidence in the conduct of the August elections and ignore CCC’s posturing. SEOM condemned the election process as a farce and rightly so too.
The people of Zimbabwe have risked life, limb and livelihood to elect MDC/CCC leader into power for express purpose they would implement the necessary democratic changes to end the Zanu PF dictatorship. After 23 years including 5 in the GNU MDC/CCC have failed to implement even one token reform. Not one!
Many Zimbabweans still continue to put all their hopes for democratic changes on Chamisa and his friends because these people have no clue what these necessary democratic reforms are much less how they were to be implemented. Even today with the benefit of hindsight, they still have no clue Chamisa and company sold out big time be failing to implement even one reform.
If you have no clue what the reforms are, how can you blame some one for failing to implement something you don’t know!
On Saturday 4 November 2023, SADC heads of state and government are meeting in Angola to decide what to do with Zimbabwe visa vie the damning SEOM report. It was pretty damning alright!
“Conclusion 13.3
The SEOM noted that, as detailed in sections 6 and 7 of this report, some aspects of the Harmonised Elections fell short of the requirements of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, the Electoral Act, and the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections (2021),” stated the report.
The only rational course of action for SADC heads is to uphold the report and deny Zanu PF and their political side-kick, CCC, political legitimacy. When SADC came up to a similar conclusion following the flawed and violent 2008 elections, the regional body invited the three main political parties at the time, Zanu PF led by Robert Mugabe, MDC-T and MDC- M led by Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara; to form the 2008 to 2013 GNU.
The primary task of the GNU was to implement the democratic reforms to restore the people’s freedoms and rights and put an end to the curse of rigged elections and bad governance. But, as we already know, not evening toke reform was implemented.
This is no doubt in my mind that back in 2008 SADC leaders must have considered the possibility that the 2008 to 2013 GNU would fail to implement at least many of the reforms given the leaders in all the three parties were corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent. If SADC leaders doubted the competence of 2008 GNU to implement reforms this time they know that having Zanu PF and CCC leaders in any interim arrangement means no meaningful reforms will be implemented.
What Zimbabwe needs going forward is a National Transition Authority comprising of technocrats who can be entrusted the primary task of implementing the democratic reforms. This would be the second chance the nation has had to implement the reforms and get the nation back on a democratic footing. We must make this one count.