By Wilbert Mukori- Tendai Biti has come out fighting to clear his name!
“Zimbabwe is at a crossroads. The weight of a stolen election, unprecedented corruption and the looting of public assets sits heavy on the shoulders of Zimbabweans who want and deserve better,” he wrote in a recent statement in the media.
“The environment in the world right now is toxic. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have pushed Zimbabwe to the bottom of the world’s attention calendar. This has allowed the vampire state here to carry out brazen election fraud. Not satisfied, the regime is now engaged in a malicious push to weaken our struggle, the progressive movement, through the illegal recall of elected public representatives.
“It is therefore shocking to hear, and read, a daily stream of abusive, malicious and defamatory claims that Professor Welshman Ncube and I are colluding with the regime and its proxies to append a struggle that has occupied and consumed all our adult lives.
“I don’t believe in recalls. I have never been part of recalls. I will never be part of recalls.”
Well in the absence of any other evidence to prove his connivence with Sengezo Tshabangu. I would give him the benefit of the doubt and say he is not involved.
Tendai Biti should have stopped right there with, “I will never be part of recalls.” Alas! he got big headed in claiming he is a democrat who has never worked for Zanu PF.
“I am a democrat who believes in constitutionalism, the rule of law, transparency, openness and collective leadership. I can never compromise on these core values. No dispute nor differences is ever sufficient to place one at the service of Zanu-PF,” continued Biti.
“Fellow Zimbabweans, all this chatter and actions by the illegitimate regime and its proxies are an engineered distraction from the main prize: to free ourselves from this rapacious dictatorship.
“It has been a long and tortuous road; and victory is closer than the distance
back to where we started.”
The truth is the fight to implement the democratic reforms to restore all the people’s freedoms and rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections and the right to life has lost direction during the 2008 to 2013 GNU and thereafter.
Lest Mr Biti and his MDC/CCC colleagues should forget; the people of Zimbabwe have risked all from the wrath of Zanu PF to elect them into power for one primary purpose: to bring about the democratic changes, reforms, the nation was dying for. After 23 years, including 5 in the GNU, Tendai Biti and company have failed to implement even one token reform. Not even one!
It is no secret that the late dictator, Robert Mugabe, bribed the MDC leaders with the trappings of high office, the ministerial limos (Mr Biti was Minister of Finance in the GNU), the very generous salaries and allowances, a US$4 million mansion for Tsvangirai, etc. To show their appreciation the MDC leaders kicked the reforms out of the window.
Mazivanhu eMDC adzidza kudya anyerere!” (MDC leaders have learned to enjoy the gravy train good-life; they will never rock the boat!) boasted Zanu PF cronies when asked why MDC leaders were not implementing any reforms during the GNU.
Worse still, MDC/CCC have been participating in the flawed elections knowing fully well Zanu PF was rigging and that doing so would only help to give Zanu PF legitimacy. Mr Biti and a few other MDC leaders like David Coltart were aware of the sheer futility of participating in these flawed elections.
“Look, you can’t keep on participating in flawed electoral processes that serve to give big benefits to dictators such as Robert Mugabe. Mugabe has perfected the art of winning elections. So it will be very foolish for the opposition to continue legitimising these sham elections which don’t deliver.
“This country will go through a serious economic crisis in 2020 caused by Zanu PF. And yet, this is the only country where a government doesn’t perform, it is encouraged by a super majority in parliament,” you, Tendai Biti, told Isaac Mugabi in an interview in 2015.
“So you can’t continue subjecting Zimbabweans to processes where their hopes just get crushed.”
No doubt, you tried to talk your fellow MDC leaders into stop participating in flawed elections. When your arguments fell on deaf ears, you decided to join them for your share of the few gravy train seats Zanu PF was offering as bait.
You knew participating crushed the nation’s hopes for democratic change, to end the curse of rigging elections, for good governance and, most notable of all, hope to end the tragic human suffering brought on by the failed state. You knew all this and did not care as long as you secure for yourself one of the coveted gravy train seats.
How can you say you are a democrat when you have failed to implement even one token democratic reform to dismantle the dictatorship even when you have the golden opportunity to do so during the 2008 to 2013 GNU?
You say you have never working for Zanu PF. So whose interests do you think you served by selling out on reforms and by participating in flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy. And what, if I may ask, do you think Zanu PF has been showering you and your MDC/CCC friends all these bribes for?
Of course, you, Mr Tendai Biti, knew that CCC was not going to win big the 2023 elections. Chamisa’s claim of having plugged all the vote rigging loop-hole was just hot air to hide the real reasons why you lot were participating – greed and breath-taking incompetence.
“I am a democrat who has never sold out the struggle to Zanu-PF!” It is bad enough you are a sell out and has never owned up for your treasonous betrayals. Don’t dare insult our intelligence by masquerading a principled democrat, when you are clearly not!
Mr Tendai Biti, you may have nothing to do with Sengezo Tshabangu and the string of CCC elected officials who have been recalled since the August 2023 elections. However, don’t deceive the nation; you are not a democrat and have sold out to Zanu PF by failing to implement the democratic change.
I rest my case!