By Patrick Guramatunhu- “Africa is witnessing increasing resistance to autocratic regimes, Zimbabwe included, where opposition and human rights activists are taking to the streets at the risk of being arrested or shot, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said in its 2022 report,” reported a local publication.
“Just last week, 16 Zimbabwean teachers protested in central Harare demanding improved working conditions. They later spent days in remand prison following their arrest.”
The economic and social situation in Zimbabwe with the economy in total meltdown and millions now living in abject poverty is unsustainable. Change is in the air, the only question is what kind of change.
By failing to implement the democratic reforms, the prerequisite for free and fair elections, the window of opportunity for peaceful change is closing. It is not only Zanu PF that is to blame for this; MDC have aided and abet by failing to implement the reforms and by participating in rigged elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy.
With the window for peaceful change closed the only option is violent change in the form of street protests, another military coup or both. Violent change does not always result in the designed peace, justice and economic prosperity as history shows.
Look at has happened to Libya, the violence that toppling of the late Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 has carried on long after the dictator’s death. Sudan is sinking deeper and deeper into chaos and despair as the street protests raging on.
Our own war of independence; an epic historic struggle and selfless sacrifice producing heroes and heroines galore, according to the Zanu PF ruling elite; is in fact the root cause why Zimbabwe is stuck in this seemingly intractable mess. As the men and women who executed the liberation war, they have imposed themselves from the onset in 1980, as the only ones with the divine right to rule Zimbabwe.
In the 1980 elections, Zanu PF made it abandonly clear that if the party did not win the elections, the bush war would continue. Of course, the people voted to end the war and, to this day, lost their right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country.
It is said that when Mahatma Gandhi and the other Indian nationalists faced a similar choice to wage war to end British rule of India; they asked “What kind of leaders with the war throw up? Will those be the kind of men and women we would want to rule independent India?”
Zimbabwe has had the grave misfortune to have some of the worst leaders violent insurrections can throw up, and, after 42 years of corrupt and tyrannical rule, we now know why Gandhi and company were right in opting for peaceful change and not a violent one.
After 42 years and counting of rigged elections, Zimbabwe is standing on the edge of the precipitous abyss. Another rigged election in 2023 could push the nation over the edge.
For the record, Zimbabwe has had many golden opportunities to end the Zanu PF dictatorship, the best chances coming during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Robert Mugabe bribed Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends with the trappings of high office, and they failed to implement even one democratic reform in five years.
Worse still, MDC leaders have been participating in flawed and illegal elections giving the vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy and thus perpetuating the dictatorship. Zanu PF has offered the opposition a few gravy train seats to entice them to participate in the flawed elections, an inducement the opposition has found irresistible.
Whilst it is too late to implement any meaningful reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections in 2023, and, with no reforms, Zanu PF is certain to rig the elections. The MDC and the usual suspects in the opposition are hell-bent on participating; they are after the bait gravy train seats which Mnangagwa has since the 2018 elections improved on by creating POLAD, a body to reward losing presidential candidates.
The strategy is to document all the glaring flaws and illegalities in the 2023 elections and prove beyond all reason doubt the elections were a farce and therefore must be condemn as such by the international community including SADC. Denying Zanu PF political legitimacy will force the country into forming a new GNU as happened in 2008; this time the nation will appoint competent men and women who will implement all the democratic reforms and set the country on a democratic track.
Street protests, military coup or any form of violent change is the last thing Zimbabwe wants this is déjà vu; for we should now know by now the devil-incarnate leaders our liberation war threw up!