Devolution a thorn in the flesh for Zanu-PF
DEVOLUTION of power remains a burning issue in the country with people from Matabeleland mostly calling for it. The region believes it has been neglected by the central government hence they are pushing for devolution of power so that they have a government which will be representing them.
The constitution which was voted by millions of Zimbabweans in March last year ushered in the establishment of devolution power. In some African countries, devolution of power is also enshrined their constitutions and it has benefited them. South Africa is an example of country was devolution exists.
Premiers or governors of their established provinces rule the province and he/she address issues affecting people of that province. The central government can only assist when it’s needed. This can be one of the reasons why their economy is striving. Through devolution, people will be empowered.
There has been a lot of criticism in the way the ruling party is empowering people, some people are saying Zanu-PF is empowering its people instead of the generality of Zimbabweans. Dumiso Dabengwa has called on the government to opt for devolution where the people will be empowered and they benefit from their local resources. he said indigenisation is not the solution.
OPPOSITION DIVIDED ON TRIBAL LINES
CALLS for opposition parties to join forces are increasing on daily basis. What is clear is that all these parties are pushing towards removing Mugabe and his Zanu-PF in power but they are all shooting from opposite sides.
The leading opposition parties, MDC and MDC-T which are led by Professor Welshman Ncube and Morgan Tsvangirai have a long history which I think will make it impossible for parties to unite. The united MDC which was formed in 1999 was very vibrant and its members were geared to topple Mugabe as a united front.
Welshman Ncube
However, a dark cloud hung over the party which led to its split in 2005. Reasons for the split are many and chief among them are tribalism and Tsvangirai’s dictatorship tendencies. Prof Welshman Ncube has long said that Tsvangirai does not have leadership qualities and some of the Tsvangiari’s blue eyes boys are still playing tribal cards as they don’t want to form a coalition with MDC.
The MDC split on October 25, 2005, after a national council meeting at which party leader Tsvangirai was accused of dictatorially vetoing a vote to field candidates in Senate elections due later that year.
Morgan Tsvangirai
But the report compiled by a three-man commission comprising Dr Tichaona Mudzingwa, Moses Mzila Ndlovu and Giles Mutsekwa into violence that erupted at the party’s Harvest House headquarters in May of that year suggests the party was still heading towards a split anyway – plagued by tribal mistrust and competing political ambitions.
In a key conclusion, the commission said it had “established beyond any reasonable doubt that there is a strong anti-Ndebele sentiment that has been generated, fanned, orchestrated and marketed to innocent party members by a senior party leader under the guise of sheer hatred for the secretary general at a personal level.”
With tribalism being one of the major causes of the split, the vibrant opposition which every person dreams of will remain a pie in the sky. The opposition which will take the government to task, as what used to happen in the early 2000 will also remain a pipe dream. The handwork of founding members who include Gibson Sibanda will go down the drain, as their efforts have been wasted.
“The political developments in this country will never be the same again after the formation of the MDC but the saddest thing in my life is the split of the MDC. It represents the saddest part of my relationship with Sibanda.
The late Gibson Sibanda
“What we said after the split, I regret it. I am sorry Gibson for what we said at that moment, it was a moment of weakness and it was not worth it,” Tsvangirai said during the funeral of Gibson Sibanda.
This apology was very strong but the apology must go further and fulfill his wishes by closing ranks and forming a united front which make the political discourse interesting and more interesting. Opposition parties must close ranks. United you stand, divided you fall.
Understanding Zim Asset
THE Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset) is the country’s economic blue print for 2013-2018 which the government said is the answer to the country’s economic woes.
People have expressed different views with some indicating it will solve Zimbabwe’s economic and political issues with some categorically stating that the document is not a solution. The government has said the document needs nearly $27 billion for its implementation yet the country’s budget is $4 billion.
Below is the explanation from Professor Jonathan Moyo of what Zim Asset is and what it aim to achieve.
Land reform takes center stage in South Africa
LAND reform has been a topical issue in African. In every election in Africa land reform takes a centre stage.
Zimbabwe is one if not the only African country which redistributed its land in a way which traumatised many whites, as it was done forcefully.
Julius Malema
South Africa’s opposition Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema recently said Zimbabwe’s land reform is a model system for Africa as it empowered people to own property. SA media quoted Malema, who is championing a radical cause for the nationalisation of mines and land expropriation without compensation, effusive in praise of the Zimbabwean system.
He said: “There’s no system that has worked successfully for Africans, except the Zimbabwean system. Zimbabweans today can be hungry and poor, but at least they own property. You are eating pap and vleis here in South Africa, (but) you have nothing to show as proof that you belong to South Africa.”
He said whites should not be compensated for the land they will lose because the stalled land reform since the end of apartheid in 1994 should be regarded as compensation enough.
“The 20 years of not taking the land should have been regarded as compensation because the land should have been taken in 1994. So we have compensated them (white people) enough,” he said. This is not the first time that Malema, ex-president of the ANC Youth League, has urged South Africans to take a leaf from Zimbabwe.
Addressing the media last year at the launch of his party in Johannesburg’s Constitution Hill, he told South Africans to brace for a painful revolution, as happened in Zimbabwe with white capitalists punishing the country if it dared redress the land question.
“There will be a time when you will wake up without bread and that will be the day you will know how to make to your own bread at home and you will realise that you do not need these people,” he said.
South Africa’s opposition leaders
South Africa is saddled with the land question as the minority white population continues to hold on to land at the expense of the black majority. A willing buyer-willing seller model of land reform has not been able to address the skewed land ownership.
Whites in Africa with the help of America and EU tend to protect their land in the name of human rights where they claim they have right to own property like the black majority. However, the willing buyer willing seller has proved to be useless therefore Africans should device their own means of taking back their land.
In South Africa, the black majority is suffering they have no shelter and food but their brothers and sisters fought and some died for land which whites still own. Malema is justifies when he calls for a radical approach because taking the land in democratic way has failed.
Tsvangirai…a hopeless leader!
MORGAN Tsvangirai is perhaps the best and well known opposition leader in the country. It is because of his bravado that saw the country’s opposition MDC gaining majority support and winning the majority of seats in parliament for the first time since independence.
Morgan Tsvangirai with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel
The country is now facing a bleak future with no prospects of Zanu-PF turning around the economy. Tsvangirai has said he is the answer to the country’s economic woes. However, I am one of those who feel that the man from Buhera, Tsvangirai is not longer a solution. He is the same man who blundered while visiting German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
As the Prime Minister of the country, his blunders surprised all and sundry and his reputation was ruined. If he failed to do basic things, standing behind his country’s flag, can he then be able to deal with the big task of reviving the economy?
The video is a clear description of Morgan Tsvangirai, he is a leader who will always be told what to do, he is a person who can not make a decision on his won. Therefore, how can he be able to serve Zimbabwe’s economy which is nose diving. I guess there are better people who can serve the economy not him.
Coalition of opposition forces not workable
OPPOSITION political parties have seen that without forming a united front, they will not win an election under the Zimbabwean sun.
As much as calls to form a united front are increasing day by day, the person who will lead this united front will make the formation of this so called united front impossible. The leader of the MDC, Professor Welshman Ncube, has declared that Morgan Tsvangirai who leads the MDC-T party is not a suitable candidate to lead a united opposition party.
Welshman Ncube
I strongly rally behind Prof Ncube’s views. There has been a lot of political mayhem in the MDC-T where violence has been used to silence some democratic views. Tsvangirai has also been implicated in most of this barbaric act and with that we can say Tsvangirai is a suitable candidate to lead a democratic front.
A leader of a united front should be truly democratic and allow critics.
MDC president Welshman Ncube has dismissed the “big tent project” being spearheaded by embattled leader of the rival MDC-T formation, Morgan Tsvangirai, as “rotten” and said only a coalition of opposition forces led by an “undoubted democrat” could unseat President Robert and his Zanu PF party in the 2018 polls.
In an interview with the Voice of America on Saturday, Ncube, who went into hibernation after his party’s dismal performance in last year’s elections, said the proposal by Tsvangirai for members of the MDC – before it split in 2005 – to re-unite under the MDC-T, in what has been branded the ”big tent politics”, was unworkable.
“You cannot invite people to a big tent. It doesn’t matter how big it is, as long as it is a rotten tent, as long as it is a tent which stinks to high heaven with dictatorship, violence, violation of everything that we stood for against Mugabe, it can be big as you want it … it can contain millions of people, it’s not worth the numbers that it has,” Ncube said.
“I have absolutely no respect and I am absolutely not impressed by the big tent politics which has no conception of what the struggle against Mugabe is.
But Ncube told VOA that he was not chuffed by Tsvangirai’s invitation into the “big-tent”.
Welshman Ncube and Morgan Tsvangirai
“He(Tsvangirai) is running a big tent full of undemocratic principles,” Ncube said.
He said the only way to remove Mugabe and Zanu PF from power would be to form a coalition of opposition forces and field one presidential candidate in the 2018 elections.
“I have no doubt that if we are able to put forward a candidate as opposition, a candidate of a united front, that candidate will win the next election in Zimbabwe,” Ncube said.
“The identity of that candidate (for the coalition), the name of that candidate matters not.
“What matters is that that candidate must be an undoubted democrat. I regret to say I do not classify Mr Tsvangirai in that category.”
Efforts to get a comment from the MDC-T spokesperson Douglas Mwonzora yesterday were fruitless as he could not be reached on his mobile phone.
DEMOCRACY IS DEAD!
ON FIRE MDC-T deputy treasurer general Elton Mangoma has been expelled from the party for gross indiscipline.
EXPELLED: Elton Mangoma
Also expelled were party youth assembly secretary general Promise Mkhwananzi, national executive council member Last Maengehama and Jacob Mafume, a lawyer to Mangoma.
The three have voiced support for Mangoma’s leadership renewal calls.
Addressing journalist is Harare, MDC-T spokesperson Mwonzora said:
“Mangoma is being expelled for continuing to disgrace while facing disciplinary measures, so the national executive and the national council voted for this decision,” Mwonzora said.
“He is not fired for the first case, but for continuing on transgression. I call it foolish bravely. I think he was wrongly advised legally and that could be his case.”
The move has however been condemned by many because its a clear sign that democracy is not a key principle in the MDC-T camp. The party seems to be fooling people that it is democratic yet in actual fact it does not know the meaning of democracy.
Morgan Tsvangirai and the expelled party members
Mangoma and some of the people that were expelled are accused of calling for leadership renewal. Is it a curse, sin or wrong to call for leadership renewal? Something funny is that the people who were expelled called for early congress and the party has mooted that the party might opt for early congress as suggested by visionary and well focused expelled members.
Before his expulsion, Mangoma was heavily beaten for calling for leadership renewal a move where everyone is pointing fingers at Tsvangirai. It is not a surprise that Mangoma expulsion is not by a surprise but a move that everyone was waiting to witness.
Those who are pursing democratic routes will eventually tell that the route MDC-T is taking is far from democratic and is not even closer to democracy. The party has shown beyond reasonable doubt that it is not democratic.
The so called big tent seems to be full of fools and people who are pursuing their egos rather than pushing for true values of democracy. It is an open secret that Mangoma was well spotted, leadership renewal is needed and Tsvangirai is fast loosing popularity.
Mangoma was just expelled because of penning a serious letter to Tsvangirai loaded with powerful information and questions which Tsvangirai failed to answer. Here are some of the questions that Tsvangirai failed to answer.
1. How will you be able to undertake the reform agenda that we failed to do when we were in government and you had Executive power?
2. How will you answer the questions that we failed to care enough for our people and that we used our time in government for personal aggrandizement, personal wealth accumulation as symbolized by the current impasse on Highlands residents?
3. How will you put closure to the issue of women in your life and ensure that these will not continue to erode your and the party’s brand?
4. How will we put closure to the question of misuse of funds, and ensure that our friends regain confidence that donations will be channeled to the people’s project going forward?
5. How will we make sure that trust, team spirit and mutual confidence, currently eroded through the misconduct of the primary elections, violence visited on staff and myself, lack of constitutionalism and failure to follow procedure on appointment of officers to the National Executive and key public offices including diplomatic posts is restored.
WHERE IS MUTAMBARA?
FORMER deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara has made an unceremonious exit from the grand political stage. Mutambara went into political oblivion in the run-up to of the 31 July harmonised elections and he is still hibernating from the political radar.
Ever since the expiry of the unity government last year, Mutambara has gone quiet. The robotics professor should never have been in politics in the first place if he did not have the stamina to last the distance.
Out of the game: Arthur Mutambara
Some people believe he was more of a political accident as he has the brains, but he was victim of irrelevance. Others say Mutambara was an “opportunist” and this has been exposed by his lack of relevance in the political scheme of things in the aftermath of last year’s elections.
Mutambara, a former student leader, stepped onto the political stage in the aftermath of the MDC’s split in 2005 and took up the leadership of the smaller formation of the labour-backed party, now led by Ncube.
Welshman Ncube and Arthur Mutambara
Mutambara had to be headhunted to lead and “sanitise” the splinter group, which was being viewed suspiciously through tribal lenses. In 2009, he rose to take up the deputy premiership as one of the signatories to the power-sharing agreement that took the country to last year’s elections. His time in the inclusive government was however, punctuated by controversy.
After being ousted from the helm of the MDC at a party congress, Mutambara refused to recognise the outcome of the congress by taking his case to the courts. He remained in government after the court processes dragged on until the expiry of the inclusive government last year.
Throughout the lifespan of the unity government, President Robert Mugabe was accused of shielding Mutambara from being stripped of power. The Zanu-PF leader continued to recognise him as a principal despite increased pressure from the courts and regional bodies to strip him of the position.
President Mugabe and Arthur Mutambara
Mutambara also ga-ined the reputation of lending support to Zanu-PF’s positions in the unity government, fuelling speculation that he had become a reluctant ally of President Mugabe’s party. It was, however, clear during Mutambara’s time in the coalition that he was without any political party under his leadership.
Many people were expecting a robotics professor to be given a ministerial position in the Zanu PF-led government as a reward for being loyal to Mugabe during the tenure of the shaky coalition government during which Mutambara sided with Mugabe in times of disagreements with Tsvangirai.
ZANU-PF: its dog eat dog
Infighting with in Zanu-PF seems to be far from over as members are trading insults.
Deputy Foreign Affairs minister Christopher Mutsvangwa recently accused his boss Simbarashe Mumbengegwi of blundering by applying for a visa for First Lady Grace Mugabe to Belgium, which was rejected.
Just because of her: President Mugabe and his wife Grace.
The First Lady, banned from travelling to Europe, wanted to accompany President Robert Mugabe to the European Union (EU)-Africa summit in Brussels, Belgium early this month.
Mugabe boycotted the summit after his wife was denied a visa with EU saying spouses of heads of State had no business at the conference.
Grace visa should never had been sought…..Minister Mutsvangwa
Christopher Mutsvangwa
Speaking on the ZiFM programme The Platform hosted by Ruvheneko Parirenyatwa on Monday evening. Mutsvangwa said Zimbabwe fell into a trap by boycotting the EU-Africa summit because Mumbengegwi was pursuing misguided foreign policy.
The former ambassador to China said he was not party to the decision to boycott the EU-Africa summit adding that Mumbengegwi ‘went and convinced initially the (Zanu PF) politburo and later Cabinet: that is what I am hearing’.
He said it was undiplomatic and unprofessional to apply for a visa for the First Lady when there were indications or a possibility that she would not be granted.
‘Maybe we were trying to test the waters, but why do we want to test the waters by having an embarrassment on our president?’ he queried. Mutsvangwa said it was important for Zimbabwe to attend the summit. its absolutely important: we should never let down our African brothers on this issue, he said. We do not need to put Africa in an invidious position: they have been consistently with Zimbabwe on this issue.’
He said it was wrong to assume that Mugabe and his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma were not attending the summit for similar reasons as the neighbouring country had special relations with EU.
This issue is different. I think our Foreign ministry, to be very candid, is really unnecessarily pitching the level of African support too high.’ he said.
‘Zuma is busy campaigning, but in any event, the relationship between the EU and South Africa is very different from that one between EU and the rest of Africa Mutsvangwa said he had taken issue with State media stories suggesting that Zuma had taken cue from Zimbabwe by also boycotting the summit.
We should be modest. South Africa has 50 million people: it is a big neighbour and has a big economy,’ he said.
‘South Africa has stood with us; let’s not try to pose as if we are super champions of this region; that is not right for Zimbabwe: we must always work in tandem with our neighbours. respect their sensitivities; never try to claim leadership.”
Mutsvangwa went on to reveal that there were fissures in the Foreign Affairs ministry.
Simbabarashe Mumbengegwi
‘There are two people there: the minister and the permanent secretary (Joey Bimha); its a fiefdom They run it the way they want,’ he said.
He warned that Zimbabweans should not have an all or nothing approach to diplomacy.
We simply have a misguided foreign policy. The major practitioner of that foreign policy is missing the woods from the trees; that’s my boss,’ Mutsvangwa said.
I do not agree with him and I stand for what will be in the interest of Zimbabwe? – SouthernEye
Bulawayo residents in catch 22
Employment creation has been a major problem that the government has failed to resolve. for Bulawayo, the situation is deemed as the city used to be the industrial hub but now it has to been relegated to a scrap yard, as the president once said.
In an interview with residents, they said they lost hope soon after the 2013 controversial July elections. Residents said they had hope but all their hope was washed away soon after hearing that Zan-PF has regained power.
Zim pundit 
