The great Spanish painter, Salvador Dali wrote in his biography (1942) that: “I regarded most of the people I met solely and exclusively as creatures I could use as porters in my voyage of ambition.”
The difference between Dali and Zanu PF leadership is that those who have aided and abetted the present situation, were willing tools and did so with no compunction of conscience whatever.
Dali points out that these sinners hoped to reach (with Dali) that “end-station of glory” which every climber wants to reach.
The case against the election results.
The case against the results should not be based entirely on numerals. It is possible that the incumbent received more than two million votes. The issue is whether that outcome reflects the opinion of all Zimbabweans who should have been given the opportunity to express their wishes.
An old friend, Andrew M. from our days at Zimbabwe papers asked seven ordinary Harare residents, shopkeepers and street vendors.
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Five of them had visited their voting stations, showed their IDs to find their names missing. Sometimes a technicality (an initial in the ID or some other concocted issue) was used to prevent them from voting. Two were resilient, searching out their names at four different stations until they were accepted four kilometers away from home.
Others waited for a whole day-either there were no papers, and if the papers arrived there was no ink.
In any case, the announcement for extended voting hours (the next day) did not reach all the voters affected in time.
The number thus affected by these shenanigans can run to thousands. Were these shenanigans deliberate or merely the result of incompetence?
If they can be attributed to incompetence, this incompetence was not experienced in rural districts.
The attacks against Dr. Nevers Mumba, head of the Sadc mission, are misplaced. Dr. Mumba is raising questions about whether these examples of incompetence, if deliberate, constitute acts of sabotage against the constitutional provisions governing elections. In simple English, is the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission part of Dali’s scheme of enablers?
There were many other enablers, and today they are rejoicing in their success. Five more years of redemeption.
If it is true that the Zimbabwe police banned more than 100 CCC meetings but left Zanu PF meetings unregulated, the police qualify as chief among sinners. I shall return to this later.
If the stalwart judges allowed with a sense of glee in their hearts the incarceration of Job Sikhala for one year, without bond and without trial, then they too must be registered as supreme among the council of sinners in the land.
No amount of verbal calibration by the chief judge will convince Sikhala’s family that Zimbabwe’s judges are sworn to protect the widow and the indigent in the gate.
Juicy cases
Brother Thomas Chidzombe of Chonhoyi is the least among the sinners. Angered by his rejection by his constituency, he at first locked the borehole he had provided for his community. The more he thought about it the angrier he became. He dug the machinery out.
Perhaps the mightiest casualty of the people’s anger fell of the learned professor Mthuli Ncube in Cowdray Park, Bulawayo.
A few months before the election, Ncube, minister of Finance, arrived in Cowdray Park, pretending to be a resident, started acting out and cutting up, making sure that roads and other infrastructure were attended to. The brother lives in Switzerland where his family and children are going to school.
To cut a long story short, this brother sinner is responsible for destroying all our savings in the years he has served as minister of Finance.
By depreciating the Zimbabwe dollar from at par with the US dollar, to virtually zero value, all our savings in Zimbabwe dollars went into a fiery furnace.
He knows all the words, can calibrate all the vowels and pronouns; at the end of the day, a country endowed with such mineral wealth is but a pauper on God’s earth.
Voters wisely decided that individual charity by the minister is no substitute for sound economic policies. They rejected him.
Cruel choices
CCC President Nelson Chamisa will not have any problems proving that the playing field was not level and that the police and judiciary sided with the ruling party.
That has always been the case since colonial times. Legislator Barbara Rwodzi verbally attacked police inspector for investigating a case of vandalism against her opponent.
My information is that the police inspector, who was called a dog (and other bad words) is in hiding, a twenty-year career over.
It is the law of the jungle. All legitimate complaints against King Lion must be reported to the chief Judge, the lion’s cousin, Judge Leopard. Frivolous complaints will be dismissed, and the complainant punished for wasting judicial time.
I did not make this up. Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, in his farewell address, remarked that in his adjudication of the land issue between whites and government, he did not allow the law to interfere with the knowledge that land was at the heart of the liberation struggle.
The choices are clear.
Chamisa can appeal to the revolutionary judiciary. If the outcome is different, I will shave my head till I die.
If the present situation prevails, in five years, all our sovereign minerals will have been pledged to foreign interests. Does anyone remember the Marange diamonds?
Employment is being created in Zimbabwe but there is no social corporate responsibility between workers and foreign companies. In the WENELA contract mining workers stayed on two-year contracts if they were fit. When they contracted “consumption” (a form of tuberculosis) they were sent home to Malawi to die.
I receive one letter a week by Zimbabwe graduates seeking to migrate.
Chamisa and all men of goodwill can see the future that awaits us. The choice is whether to play by the lion’s rules or to reject the rules and risk imprisonment and death. That is why the choices are called cruel choices.
*Ken Mufuka is a Zimbabwe patriot. He writes from the US. He can be reached at mufukaken@gmail.com.