2018 polls: The lying has begun

Source: 2018 polls: The lying has begun – The Zimbabwe Independent April 29, 2016

ZANU PF has begun rolling out a dirty electoral grand plan to systematically reclaim control of local authorities led by the MDC-T, while making new spurious promises ahead of the 2018 general elections as the embattled ruling party targets the main opposition’s traditional urban strongholds to win the crucial polls, as reported by this paper last week.

Editor’s Memo,Dumisani Muleya
dmuleya@zimind.co.zw

Apparently, the recent suspension of Harare mayor Bernard Manyenyeni is part of the wider electoral strategy by Zanu PF to seize control of MDC-T-led local authorities, particularly Harare, Bulawayo and other major municipalities.

Zanu PF national political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere, who is also Local Government minister, is spearheading the crackdown on MDC-T-run councils, while his party comes up with impressive but deceitful electoral promises as it did in 2013.

After MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai flexed his political muscle recently when he rallied his supporters in a massive demonstration in the capital against President Robert Mugabe’s leadership and policy failures as well as economic and social problems, particularly unemployment, poverty and suffering — hallmarks of Mugabe’s corrupt and incompetent regime — Manyenyeni was booted out.

Some of Zanu PF’s electoral promises, which undoubtedly won’t be fulfilled, include providing 900 hectares of land for the construction of 20 000 housing units for youths; construction of new townships in Harare and Bulawayo; spearheading allocation and development of state land to reduce the 1,5 million housing backlog; provision of efficient and reliable services by local authorities; eliminating corruption; availing a concessionary funding facility for women and youth projects; job creation; affordable healthcare and primary school education; poverty datum line-pegged salaries for civil servants; and payment of US$2 000 gratuities for war veterans.

In the run-up to the 2013 elections, Zanu PF came up with threadbare promises which, as you would have thought, turned out to be pie in the sky. Actually, most of them were just so impractical and absurd that they were simply ridiculous — similar to a promise to build a bridge where there is no river.

Incredibly, Zanu PF promised to create 2,2 million jobs by 2018; unlock US$1,8 trillion value from exploiting idle assets in the custody of parastatals — whatever that means; transfer US$7,6 billion into hands of previously marginalised people through indigenisation; eliminate corruption; build 50 000 low-income housing units; rehabilitate 1 250 public houses and buildings; create 2 500 shell factories, flea and vendor market stands; build 310 clinics and 300 schools; and capacitate Sedco with US$300 million to fund innovative women and youths initiatives.

Of course, none of this materialised. In fact, the economic situation has got worse than it was in 2013. This means Zanu PF lied. And more lies are now being wheeled out ahead of the next elections. That is typical of politicians.
They think about the next election. That’s how they differ from statesmen. A politician, like Mugabe, always thinks about the next election, while a statesman like US President Barack Obama thinks about the next generation.

Basically, that is why Zimbabwean voters now have a deep and profound distrust of all politicians. With every election, promises are made and lies are told. The lies may be told in the form of false promises or through mudslinging and character assassination. Indeed, all politicians lie, but some lie more than others.

Well, sometimes the reason politicians lie is because some voters don’t want to hear the truth. They easily believe lies, rather than the truth because they want to hear what they want to hear. So, unscrupulous politicians take advantage of them.

But when politicians renege on their promises, they are not simply being economical with the truth; they are deceiving the public and betraying trust — and such betrayal must be punished in the next elections through the ballot.

As American author and satirist Mark Twain once said, politicians and diapers should be changed frequently and all for the same reason!

More ZANU-PF violence coming to Mugabe opponents

Zimbabwe could be heading for a new wave of violence, a minister in the country's unity government has warned.

Sekai Holland, a member of the former opposition MDC, told the BBC opponents of the power-sharing government were drawing up assassination lists.

She said she believed the worst violence was being planned to coincide with elections due in 18 months.

Her comments echo earlier claims by PM Morgan Tsvangirai of ongoing political intimidation and abuses in Zimbabwe.

Ms Holland, Zimbabwe's Minister for National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration, told the BBC that she and other members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), including fellow ministers, were receiving threatening phone calls every day.

They had been told that hardline members of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party are adding their names to a lengthening assassination list.

"We are told that they do have a list of people that they will kill," she said.

"No-one feels safe in Zimbabwe, no-one - and I mean no-one. We haven't reached a ceasefire. We are still at a point where people have their guns cocked."

Ms Holland is a senior member of the MDC and was badly beaten by Zanu-PF supporters two years ago.

Fear continues

Ms Holland also claimed that 39,000 militiamen "working inside the civil service and outside" were being paid a wage of $100 (£62) a day to beat up MDC supporters, in the event of an election.

This, she said, meant that violence in the next elections could be even worse than in 2008, when some 200 people were killed and thousands injured.

Last month Mr Tsvangirai, the prime minister and leader of the MDC, criticised the speed of political change in Zimbabwe.

He said that although the MDC was in government, it had not succeeded in restoring the rule of law and warned his party that Zimbabweans remained hungry and afraid of political persecution.

But Mr Tsvangirai, currently on a tour of Europe seeking financial aid, has insisted that the government would stabilise the situation in Zimbabwe.

He said it was "a work in progress", but that the "period of acrimony" between him and Mr Mugabe was "over".

Mugabe refuses to disband notorious JOC

http://www.nehandaradio.com
By Denford Magora

Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe and his security chiefs have refused to
disband JOC (the Joint Operations Command, which was at the forefront of
strategising Mugabe's retention of power in the chaotic aftermath of the
March elections in 2008).

Instead, JOC still sits regularly, thumbing its nose at the Inclusive
Government. The meetings, some of which I have reported here before, are
mainly held in two places: at State House, which Mugabe now uses as his
preferred office after moving his family to his mansion in Helensvale,
Borrowdale, a minute's drive from Gideon Gono's house, just off Carrick
Creagh Road) or at the house in Highlands that I have mentioned here before.

The Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed by Mugabe, Tsvangirai and
Mutambara commits to the creation of a National Security Council, on which
Tsvangirai is guaranteed a seat.

The Service Chiefs and Mugabe have simply ensured that the Security Council
never meets.

The MDC-T made the mistake of assuming that the creation of a National
Security Council meant the disbanding of JOC.

The agreement says nothing about disbanding JOC. Based on this, the Service
Chiefs and Mugabe have said the continued meetings of JOC are legal and not
in violation of the agreement. Technically, they are correct. The letter of
the agreement certainly indicates this. But only if you are being legalistic
and insincere.

The spirit of the same agreement, however, suggests that the body should not
even be meeting anymore.

Meantime, the MDC-T has been reduced to demanding that the National Security
Council meets "without further delay".

They bemoaned the failure by the Council to meet in their Resolution this
past Sunday, the one in which they said they had referred the matter to
SADC. (Another cock-up I shall be discussing in detail in a later posting
this evening).

I also know for a fact that the Prime Minister "invited" the Service Chiefs
to have a cup with them for familiarisation purposes and got back the
following response (within the day):

"We don't report to a Prime Minister. Send your request through our
Commander-in Chief (President Mugabe)."

It is not known whether Tsvangirai put his request to Mugabe in their
one-on-one Monday meetings, but the fact that he has failed to meet the
Service Chiefs to date says a lot.

As I told you around the time Tsvangirai was sworn in (and I was told that I
was dreaming and was wrong, the tide had turned etc), Mugabe was clear from
the outset that Tsvangirai had to be kept as far away from the Defence
Forces as possible.

The Prime Minister, who keeps telling us about hardliners and how Mugabe is
such a dandy chap, needs to look no further than Mugabe to find the gang
leader of these "residual elements".

So far, he is insisting that he needs Mugabe in order to give Zimbabweans a
solution.

Denford Magora is also the spokesman for the Mavambo Movement led by
President Dr. Simba Makoni, who ran for President last year. His blog can be
accessed on http://denfordmagora.blogspot.com/

Inmates dying like flies in Zim's prisons

Harare - Six people were found dead in their filthy cells at
Zimbabwe's Chikurubi maximum security prison on Monday.

About the same number died over the weekend.

Another 100 bodies, many mutilated by rats, are stacked up in the
mortuary and will be unclaimed and buried as paupers in prison grounds.

'It was a nightmare'
Over the past year, more than 700 prisoners died in the prison about
20km east of here.

"It's the same at the rest of the prisons around the country," an
off-duty warder from Chikurubi said on Monday.
Continues Below ↓

"We often find six died at a time, mostly of pellagra. A lot have
Aids, but die quickly because they don't have enough food.

"Three days ago, for the first time, Assistant Commissioner Chikature
from the regional office came to have a look because the ICRC,
(International Committee of the Red Cross) is working here.

"ICRC put in a borehole two months ago, so at least we have clean
water now and more food."

The ICRC in Zimbabwe has been working quietly within the prisons since
the inclusive government was sworn in.

At the height of the crisis, between November and January, 327 deaths
were officially recorded at Chikurubi.

The jail, with an average of 30 inmates each for cells designed for
10, is among the most congested of the country's 42 prisons, with a national
population of about 24 000 inmates - many on remand.

In Bulawayo last year, an open cell at Grey's Prison was turned into
an infirmary because so many inmates became ill.

"It was a nightmare," a former short-term detainee said.

"A kid who stole five mangos was in for five months, another guy
accused of stealing washing was there for 21 months. They were starving."

Retired Major-General Paradzai Zimondi was appointed commissioner of
prisons 10 years ago and is in President Robert Mugabe's inner circle.

"He has never been to see what is going on in Chikurubi" the warder
said. "He doesn't care."

The Central Prisons Department said no one was available to talk to
the media.

Mugabe is still the boss

In small and big ways, the Zimbabwean leader shows he remains in charge.

HARARE — The prime minister of Zimbabwe is unable to receive visitors because President Robert Mugabe’s security officers bar their entry to his office building.

This recent incident illustrates the sort of obstacles Morgan Tsvangirai faces daily.

Senior members of a leading civic organization, the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), were blocked from meeting Prime Minister Tsvangirai by Mugabe’s security agents. The president and prime minister share offices in the same building. The NCA delegation had been due to discuss issues of constitutional reform with Tsvangirai, who is one of three principal party leaders heading the government of national unity.

Only the intervention of Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe eventually secured the group's entry.

Last week a vehicle in Tsvangirai's convoy was denied entry to Mugabe's official residence, where a state dinner was being held for a visiting North Korean delegation. Tsvangirai drove off saying he had better things to do after guards at State House refused to admit a vehicle in his convoy.

Of course, the entire visit of the North Koreans was controversial. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) enjoys widespread support in southern Zimbabwe, known as Matabeleland, where Mugabe unleashed the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade in a campaign of political retribution in which an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people were killed in the mid-1980s.

To welcome the North Koreans last week Mugabe praised their support for Zimbabwe and congratulated them on their rocket launch that caused international tension earlier this year.

Mugabe's speech was, by any standard, provocative and designed to show Tsvangirai who is boss. Mugabe was, at the same time, rebuking the MDC’s international allies, who are looking to Tsvangirai to restore productive relations with Zimbabwe.

These incidents may be dismissed as trivial, but they are examples of how Robert Mugabe is letting everyone know that he is still running the show in Zimbabwe. It is not just in petty security access situations. Mugabe is also calling the shots to jail his critics for lengthy periods on flimsy charges. He is also continuing to harass the small but lively independent press.

From the very start of the power-sharing government, which brought Tsvangirai and his MDC party into a coalition government, critics warned that Mugabe would not cooperate and would tarnish Tsvangirai's reputation by continuing repressive actions. That is exactly what is happening, especially regarding the rule of law and the press. Mugabe is using his control of the judiciary to jail government critics on spurious charges and to press similarly weak charges against the press.

Mugabe is demonstrating just how obstructive he can be by refusing to remove the loyalist Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono and the equally dedicated Attorney General Johannes Tomana. Those officials protected by him are in no doubt about whose orders they must follow.

Responding to questions in parliament last week, the co-minister of Home Affairs Giles Mutsekwa revealed that Tomana, not the police, ordered the arrests of two journalists from an independent newspaper. The newspaper had published the names of police and intelligence officers responsible for the abduction and torture of opposition activists last year. The names appeared in court papers and were therefore matters of public record — so there should be no problem in printing them in a newspaper.

Tomana’s office also has refused to grant bail to detainees who have been ordered free by the courts. In nearly every case involving charges against government critics, the state has challenged court rulings to keep people imprisoned for another week, or more, while the government's appeal to their release is heard. A judge only last week sharply criticized the state for opposing bail in the case of three activists when its legal grounds for doing so were weak.

Meanwhile, media defense organizations have slammed the recent arrest of journalists.

“Zimbabwean journalists continue to be the victims of police brutality and judicial abuses,” said Reporters Without Borders. “By arresting journalists arbitrarily and then conditioning their release on the payment of bail, the police and courts are subjecting the media to a systematic extortion racket. We again appeal to the authorities to stop these practices.”

Mugabe’s grip on the levers of power has placed the MDC in an invidious position. In a bid to placate the prickly Mugabe, Tsvangirai has campaigned for the West to lift sanctions. Although Tsvangirai has also called for an end to criticism of Mugabe, he has been forthright as to where Zimbabwe's problems lie.

“The continued violations of the rule of law and the Global Political Agreement (which created the power-sharing government) prevent the inflows of development aid, obstructing the legislative agenda, and risk keeping Zimbabwe mired in poverty,” he said recently. “What continues to plague Zimbabwe can best be described as a reluctance to accept the reality of the changes taking place within the country.”

Western donors have made it clear that before they untie their purse strings the new government must end arbitrary arrests and allow a free media.

At a recent conference call to chart a path to media reform, government publicists called for sanctions to be lifted, but they made no mention of the need to stop state arrests of independent journalists, to allow the return of exiled journalists, or to end state controls over the media.

The MDC, frustrated by Mugabe’s persistent stonewalling, has sought the intervention of the regional organization, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which is the guarantor of the Zimbabwe settlement.

Tsvangirai, in a remarkable display of self-criticism, said over the weekend he “totally agreed with the decision because they (his party) feel we have been dragging our feet in solving the outstanding issues.”

Tsvangirai specifically mentioned the “unexplained arrests.”

The MDC's move to bring SADC back into the fray is an admission of the failure to gain cooperation with Mugabe and his party, Zanu-PF.

Meanwhile, civil society and much of the independent media will be biting its collective tongue. It is tempting, but would not be helpful, to say “told you so."

Newspaper editors released on bail

Zimbabwe Independent editors, Vincent Kahiya and Constantine Chimakure, were
released on US$200 bail after appearing in court on Tuesday, a day after
they were arrested for publishing a story that quoted from a court document.
They are facing charges of publishing or communicating a statement 'wholly
or with the intention of undermining public confidence in law enforcement
agents.'

The newspaper published a story last week entitled: CIO, police role in
activists' abduction revealed, which named some police officers and Central
Intelligence officials who were allegedly involved in the abduction of MDC
and rights activists last year. They reported that these names had been
revealed following the formal notices of indictment for trial of some of the
activists this past week. The court documents also revealed that the
activists were either in the custody of the CIO or police during the period
they were reported missing.

However the police claim the law enforcement agents named by the newspaper
were in actual fact summoned as witnesses by the State.

Magistrate Catherine Chimhanda remanded the editors to 28th May and ordered
them to report once a week to the Police Law and Order Section in Harare.

Lawyers protest re-arrest of MDC activists

HARARE - Lawyers representing two members of Prime Minister Morgan
Tsvangirai's MDC party re-arrested last week despite being granted bail by
the High Court have requested the Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) to seek
explanation from the government over the matter.

Kisimusi Dhlamini and Gandhi Mudzingwa, the two MDC activists who are
facing what the party says are trumped up charges of banditry and terrorism,
are presently under prison guard at a private hospital while their
co-accused freelance journalist Andrison Manyere is reportedly on the run
after police launched a manhunt for him.

"We write to bring to you this serious violation of our client's
freedoms," Alec Muchadehama, the lawyer representing the MDC activists wrote
to the LSZ.

"We write to request that you seriously look into this matter and get
explanations from the Ministries of Justice and Home affairs, the Attorney
General's Office and their officers in regard to their conduct or
misconduct.

"We also write to request that you register our concern as lawyers in
regard to how our clients have been mistreated from the time of their
initial kidnapping," Muchadehama wrote.

It was not possible to establish immediately what steps, if any, the
LSZ would take regarding the matter.

Mudzingwa, Dhalmini and Manyere were granted on April 17. The two MDC
activists were admitted to Avenues Clinic in Harare for treatment to
injuries they incurred while being tortured by their captors. Manyere, who
was also tortured, was not admitted at the clinic.

Three days after their release on bail, Mudzingwa and Dhalmini were
re-arrested by police without any due process being followed, according to
their lawyers.

Mudzingwa, Dhalmini and Manyere were among more than 30 MDC activists
and human rights defenders abducted by state secret police between October
and December 2008.

More than 20 of the abductees have been accounted for and produced in
court where they have been charged with plotting to topple Mugabe or
engaging in acts of banditry.

The whereabouts of another seven activists are unknown, raising fears
they may have died at the hands of their captors who have been accused of
severely torturing their victims.