Special Rapporteur on Torture- Manfred Nowak

If there lived a spine eating ogre for which survival means feeding on a constant supply of protein derived from the spinal cords and backbones of fearless men, that ogre would be emaciated and die of starvation in Zimbabwe.

The Government of National Unity (GNU)’s cohesion is strained by the lack of genuine power sharing. Mugabe is not going to voluntarily relinquish authority; it has to be taken from him, only by men with cast-iron backbones. As with all progressive democratic societies whose governments are held together through loose coalitions, the collapse of such alliances due to ideological discord triggers an immediate call for fresh elections.

If free and fair elections were to be held for a village headman in Zvimba, Mugabe’s “ancestral” home, based on recent opinion polls, Mugabe would lose.

Mugabe lost the presidential election; ZANU (PF) has a minority in parliament and the unity government has set a bad precedent for Africa’s democratic roadmap. A GNU renders election results pointless, wastes scarce resources and breeds closet dictators within the opposition which had the people’s irrevocable mandate to remove tyranny.

The cycle of remunerating and appeasing dictators to avert further chaos must now cease and men with moral fiber and stainless steel vertebrae must now lead and take this fight to the end. Mugabe intimidates the populace and uses violence each time his political fortunes are threatened and menaces rural folk with incendiary remarks, feigning to revert to the bush war should the opposition come to power.

Democracy is not an event but a process and the opposition is merely part of that progression.

The GNU is illegitimate and illegal without the opposition and must be officially dissolved once the other party to the Global Political Agreement (GPA) withdraws. The GPA ought to then be nullified and Zimbabweans should return to UN supervised polls to elect a leader in a “winner takes all” democratic contest.

Zimbabwe will relapse into lawlessness in the absence of accountability and today marks another broken milestone on the treacherous road to elusive social equality and justice. According to a ZANU (PF) spokesperson, Mugabe has withdrawn an unprecedented invitation to a UN independent expert on torture at the last moment.

According to the United Nations, UN Special Rapporteur on torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, Mr Manfred Nowak, is now unable to compile a report on ZANU (PF)’s humanitarian abuses. Subsequently, United Nations human rights expert, Manfred Nowak, was prevented from entering Zimbabwe on Wednesday and was deported, after spending the night at the airport on the orders of ZANU (PF). Under Zimbabwe’s coalition agreement, the foreign ministry is controlled by Mugabe. What does ZANU (PF) have to hide so desperately that it would rather provoke a demarche?

To add insult to injury, Minister of Information, Webster Shamu, was quoted as saying, “The MDC boycott, which began on October 16, was affecting the government’s work in preparing for a new farming season and its efforts to turn around the agriculture-based economy after years of recession. His Excellency (Mugabe) may have to consider appointing ministers in an acting capacity to key ministries for the sake of a successful agricultural season and general economic turnaround.”

What a revelation—fifteen days before the official commencement of Zimbabwe’s rainy season, Shamu inadvertently discloses that the government is unprepared for the forthcoming agricultural season. These preparations (draught power, fertiliser, fuel and seed) should have been in place a year ago, not two weeks before planting starts.

These disingenuous comments come from a minister, whose government through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)’s quasi financial activities wasted precious time and squandered scarce funds, corruptly importing Chinese chalk dust, passed onto to the hapless new farmers as fertiliser. Its cabinet embarked on a futile medieval expedition of extracting diesel from rocks in a clairvoyant’s cave. ZANU (PF) even justified the shortage of cereal production by blaming a monkey for sabotaging the power supply to Zimbabwe’s only ammonium nitrate fertiliser manufacturer thus affecting agriculture.

The propensity for ZANU (PF) to blame everyone but themselves for Zimbabwe’s ills is manifesting itself again. The opposition, the perpetual fall guys, will now be held liable for imagined sanctions, droughts and the looming shortage of cereals and the dearth of investors.

“Every morning in my village, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

“It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running”. — African Proverb

Phil Matibe – www.madhingabucketboy.com