Can Zimbabwe ever hold peaceful elections?

 

 

Any  Zimbabwean who is his/her right mind must know by now  that the country can never hold free and fair elections. It is in the blood stream of the ruling party to seek to intimidate and worse still kill during an election campaigns. This is a party that prides itself for having "a track record of pondering the enemy" ZANU PF candidate are not fair players, they demonize  their opponents. Ever since the talk about general  elections, I could not help but fear for ordinary people's. Zimbabwe as a country is still trying to heal from the wounds inflicted during the last harmonised election of 2008.Thanks to former South African President Thabo Mbeki, the Government of National Unity was created. This created two ceremonial positions for  opposition leaders, Mutambara and Tswangirayi.

We all new that was a temporary solution. As a matter of fact it did work at some time, because for the first time in a long time there was not functioning government office except the army, police and other security organs. To cut the long story short, Zimbabwe is only thirty three years old. The country got Independence when I was eight years old, in all those years there has never been peaceful elections. So anybody who is in his senses to think that these people will change  overnight is nothing more than being absurd. Unless and until there are separation between the government and the ruling party organs, we will always have problems. The Army and Police must belong to the State, and not the party .They might be card holding members of party of choice but that must not compromise their stand as employees of the government of the people of Zimbabwe. They must be accountable to the people of Zimbabwe, not just the Executive!

 

The problem is not just the individuals, but its the system that is in place. There should be not provision for partisanship when it comes to civil servants. The term "elections" in Zimbabwe means that some people will be killed for their party of choice. That is what we call democracy in Zimbabwe! The sad thing is that this culture of violence is now being emulated by the MDC.T in some other parts of the country. This makes it easy for ZANU PF to find somebody to blame.  As a matter of fact MDC. T has now adopted the ways of their number  opponents all the way to the top. Which ever way one looks at it we are headed for trouble. The people of Zimbabwe are losers, the only winners are the Party leaders. They say one thing on Monday morning  meetings and do another during the night. The culture of violence is so strong in Zimbabwe, and is increasing like wild fire.

 The new United States Ambassador to Zimbabwe has already had his honey moon. He came with new approach and strategy that was too good to be true. He probably wanted to start a clean page considering the history of  sour relations that his predecessors encountered. Lo and behold it did not take much long for him to call a spade a spade. Hardly a month after trying to play along, he recently blamed ZANU PF for killing a 12 yr old boy died in a hut that was engulfed in fire. This was no doubt a politically motivated murder. Both MDC.T And ZANU PF are  blame each other!