Zimbabwe Reflections on the Inconclusive British Elections

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has called again for the lifting of sanctions against the govenment bythe western imperialist states.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Britain walking in Zim’s footsteps?

Prof Jonathan Moyo, MP
Zimbabwe Sunday Mail

What the hell is going on in the disintegrating MDC-T whose hypocrisy against Zanu-PF on issues of corruption and leadership wrangles is now being exposed on a daily basis and what on earth are the MDC-T’s neo-colonial founders and funders in Britain up to following last Thursday’s inconclusive British general election whose conduct and outcome has all the derided trappings of Zimbabwe’s March 2008 elections to the embarrassment of the British political establishment that has been behind the MDC-T in a hopelessly single-minded way?

While the answer to this question may be out there in the politically polluted air, and because time does not hide anything, those in our midst who believe that only time will tell can take heart.

The confused and confusing aftermath of the British election and the senseless wrangling in the MDC-T are God-sent events.

Some fundamental truths about the treachery of the MDC-T and the hypocrisy of its British creators are beginning to speak for themselves as told by the passage of time, not only since Zimbabwe’s March 2008 general election but particularly after the emergence of the MDC in 1999 as an undisguised front for Rhodie and British interests in Zimbabwe.

The good news about our country from the passage of time is that most Zimbabweans are Zanu-PF at heart, a common truth there for all to see.

There are now some compelling developments in our body politic which point to the real possibility that even God may also be Zanu-PF mainly if not only because of the party’s unflinching pursuit of higher principles and enduring policies whatever the circumstances of the day.

It is very tempting, in fact irresistible, to interpret the latest electoral stalemate in Britain and its explanations and justifications from the British political establishment as God’s way of exposing British colonial folly over things Zimbabwean with reference to Zanu-PF in particular.
Zimbabwe’s electoral problem in 2008 is exactly Britain’s electoral problem today.

Put differently, President Robert Mugabe’s and Zanu-PF’s post-election quandary in March 2008 after the inconclusive election in which no political party won the parliamentary plebiscite is precisely the post-election quandary that Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his embattled labour party are suffering in Britain today after the British held an election which did not produce an outright winner.

That can only be as a result of God’s intervention to teach the Brits an historical lesson about the wages of neo-colonialism in pursuit of regime change. And the moral of the lesson is that former colonial powers like Britain should be careful about what they say about or wish upon their former colonies.

For the avoidance of doubt, there is of course no shortage of Zanu-PF actions that may leave a lot to be desired as policy deviations or as betrayal of the party’s enduring principles but those deviations and betrayals are inherent to the human condition and are therefore inevitable as a matter of human nature. What is relevant and significant and what explains why most Zimbabweans are Zanu-PF and why even God himself seems to have a soft spot for Zanu-PF is that the party’s principles and policies on the big and revolutionary issues of self-determination, indigenisation and local empowerment always speak to a just and higher human good typically sought by any sovereign people under similar circumstances around the world.

In this vein, Zimbabweans understand only too well that the shortcomings of their political leaders and the weaknesses of their political system are matters for Zimbabweans to deal with and not an excuse for neo-colonial intrusion. It is instructive that the election mess in Britain has not attracted international intervention and yet it is indeed a mess which the international community expects the British to resolve on their own because it is, after all, their business.

Zanu-PF has always maintained as a matter of principle and policy that Zimbabwean issues must always be resolved by Zimbabweans without being manipulated by external interests with their own agenda.

This principle and policy is not about performance, which is a technical or action-based matter, but about belief embedded in the heart and spirit of the nation.

As such, where Zanu-PF may fail here or there on some specifics of detail, its failures are never an act of deliberate malice or ideological confusion as a matter of principle or policy but a necessary political expression of correctable human weaknesses that are commonplace.

This is the infectious thought that comes to mind when one considers the political ramifications of what is going on in the now irreconcilably divided MDC-T along with the geopolitical consequences of last week’s telling British general election which ended with a hung Parliament amid serious allegations of vote rigging as Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his labour party cronies vigorously make unmistakably Zanu-PF arguments to justify clinging on to power.

Let us further probe the latter before the former.

Since 1997 the British Labour party has pursued a racist and gratuitous foreign policy on Zimbabwe reminiscent of how the same party facilitated Ian Smith’s illegal Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965 which triggered Zimbabwe’s Second Chimurenga.

The cornerstone of the British Labour party’s mindless approach to Zimbabwe since 1997 has been its refusal to either understand or accept the just and unapologetic implementation of land reform in the country to remedy colonial injustice.

In that refusal, the British Labour party turned the necessary and therefore unavoidable land reform in Zimbabwe into a governance matter in general and an electoral issue in particular. The fairness and freeness of elections in Zimbabwe was made to be dependent on whether and how Zimbabwe pursued land reform.

In defence of its untenable and, in fact, ridiculous 1997 position on Zimbabwe, the Labour party used electoral propaganda about alleged bad governance in Zimbabwe which in 1999 was swallowed by the British Conservative party and Liberal Democrats who joined the Labour party to found and fund the MDC through the Westminster Foundation.

All these three British parties claimed that the MDC-T won the March 2008 parliamentary election and demanded that Morgan Tsvangirai, whose party had gotten one seat more than Zanu-PF, should form an MDC-T government not only when the fact was, as it is in Britain after that country’s May 6 general election, that no single party won an absolute majority of at least 106 seats out of 210 but also when Tsvangirai himself had not won the presidential election despite mustering the most votes in a presidential election whose inconclusive outcome required a run-off on the back of a parliamentary popular vote resoundingly won by Zanu-PF.

Obviously the three main British parties demanded that the MDC-T should form a government after the inconclusive March 2008 general election not because the MDC-T had won the election but only and only because the three parties had, in fact, formed the MDC as their front and were supporting it for that reason alone.

Now, after last Thursday’s general election in Britain, the three British parties behind the MDC-T are in exactly the same situation in which their MDC-T was in 2008 with none of them commanding an absolute majority in Parliament to be able to form a government. All of them are in political misery. With the Zimbabwean situation in mind, it would be surprising if God is not repeatedly telling poor Gordon Brown, who made the most useless noise against President Mugabe in 2008, that what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

In the true biblical style in which God is said He reveals His will or way, Gordon Brown has not only had to deal with the compelling fact that a sitting head of government must remain in office until a new head is sworn in, something which he tried in vain to deny President Mugabe after the inconclusive March 2008 elections in Zimbabwe, Brown’s defeated and outgoing government is also facing mounting voter anger after many would-be British voters, like some Zimbabwean voters in 2008, were turned away before voting in places like Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, parts of London and Surrey, among many others.

Legal challenges are now pending across Britain. Similar situations in Zimbabwe after the March 2008 elections were demonised as vote rigging not only by the three main British political parties that are now suffering the same fate but also by the gullible so-called private media in and about Zimbabwe whose silence over the British electoral mess, chaos and hypocrisy is deafening.

The timing of Britain’s electoral mess which proves British hypocrisy on free and fair elections could not be worse for the MDC-T which is literally disintegrating on the weight of its treachery as a sellout party with no national agenda beyond the neo-colonial interests behind it.

One of the very good outcomes of having the MDC-T in the coalition government since February 2009 is that its officials have used the opportunity to show the party’s true essence and colours. By every measure the MDC-T has proved that it is not what its duplicitous British founders and funders cracked it to be in 1999.

Whatever the MDC-T is, we now can say with certainty that it is not a movement for democracy. The best that can be said about it is that it is a Movement for Delinquent Confusion. After joining the government last year, the MDC-T leadership has displayed a shocking penchant for corruption, greed and power for its own sake on the back of breathtaking incompetence.

While Zanu-PF continues to address the critical issues of removing the illegal Western economic sanctions, consolidating land reform and ensuring indigenisation and empowerment for all Zimbabweans, the MDC-T has nothing to say or offer on the national scale for the benefit of Zimbabweans regardless of their political affiliation.

The MDC-T confusion is very serious and Zimbabweans better beware. One day the MDC-T makes noise about an endless list of alleged outstanding GPA issues. When they run out of steam about that, as they have, they make a lot of negative noise against indigenisation and empowerment and when that does not work they make more negative noise about freezing and not freezing salaries for civil servants.

What is important to note in this saga is that while the earlier MDC-T noises were against Zanu-PF, now it's the MDC-T fighting itself as evidenced by the clashes between Tsvangirai and Biti or between Biti and Eliphas Mukonoweshuro over the salaries for civil servants.

Clearly this saga demonstrates that the MDC-T is all about negative energy. If you want to hear about something that either will not happen or work, listen to the MDC-T. Tsvangirai has become an expert at promising pies in the sky.

When he assumed office as Prime Minister he sought to score cheap points against Zanu-PF by falsely promising civil servants real salaries in forex, but that remains a pie in the sky.

Now he is seeking to score equally cheap points against his own secretary-general, Tendai Biti, by falsely promising that civil servant salaries will not be frozen when the practical position is that these salaries have indeed been frozen all along and they will continue to be frozen until the illegal sanctions are removed and the Zimbabwean economy can make money again.

The reality is that, while the MDC-T loses its way in the trenches of corruption, especially among its councils, but also in the ranks of its national leadership, Zimbabwe is going through a severe liquidity crunch made worse by MDC-T-inspired economic sanctions with no solution in sight.

As for Mukonoweshuro, a well-known member of Tsvangirai’s so-called kitchen cabinet who has been shedding crocodile tears about the low salaries of civil servants given his party’s parallel structures that are awash with donor top-ups, while it is understandable that he should seek to please his master against Biti, it is totally absurd for him to suggest that alternative sources for civil servants’ salaries might come from Cabinet committees, including one chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe, who these days seems to be concerned more about what she is wearing than what Zimbabwe needs to survive.

The fact of the matter is that Zimbabwe needs real national and revolutionary leadership with an indigenous focus which can only come from Zanu-PF to find ways of strategically utilising our God-given national resources to revive our economy for the benefit of all Zimbabweans. Anything else coming from the MDC-T and its embattled British founders and funders whose hypocrisy on elections knows no bounds is a pie in the sky.


British hypocrisy exposed

By Mupata Sango

Parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom on May 6 turned into a chaotic situation that some television and online commentators likened to elections in Africa, but the scene was thoroughly British.

Angry voters in a number of mostly urban constituencies reported that the doors to polling stations were slammed shut at 10pm despite the long queues remaining, effectively preventing an undisclosed number of voters from casting their ballots, thus disenfranchising them in an electoral process that was very closely run.

Many had waited in the queues for several hours, with delays apparently caused by the insufficient staffing unable to handle a higher turnout at the polls, which was expected but not planned for.

Some polling stations ran out of ballot papers.

Commentators said this was like an election in Africa, and one dismissive former media editor waved his hand and sniffed: “This is African stuff.”

The lumping together of 53 different countries in Africa, all with different electoral systems, into one dismissive comparison, illustrated the ignorance of the commentator.

Elections are very well organised in many African countries and certainly a prospective voter who has waited in a queue can expect to cast their ballot.

In most African countries, anyone who is already in the queue at a polling station at closing time is allowed to complete the process, even if this takes several hours more.

The UK electoral law calls for the doors to close at 10pm sharp, regardless of who is waiting, except for those who may actually have a ballot paper in their hand, although there is some debate about the discretion of the polling officials.

One similarity to an election in an African country was the words used by the head of the Election Commission, which is a watchdog body, and her language was the same as that used by such commissions the world over.

She said that they are sorry, that they will have a full investigation and prepare a report in due course, and that they are absolved of blame for the poor planning as this is the responsibility of the returning officers in each constituency.

This angered the affected voters even further as it does not help them to get back their lost vote.

Police were called to some locations, and legal challenges are likely.
Some commentators said that the delays at polling stations and shortage of polling officials could have been caused by insufficient funds.

The ballots were counted very quickly in some areas, with the spectacle in one constituency of high school students sprinting across a sporting complex carrying ballot boxes to tables of people counting the papers.

They were trying to beat their record of announcing the result within 43 minutes after the polls closed. They failed by several minutes, but still expected to clear up in time for early morning swimming lessons.

As the election results became known throughout the night, showing the type of uncertainty that can arise from a close race under the first past the post electoral system, the issue of concern shifted rapidly from the state of the economy to the state of Britain’s electoral system, with politicians from all three of the main parties calling for electoral reform.

The Conservative Party emerged with significantly more popular vote but not spread evenly enough to reach the magic number of 326 seats in parliament needed to form a majority government in the 650-seat House of Commons.

The Conservatives picked up more than 90 additional seats that were previously held by other parties, but they still fell short of a majority.

This has resulted in what the commentators called a “hung parliament”, meaning no party will have a majority.

Under the British system (they have no written constitution), the sitting prime minister remains in office and is entitled to make the first attempt to piece together a government or a governing coalition with other political parties, even though his Labour Party had lost most of those 90 seats gained by the Conservatives.

However, if Prime Minister Gordon Brown, far short of a majority, had expected help from the Liberal Democrats, he may have been disappointed by the statement from the Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, saying that the party that has most votes and most seats — the Conservatives — should have opportunity to prove that it is capable of seeking to govern, “in the national interest”.

His party holds the “balance of power” in the sense that if he were to agree to work with the Conservatives, they could either form a majority coalition government, or his party could keep them in office through voting with them in parliament.

If he were to support Labour, they could try to form a government but together they would still not have a majority of seats in parliament unless other smaller parties joined them.

Around 5 percent of the seats were won by other smaller parties, including the first national seat for the Green Party, and they will be furiously courted for their support by the main political parties during the weekend.

England, Scotland and Wales together with the province of Northern Ireland, form the country officially known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the UK or Britain), and smaller parties include the Scottish National Party, which wants more independence for Scotland.

Clearly, the reform of the electoral system is a bargaining chip in these discussions.

The most telling of Clegg’s remarks were that the first priority of a new government should be to “fix our broken political system”, a point echoed by politicians across the political spectrum.

Clegg also called for reform of the Upper House, the House of Lords, in which members of the British aristocracy hold family seats, and outgoing politicians can also be appointed to the peerage for this purpose, becoming Lords for life.

This type of inconclusive outcome last occurred in Britain in 1974 when Prime Minister Ted Heath’s Conservative government tried and failed to form a coalition, giving way to Labour.

Another election was called within a matter of months, thus there were two national elections in one year in 1974.

The Queen, as Head of State, appoints the government and has the power to intervene if the situation appears unstable, but in practice prefers to work behind the scenes to achieve an acceptable solution.

Stability of government was a campaign issue used by all of the three largest political parties.

However, this matter will not be left to the politicians and the royalty. Other players began immediately to exert their influence on the outcome of the election.

The financial markets opened during the night, several hours earlier than usual, for the purpose of gauging response to the outcome of the election.

The British currency, the pound, dropped in value by three pence before dawn with the verdict of the hung parliament, and recovered half of that amount a few hours later as the Conservative gains became apparent.

The traders of currency and bonds in the financial district known as the City of London feared a Labour coalition and generally considered a Conservative government as more palatable.

They were also responding to market worries across the Atlantic where the US markets were fluctuating due to concerns about the struggling Greek economy.

Commentators worried about “spooking international investors” if there is no solution by Tuesday.

Support for the Greek economy and Britain’s place in Europe were election issues, with the Conservatives refusing to support Greece and using this as an argument to retain the British currency and stay out of the eurozone.

The media too were looking for a piece of flesh from the prime minister, with the morning headlines telling him to go.

Labour did much better in Scotland and Wales, and in the north of England, and lost massively to the Conservatives in the south.

Opinion polls that predicted a surge for the Liberal Democrats following three national televised debates failed to take account of the fact that, in a close election under the constituency system, the electorate generally supports one of the two main political parties rather than “wasting” its vote on a third.

Whatever the outcome of the political impasse, it seems that reform is coming to the British parliamentary election system that has been so firmly transplanted into the former colonial empire, including among many others, Australia, Botswana, Canada, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

The new parliament will sit on May 18 to elect the Speaker, one week before the Queen addresses parliament in the “Speech from the Throne” to set out the new government’s agenda.


Britannia is dead

British voters have spoken. But what exactly have they said and why should we be listening? This is the question of the moment as people around the world try to digest the outcome of last week’s parliamentary election.

As a rule of thumb, it is notoriously difficult to predict the outcome of any election but much easier to analyse the results. Not for this particular poll. Political analysts are scratching their heads, struggling to make head or tail of these results.

Well, let them continue analysing. What is absolutely clear, though, is that Britannia is in terminal decline and there is no better proof of this than last week’s election which created a hung parliament.

There were many losers, of course, but the biggest loser must be British politics. Conservative leader David Cameron is prancing around and masquerading as the winner of that election, yet he is a loser too because he failed to unseat the Labour government in the middle of a financial crisis. Voters refused to give him a parliamentary majority and he is just grandstanding in a desperate bid to save face.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, despite all attempts to market himself as a kingmaker, is also a big loser. By trying so hard to be all things to all people, he came across as a hollow creation of the media and the voters dealt him a mighty boot.

As for Labour’s Gordon Brown, he is finished for sure. He claims he is still the Prime Minister. But for how much longer? To understand what is happening, we must ask the question: How did British politics get into this mess?

Following the end of colonialism, British politics had a certain respectability about it, thanks largely to the policies of Conservative premiers Mar-garet Thatcher and John Major. For a while during the Thatcher-Major era, people in most of Britain’s former colonies generally accepted that there was a sense of decency to British politics and foreign policy.

This measure of civility was shattered to smithereens when “New Labour” swept to power in 1997. Tony Blair, a swashbuckling master of spin, changed the political landscape in a manner that would later prove detrimental to Britain’s long-term strategic interests.

Britain’s international standing has been waning ever since Blair stepped into 10 Downing Street. In fact, these days, matters are so bad that Britain’s chaotic elections have been likened to a “Third World” circus.

British politicians ridiculed and taunted Zimbabwe’s elections in 2008, but look who is laughing now!

Their winner-takes-all majoritarian system is a liability and could very well be replaced by a hybrid electoral template that borrows heavily from proportional representation. British politicians must learn not only to co-exist but also to co-operate.

This is cruel irony for politicians who have been unfairly demonising Zimbabweans for forming a Government of National Unity. These are the same drivel-mongering politicians — we must remember — who have refused to work towards the lifting of British and European Union sanctions on Zimbabwe.

In the last 10 years, political relations between Zimbabwe and Britain have been severely strained. Blair’s Labour government was largely to blame for this. Brown was part of that administration and most Zimbabweans did not expect a radical shift from him once he assumed the premiership.

The tragedy for Brown is that he had the opportunity to initiate a process that would have led to the scrapping of the illegal sanctions. What did he do? He squandered that chance.

As a result, the evil sanctions remain in place and continue causing immense suffering. Gordon Brown, just like Tony Blair, has the blood of innocent Zimbabweans on his hands.

Perhaps the extraordinary situation unfolding in London will have far-reaching implications for Zimbabwe-Britain relations. Time has come for the British political class to accept the self-evident truth that Zimbabwe’s agrarian revolution is irreversible.

The politicians in Westminster must be told that it is in Britain’s long-term strategic interest to restore cordial relations with Harare. This matter has nothing to do with oversized egos. There is a whole lot more at stake. Britain has citizens in Zimbabwe and vice versa.

Hundreds of British companies are operating profitably and unmolested in Zimbabwe. With regional economic integration fast becoming a reality in this part of Africa, the deployment of sanctions as an instrument of foreign policy will soon lose all meaning.

Even if the British government maintained a hard-line stance, this would not stop Zimbabwe from progressing economically. China, India, South Africa, Iran and other emerging economies will continue doing business with this country. There are rich pickings to be enjoyed here, that is why British companies have vowed to stay put.

Meanwhile, if the politicians in Westminster fail to resolve the power-sharing squabble that has erupted in London, they should not be too shy to ask for assistance from Zimbabwe. Coalition politics can be tricky!