The Sunday Mail
Retired Major Action Mandingo
THE time for mumbo jumbo politics is over. The time for fake bravado is over. The time for hallucinations is over. The time for pomposity is over. The time for promises and lies is over. We are on the homestretch to the country’s harmonised elections, and it is now show time!
Hullabaloo about delimitation report We have said it repeatedly: President Mnangagwa sets the political temperature and all the other pretenders have to feel the heat.
While celebrating the National Youth Day on February 21 in Lupane last week, the President set the political temperature when he announced that “the delimitation report has now been gazetted, I will soon be making a proclamation of the harmonised elections date.”
This announcement followed gazetting of the final Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) delimitation report, which sets boundaries for wards and constituencies to be used in the upcoming polls. When ZEC presented the preliminary delimitation report to President Mnangagwa in December last year, there was a lot of noise, with some suggesting that the document had exposed serious infighting within ZANU PF.
In a hurriedly written paper titled “Electoral Rigmarole and Elite Discohesion”, the Western-sponsored Zimbabwe Democracy Institute claimed the report had exposed divisions in the ruling party. Which ZANU PF were these dreamers talking about? Some of us laughed, because we knew the real goings-on.
As they debated the report in Parliament, some opposition legislators actually thought they had finally managed to turn ZANU PF against ZEC in general and its chairperson, Justice Priscilla Makanyara Chigumba. Again, we laughed at the naivety. If the opposition legislators think politics is that simple, then they should stop wasting our time.
In very simple terms, Justice Chigumba’s middle name Makanyara means being shamed and I am sure all in the opposition were shamed because ZANU PF refused to turn against ZEC and its chairperson. As the puppies squeaked and squirmed, President Mnangagwa never flinched. The report got to him and he did the needful and now we are getting ready to rumble.
Another sideshow that has died a natural death
As the shallow-thinking opposition was trying in vain to fight the delimitation report, there was another sideshow. There were spirited but miscalculated attempts to kill the Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Bill by civil society organisations and their sympathisers, who cried foul that the new law would shrink the democratic space in the country.
The PVO Bill seeks to upgrade financial accountability of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Government wants to stop people who are using PVOs to launder funds and sponsor terrorism. PVOs should operate in areas where they are registered, for example, health and education, as well as supporting vulnerable members of society.
Seeing that they had finally been caught with their pants down, civic organisations have been trying all tricks in the book to ensure the Bill is not signed into law. The NGO Forum even lied that Zimbabwe would lose about US$1 billion annually if the PVO Bill is signed into law.
The NGO Forum and other regime-change agents thought they had finally pinned President Mnangagwa not to sign the Bill when they said “it is not too late for the President to change course . . . We stand ready to assist the Government to revise the Amendment Bill to ensure compliance with international human rights norms and standards”.
This miscalculated and spirited fight by civic society clearly showed that some people really underestimate the Second Republic’s resolve when it embarks on a project. The Second Republic is determined to ensure that NGOs do not hide behind humanitarian work to meddle in the country’s politics.
The NGOs have sponsored violence and created division among the people of this country. They have hired journalists to lie about their country. They have also handed out dirty money to entice gullible Zimbabweans to hate their country.
The PVO Bill is coming to discipline NGOs and safeguard funds donated to them. There is no going back and President Mnangagwa made it very bold and clear last Sunday in his weekly column in this paper.
“The Private Voluntary Organisations Bill, PVO Bill, has now passed various stages of the legislative process. It is now being cleaned up for my assent. I will sign it into law once it reaches my desk,” said the President.
His Excellency then emphasised: “Let me repeat: once the Bill is cleaned and sent to my Office, I will sign it into law. Speedily, too!”
And so, with regards to the PVO Bill, it is a case closed! It will soon become law; and again, the puppies will squeak and squirm. Sometimes President Mnangagwa puts it aptly when he says: “Vamwe vachingovukura, isu hatimiri!”
In simple English, the President will be saying: “They may bark, but that won’t stop us!”
Winston Churchill, the late British Prime Minister, would say: “You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”
Likewise, author Bruce Redd McConkie once wrote: “What does it matter if a few barking dogs snap at the heels of weary travellers? . . . The caravan moves on.”
Indeed, the caravan moves on and President Mnangagwa will not be distracted by barking dogs.
To contest or not: Dreaming about electoral reforms
Are we not tired of this one? Since the Morgan Tsvangirai days, the opposition has been haunted by one big question: “Without the electoral reforms, should we contest in the elections or not?”
After hijacking the MDC T and rebranding it as CCC, Nelson Chamisa is still being haunted by this troubling question. Chamisa and his handlers can scream about electoral reforms, but they know that they are fighting a losing battle. Without their supposed electoral reforms, Zimbabwe will soon be holding the harmonised elections. Their hallucinations will not stop the elections.
Of course, Chamisa will amplify the rhetoric and his handlers will dangle lots of dirty money, but that will not stop the caravan. I like the way Yiddish author Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, better known by his pen name Sholem Aleichem, puts it. “Barking dogs don’t bite, but they themselves don’t know it,” he says.
President Mnangagwa has set the political temperature and Chamisa will soon be stewing in the political pot. All the noise, the bickering and the pomposity will soon die down as the barking dogs finally realise that they actually do not bite.
