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- Written by: Richard Gandari
- Category: Zimbabwe
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BURNING BRIDGES: the Hypocrisy of Erstwhile Revolutionaries
The third president of the United States of America, Mr Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was famously quoted saying,
“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”
These words have immortalized his memory and continue to inspire successive generations across the world. During the liberation struggle, many revolutionaries answered that call of duty largely because colonialism was entirely premised on injustice.
Even the colonial government up to Mr Winston Field knew that for a fact. Reality only became blurred in 1965 when Mr Ian Smith announced his Unilateral Declaration of Independence. According to Mr Smith and his Rhodesian Front party, Rhodesia had become a sovereign state and no longer a British colonial outpost. History records that resistance to Mr Smith’s government was swift and determined.
Many freedom fighters left Rhodesia to join liberation movements. Some went east to join ZANLA, the armed wing of ZANU in Mozambique. Others traveled west to join ZPRA, the armed wing of PF ZAPU in Zambia. Those who stayed in Rhodesia also clandestinely resisted the Smith regime in various subtle ways. Faced with resistance, the default response of every rogue regime is to dig in.
Ian Smith and his henchmen designed intricate repressive mechanisms. The easiest strategy for the regime in Salisbury was to weaponize the law. Smith’s use of lawfare outlawed every known form of resistance, which led to the establishment of prisons and secret detention facilities, ironically still in use in present day Zimbabwe.
At this juncture, it would be prudent to draw a second lesson from another famous Jefferson quote in which he said,
“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.”
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- Written by: Richard Gandari
- Category: Zimbabwe
- Hits: 592
Retributive Triumphalism: The Hallmark of Illegitimacy
Dictatorship looks invincible from a distance but its hollow core is a laughable fiasco. In this day and age, no nation can hope for any progress under the clueless rule of a tinpot dictator. Cavemen leading their clans had better prospects for success than the occult administration of a despotic ruler. It must ring true even to the staunchest tyrant that dictatorship is a hard sell in today’s world. That is why every dictator tries his best to masquerade as a democrat.
Unfortunately, the pretense strictly demands periodic elections, whose outcomes are not always favorable for the incumbent. The correlation between credible elections and legitimacy is every dictator’s Achilles heel. When ordinary citizens reject a dictator through the ballot, his foundation is shaken. He bites his nails and makes countless frantic calls to the head of his handpicked election commission. Spirited efforts are made and the bare minimum percentage of electoral victory is fraudulently conjured up. The dictator barely survives, through the skin of his teeth.
Yet being declared the winner is not exactly the same as being the legitimate leader of a country. Apart from abdication no perfume can take away the stench of illegitimacy. It stinks to high heaven.
In the case of Zimbabwe, His ZEC-cellency President Emmerson Mnangagwa is a broken man with a fatally bruised ego. His sham election in August 2023 introduced humanity to a new blackhole of election rigging and gerrymandering. It was a global 'first' but quickly replicated in Gabon which held elections 3 days after Harare’s fraudulent charade. Unfortunately for the Gabonese incumbent, his bootleg version was rather hurried and lacked an after-heist roadmap.
In Zimbabwe, a clear strategy was in place, with all permutations and combinations of the post-election period anticipated.
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- Written by: Richard Gandari
- Category: Zimbabwe
- Hits: 644
The Cost of Tyranny
When the Union Jack was lowered and handed to Prince Charles on 18 April 1980 at Rufaro Stadium in Harare, no one would have guessed that it was the beginning of Zimbabwe’s demise. Many considered it the beginning of prosperity and advancement for the black majority, under the assurance of self-rule. The ideals of Marxist ideology proselytized throughout the liberation struggle meant that everyone would get a piece of the cake in the new republic.
The people’s euphoria at Independence made it treasonous to even slightly suggest that self-rule could easily mutate into self-ruin. Without institutional checks and balances, it was not long before things morphed into George Orwell’s Animal Farm scenario. The paradox of Zimbabwe’s independence needs careful dissection. Viewed from afar, it put an end to the Rhodesian white minority rule and its accompanying evils.
Yet a closer inspection will reveal how independence actually paved the way for a black minority elite which quickly turned into the average citizen’s worst nightmare. It would be naïve to make a blanket assertion that colonialism was better than post-independence Zimbabwe but no objective analysis can ignore the structural failures of the latter. Central to the failure of the independence project was Robert Mugabe’s power-hungry desire for a one-party state. Mugabe turned ZANU into Zimbabwe and narrowed the definition of citizenship to his party membership.
Zimbabwe’s fate was sealed by the conflation of party and state.
In essence, every statutory entity with an acronym starting or ending with the letter Z became an appendage of ZANU. So, in Mugabe’s warped view there existed statutory bodies like ZANU National Army, ZANU Republic Police, ZANU Broadcasting Corporation, National Railways of ZANU and Reserve Bank of ZANU. This humongous enterprise of state capture is proudly portrayed by the party flag of ZANU. One can easily mistake it for Zimbabwe’s national flag.
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- Written by: Richard Gandari and Duke Maplanka
- Category: Zimbabwe
- Hits: 2042
Press Conference 16th Feb 2024
Today 10am Harare {8:00 am GMT} LIVE LINK - Click the image of the flyer below. After the LIVE Press Conference is over, this Link will still take you to the video of this confernece on the 16th February 2024 by The Rt Honourable President MS Nkomo For those withour Facebook - see the video at this LINK {Click Link} Follow the "Read More" for a Full Transcript of the day's Press Conference:
From right to left in order on the live link/video The ZAPU vice President Derrick Katsenga , ZAPU President Sibangilizwe Micheal Nkomo, The ZAPU National chairperson John Zolani Dlamini ,The Party National Spokesperson Richard Gandari. Vidoe Here: https://www.facebook.com/MediaCentreZw/videos/1071597544099000 Follow the "Read More" for a Full Transcript of the day's Press Conference:
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- Written by: Duke Maplanka
- Category: Zimbabwe
- Hits: 1823
Let us not forget the genocide of Gukurahundi. The recent "enquiry" smacks of an air-brush attempt to alter history
