Dear Emerson Mnangagwa:
Free and Fair Elections!
“What is your name, Skull?”
There are a couple of years at school I want to talk to you about. There is the year we got a really difficult insufferable Head boy at school. He was too strict. Even if you were friends with him, if he found you on the wrong end of the school rules, he will book you for punishment. And I had my full share of these bookings and detentions. Yes, admit I was a difficult student. But what I also realized, even for those who were never punished by this head boy, they still didn’t like him. Deep down all this insufferable strictness, he was driven by a streak of cruelty. He wallowed in cruelty. The students finally realized this about him. Even on issues where the whole student body was fighting for against the administrators, he always found his side with the administrators, yet his other job was to represent the students to the powers that be. So the students ended up resenting him. The students liked his deputy who was a far better person, wished the deputy was the one at the top. This deputy treated us as adults, respectfully. But the deputy never got the chance to lead us. With the end of this head boy’s term of office we selected another head boy. What the old head boy had made us feel was that office was against the students; we distrusted it, so that this new head boy took off with a student body that already despised the office he was taking over. We didn’t give him time to adjust and show us what he was all about. We distrusted him straight off. We shut him out, we resented him. And he responded exactly like the previous head boy. He punished us. He blocked us. He harassed us and we wished his deputy would get a chance to lead us. But the deputy can only become the head boy only if the head boy leaves his office during his term of office. At school that was highly unlikely, so we had to figure out a way to deal with that, and moved on with our lives.
Emerson, you are the second head boy at this school we are enrolled in for all our lives. This school has a name; Zimbabwe. Emerson you have inherited an office that we despise, that we don’t like because that office was made a monster by Robert Mugabe. It is so offensive to us. Robert used that office to punish us, to kill us, to maim us, to destroy out economy and country, to make us feel like we were nobodies in our school. It’s only him we had to listen to and obey. We learned to hate Robert and the office of the president. Don’t be fooled into thinking we only hated Robert. We hated the whole system, the whole government. We never wished for you to take over like we wished those deputy head boys to take over at school so many moons ago. You were Robert. You are Robert. Here is a tale I want to share with you, Emerson
Some time ago, not so long ago there was this man who felt he had shadows he didn’t understand. He told himself there were shadows that spoke to him when he was asleep but never really grasped what they wanted him to do. And then they started to speak to him even when he was awake, when he was listening, when he wasn’t listening. He heard those shadows speaking deep inside himself. The voices of which were an amalgam of light and shadows flickering, sizzling him with restlessness he didn’t understand or know how to deal with. They told him he had to go to a Well by the end of the village, a disused, dumped Well, where naught kids circled, around the close of the day, singing, calling the old prophet to come and awash them with gold. There is a story, a legend that the Well had dried in another lifetime with the death of an old prophet man of this village when he fell in this Well and died in this well. It was said the prophet man had tried to retrieve a blood tree (Mubvamaropa tree) box that was full of gold. So that, even when the villagers managed to retrieve the dead body of this prophet, it was thought the Well was cursed, yet some thought a ceremony dance around this Well helped to soften the restless and hunger inside souls, a hunger of wealth. These kids were propagating this folklore, though playfully, but in this old man the voice kept whispering to him to go to the Well. It told him that deep inside the Well there was definitely a Mubvamaropa tree box full of treasures. The voice told him to go the Well and excavate this treasure trove.
This man, deep in his dreams left for the Well. He knew he had to listen to this voice and free himself from its restlessness. He had to go there to find wealth for himself and his people. In this night the moon was a bruise on the skies, it emitted reddish wounds of flowers of light, the whole night was in bubbles of voices beckoning, wishing him to keep going, to keep moving, and he could only obey these voices. He couldn’t make himself stop. He got to this Well in the early hours of morning. It was surreal, he searched around for the rope the people of that far off time had used to excavate the old prophet man with and he found it was still there, waiting for him like a left over log to use to light up a fire in a world of no trees. He took a small stone and threw it into the Well to measure how deep the Well was; by noting the time it took for the stone to hit the box of treasure. The thumb hit of this mubvamaropa tree told him the rope was long enough to reach the bottoms. He immersed the rope with a hook attacked to its end into the Well. He felt it hit something and he felt it hook it. He starts drawing it out. He felt the weight. He knew he had finally rounded up on his voices. The expectations he had for the treasures. He kept drawing it until something hang on top of the Well’s mouth. It had the shape, not of a box. He reached his hand to touch it, to see it. He was asleep so he couldn’t really see it with his shut eyes, but he used his fingers to feel it, to see it. His hands closed on this object. He touches two holes on its top; and a opening below them belies a mouth. He knew it was the skull he was holding. He asks this skull,
WHAT’S YOUR NAME, SKULL? But the skull didn’t answer him. He was angry and like Moses throwing the tablets on the ground in the bible, he threw it on the ground. He cried to the space above him
WHERE IS MY BOX OF WEALTH, WHY DID YOU SEND ME THIS SKULL?
Nothing answers him. He takes the skull in his hands, he looks at it again with his fingers, and he felt a song in his heart telling him it was the skull of his mentor. The skull looked familiar, like his head on his body. He touches his head, he felt he was touching his mentor’s head. So he looked at the skull again and tears begun flowing down his face. The front porch of his brain knew he was himself in this skull. He was the skull. He asks the skull again,
WHAT IS YOUR NAME, SKULL?
Only he heard his own voice askance
He took the skull and put it on his head, and it fitted him well. He knew he was the skull.
This is how we know you are the skull. It is your story’s life, Emerson. Don’t ask us how we came to know of this, we only know! This is how we know you are Robert. This is how we know we are dealing with Robert’s skull. No, Emerson we are not going to give you time. No, I have no reason to think you will be different from your skull. Don’t forget we know you were with Robert at the Well trying to excavate the box full of wealth in Marange, and that you helped him make us hate the office of the president, the government. Don’t be surprised when everything you do or touch is going to create noise, anger, bitterness and displeasure with the people. What are the sounds for but to hear what isn’t there. It’s your voice you will be hearing. Dear president, our apologies, we will chop you off the living skull on your head.
You are Robert Mugabe. It’s you who hurt us for 37 years. It’s you who destroyed the country for 37 years. The country is empty. I think if I were to go home now and knock on the Zimbabwean blue skies, I would hear the hallow sound of my own empty hands penning this missive in all that Zimbabwean blue. It’s you who stole the elections for 37 years; it’s you who burned down our homes, maimed people who were against you. If you think I am fibbing go to Kwekwe today and ask the people there what they think of you. Ask the Kwekwe people who burned down Blessing Chebundo’s home, who killed a number of activists in Kwekwe. Emerson, it’s you who killed thousands of the Matabele people. Despite the fact that you are always saying it’s not you who led the genocide, ask the Matabele people who killed their families. They know it’s you. The whole country knows it’s you. Yes, we know they were a lot of people involved in that madness (Sidney Sekeremayi, Perence Shiri, Solomon Mujuru and the army, Edson Shirihuru, Kevin Woods, Menard Muzariri, the CIO people, and you Emerson, Robert Mugabe, his deputies and cabinet, even Chiwengwa… all these a closeted plausibility of chihauhaus, come back Joshua Nkomo!). Oh, Chiwengwa can as well say what you saying too, to excuse himself since he was at the 1 Infantry Brigade in Bulawayo not the monster 5 Infantry brigade based in Kwekwe that Perence Shiri lead as they grounded down the Matebele people. Chiwengwa provided support to Shiri’s 5 Brigade. You two can say you were not there when you were there, but we all know it’s a lie. Even a wind takes with it evidence of where it has been. Violence is a product of systemlessness as much as a pillar of lootercracy, Emerson. Who did the target killing of the politicians and leaders of the Gukurahundi? It’s the CIO. Who tried to kill Nkomo as he skirted out of the country in woman dressing, running from your thugs the CIO who were on his tail. You were the minister of security, Emerson. Tell us why Mugabe fired you, if you were not involved. Don’t think we are such fools we will accept you didn’t know what your subordinates like Kevin Woods were doing in the ministry you led. Don’t think we are dump goats we don’t know the army couldn’t have done that work without the intelligence knowledge it got from the CIO. It is the CIO that helped the army extirpates the Matabele. You were the head of the organisation, you crushed them in your hands, you are covered in blood that dripped from the people to become empty shells, like testimony. So don’t tell us lies, no amount of lies will ever make us think of you differently as your skull, Robert. A caterpillar out of botulism does not become a butterfly. Stop trying to persuade us you are clean, prove it. Come out clean. Tell us what really happened in Matabeleland. This experiment is to see who has been killing us, Emerson. The experiment is about a lot I don’t know, the experiment is about silent things talking in the dark of now. You are Robert and the Zimbabweans have no engagement rings for you man; they can’t commit themselves to a thug boss!
Emerson, it’s you who killed your rivalries and Robert’s rivalries in the ZANUPF power soaps we have come to expect over the years. It is you who has pushed out those who blocked your ambitions to one day succeed Robert and come to terms with your voices inside you. It’s you who we blame for the killing of Solomon Mujuru, Learnmore Jongwe, the generals, the political commissars (Movern Mahachi, Elliot Manyika, Border Gezi), and everyone who was against your ambitions and your skull, Robert. It’s you we blame for everything that Zimbabwe is; oh we might as well blame you for global warming! Let my pen reveal what you can’t revel to us and if I am free to speak loosely, the predator could easily be revealed. It’s you who forced Robert to take farms from the whites, you who gutted the white people. Don’t think you can fool us now when you say you have changed, that you now want the white people back. An eagle no matter how much it cleans itself is always black. Do you know each pattern is different, like a snowflake but none is as cold as you are? It’s you who pushed Robert to send our soldiers to the DRC to fight a war that has never benefited the generality of Zimbabweans, but rather depleted every foreign currency reserve the country had and pushed us into inflation. It’s you who looted the DRC of its diamonds and made billions out of that Lootercracy. Ask the United Nations, they know your money was from blood diamonds you looted in the DRC and at that Well in Marange. It’s you Emerson who stole elections that the opposition had won in 2008. Wasn’t that you we heard who told your skull that he wasn’t going anywhere, and took the whole country to ransom as you played with the work of our pens until Chiwengwa’s gun ruled us again? Emerson, it’s you who helped create the securocratic leadership style that now subject us to poverty, it’s you who re-created the monster Joint Operations Command that has run the country, de facto basis since year 2000.
It’s you Emerson who took the country through a coup just a few weeks ago, and hauled your skull to the ground. You opened your big mouth which can only be described as that of a comic book character, gulped everything down at once. Didn’t we hear you from foreign lands asking the skull what his name was? Didn’t we hear your voice in the voice of your chummy Chiwengwa asking Robert who his name was whilst his distance from our streets disagrees with us, by imprisoning Robert in his beautiful blue roof casket? With frightening speed, actions took hold of Robert in a matter of a few days. Didn’t you repeatedly lie to us that it wasn’t a coup, didn’t you say it had no name. You called it operation restore order, you called it a coup which was not a coup, you called it capturing thieves surrounding the president, so why did you capture the skull back into your hands and took it to be yours, why did you fit the skull on your head at the end of the coup. Yes, there was so much love lost between Robert and us. We had buried our love of Robert so many years ago like that village had buried the body of their prophet who had died in that Well. We supported you, we danced around the Well with you Emerson, and we were little children looking for something we didn’t know, whittling away at the silhouette that had kept us captive so that the night of his resignation we all might sail into drinks and talk and the shared adulations of this small army of joy, the vibrations, the vibe, buzz, bizz bizz, the fear, and in the morning the sweepers would follow the parade march. But you hijacked that dream for us too. Even though we danced with you we knew the Well was not clean. We knew you were not clean. We supported you because we felt it was better to deal out one monster at a time. Now Robert is gone, don’t think we are fools to think his Mugabeism is buried with his body, no. You have his skull on your head, Emerson. We still see the shadows. We know ZANUPF is a group of look alikes/ dress alikes/ think alikes/ looter alikes, near insanity Bono rock music look alikes who concocted to distance themselves from their boss when the people called it quits, and your ZANUPF supporters even know you are interchangeable, and that when these look alikes are kicked, other Robert Mugabe look alikes will take over like allusions of the Mussolinis eating Ethiopian checken (chicken) bones in the form of the Mengestus. You are just a new leader of an old sect. We even know you are more dangerous than Robert; that Mugabe’s imaginations have hybridized into monster crops in you! Yet it’s better to deal with the head of the snake than its tails we have been doing all along. Now you are out on the open.
We are going to fight you until you are gone too. We are on you, until we eat your footsteps in our sleep. I cast out a proud call to you Emerson; we will swallow stones, grasses, poison, bitterness, molasses, stuff our mouths with emptiness, depth and height for the next few months until the elections. Emerson, we will consume birds, beasts, locusts, monsters, fish, glue, sadza, wind clay salt, ripples…, until we become this for you, stone and only stone, until we push you out too. We know it is good to be alive, even on a leash, to test our reflexes. You are from ZANUPF. So as far as we concerned we gave you 37 years and you rundown the country. 37, 37, 37!. We are not going to give you another 37 years to ruin us further. We have waited too long for uhuru, and the georgics of waiting beyond now are time as a torn cloth. We know you have nothing to offer us. We know you can only resort to buying our votes in the next 8 months or so until the elections. We see you have started the buying us programme. You think it impresses us that you have refused to use Robert’s chariot of fire, the limousine, gold plated with black gold of the blood he bleed from us over the years as he paraded and cocked all over our roads. Of course your emergence demand a makeover that would seem to impart change, simplicity and maturity, perhaps a whiff of Africa’s present darling, a magufulication! If you think it impresses us you cut back your congress expenditure from 8 mil to 2 mil. If you think we have bought into those promises you made that you are now born again and should be absolved for killings you did under Robert, and that you now want the white people back, now that you have the crown, making it seem as if it was Mugabe only who was wrong all along. If you wanted this done you should have done it yesterday. Everyone knows Mugabe was against farm invasions, tried to fight you and the goons to leave the farms. If you think we can easily buy into this fluffy thing that you now want to compensate the whites for taking their farms forcefully, with what money, Emerson. I will come to that letter. If you want it done right now put pride aside man, and tell us the truth and pray to space. Achieve a better form of purity, Emerson! If you think we have bought into your lies that you now want to resuscitate the economy you destroyed, that you have started by cutting down the number of ministries in your government, and if I may ask you, why is there some process toward militarizing the government. This unassembled cabinet is waiting for its own loot in this mineral rich country. I might come back to that, no promises. Emerson, just know that all that you have done or purporting you will do doesn’t impress us. First thing first, Emerson!
We have an election next year. Make that right, first of all. Give us a free and fair election. Win or lose it fairly, then if you win fairly we will start trusting your good intentions. Rest awhile; we are not even there yet, not even with a fair election. There are sins you have to apologize and pay for, for humankind’s swelling expenses. I will come to that later. Let’s stay on the elections now. I said we know all these promises were to buy us into believing you now care for us as we toward the elections. Whereas your skull gave us food and agric implements, sometimes used panties to cloth up our open business, you thought you could better your skull by offering us what we have clamored for all along to fill up our flesh, thus to flesh up your skull too. I said we know you are not the deputy head boy of this school. You are Robert, the head boy!
On free and fair elections here are the areas I want you to right. Fire Rita Makarau and her gang at ZEC. We know she is the dust that clung around the skull you have in your hands. She is Robert’s lapdog, she stole the 2013 election for Robert, awarding him and his party ZANUPF the two thirds majority they have now. Just think of it. How could your old decaying skull get a two thirds majority in a village that so hated the shadows of your skulls. No, she has to go. The second issue is ZEC should be totally independent, chosen by civil society institutions like the Judiciary Service Commission, or be chosen by the Parly, with equal representations of parties that constitute our Parly. Not by the executive, not by the immediate players, not by oncoming players. The Registrar General is another public office that needs to be removed from your tentacles. Let’s have the Parly overseeing that one too, or the judiciary.
The next reform area is on the military and security establishment. Zimbabwe is now a blank terrain, surrounded by two armies, one wields a gun and another, a pen. We want the army off our political processes. Tell Chiwengwa and his power grabbing goons to go back to the barracks. Tell those monsters to focus their energies on military issues, not political processes. We need a law that makes it clear that its treason for the army to enter our streets to temper with political process, payable by jail sentence. If they have nothing to do at the barracks, they should help in the construction of schools, clinics, roads etc. If they are tired of mooching off our taxes, if they are tired of training without a fight to engage in, export them to the world over, the world is full of strife. It would earn us foreign currency. Employ them to farm the millions of hectors that remain uncultivated every year and grow our agricultural industry and other industries. Apparently those goats are employable and there is a lot that needs to be done to build back Zimbabwe. They should leave politics to politicians, law to lawmakers and judiciary, theirs in military. We don’t have a war in Zimbabwe. Nobody is killing the other in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has next to nothing possibility of degenerating into a war situation like Somalia which your chummy used as the cry call to enter the streets. We are civilized. We don’t kill each other in Zimbabwe. This is not bloody Central or West Africa! Emerson, the military needs to be reformed, and those who have nothing to do should be retired. The heads of the military have to be retired too. We need new thinking, fresh perspectives in this organisation. We have over 30 000 active soldiers- that’s too much for a country as small a Zimbabwe, a country that has no possibility of generating a war. What do we need all those soldiers for? There is nobody in the SADC region who wants to attack us, we don’t even have any territorial dispute with any country in the SADC. And on top of that we have over 22 000 reserve soldiers in the form of war veterans, and these have been used to destabilize us, destroy opposition parties and make Zimbabwe ungovernable by messing with our political processes. Retire all these veterans, too. They have no use. Those who want to be politicians, let them do that on a personal level, not using our taxes to rape us further. We need a small highly technological and advanced force that focuses on their mandates in the constitution. It’s no longer a game of numbers nowadays. Look at American wars for the last few years. They are winning fights without deploying a lot of soldiers on the ground. Cull this lot. We need about 15 000 soldiers for the size of Zimbabwe. Still on security reforms, the police and civil security establishment needs reforms. Their mandates are to protect the civilians and uphold the law. They should move from the police state that they are now and have made Zimbabwe to be, into a people state police. The CIO should focus on country security not politicians security, or party games that they are involved in.
The next reform area I want see done before the elections is on the media. Open up the airwaves. Licence more players in this important field. Make this “fourth organ” of state strong and independent. We need new independent broadcasters. For us to still have 1 TV station, 37 years down the line is an insult on us. For us to still have only 6 national radio stations that are all controlled by the government, one way or another is an insult. For us to have very few local community radio stations is simply bad. Open up the airwaves and leave the journalists and media people to do their jobs in a free and fair environment, not to report according to party lines. ZANUPF is not Zimbabwe. I know that because I didn’t see the memo that changed Zimbabwe to be ZANUPF republic. The media’s job is to serve the people not politicians. Allow free and fair reporting on the national broadcaster, give competing parties into the next year’s elections fair share of airwaves time. Leave the internet alone. Leave people to express what they think in these internet social platforms. Let the information be shared in a free and fair way. It’s laughable you have a ministry that focuses on that. I wonder what flimsy ministry you are going to create next, the ministry for love!
The other reform area is on the commission that deals with constituency demarcation. The job should be given to an independent organisation, independent from your executive power mongering hands. The constituency delimitation and demarcation should be overseen by Parly or judiciary appointed organization. We know how you have used this exercise to give yourself and your party unfair advantage over opposition parties. This is how you got two thirds majority in the Parly now. How did I come to this when I am not a statistician? When I realized the impossibility of counting to infinity the millions in Zimbabwe, I have decided to vomit these numbers. It’s a big flat joke to think that a city like Chitungwiza that crawls with people from every hole, over 1.5 million people, will have 5 constituencies, yet a district like Gokwe will have the equal number of constituencies. And this capital should be damned, Harare, which has plus 2 million people has not more than 20 constituencies yet provinces with fewer people than Harare have more constituencies. Don’t lie to us that three major urban centers (Harare, Chitungwiza and Bulawayo) with more than 4 million people combined together would not even have a fifth of the constituencies of Zimbabwe. 4 million people is almost a third of Zimbabwe’s population. Protest all you want, but there is a grain of truth in these vomits. Let the statistician illuminate this beyond mathematical doubt, if you want. We know you and your party have used this organisation to give more constituencies to rural areas that have more ZANUPF supporters more constituencies than those that are predominantly opposition. Get your power mongering hands off this cake, Emerson.
The next port of call is the judiciary. I find a judiciary that legitimatizes a coup suspect. A coup is a coup, that’s the only name it is known by; otherwise we might as well call it a soup. We all stumbled as we were struck in the shock of it! But a simple truth is soldiers in a constitutional democracy can only come into the streets in times of war or civil emergences, not to right a party. Chiwengwa was clear why he decided to enter our streets from the beginning of it. He wanted to clean up the mess in the ZANUPF party, period. What happened later with major general SB Moyo is known as sanitizing a wrong. I have said it before ZANUPF is not a country. Why didn’t he enter the streets to right the MDC when it had power problems? We have an election to sort the country, not the army. And the sick thing is if a judiciary is blind to how the law works, how are we going to have faith in such an institution like that. Chiwengwa is not the commander-in-chief of Zimbabwe Defense Forces. Mugabe was the boss. So for Chiwengwa to come into our streets it had to be signed off by the president. It was Mugabe who had the right to allow the soldiers to invade the streets and break down government as they did. It doesn’t matter if it was for the right causes or wrong causes. It’s a wrong precedent the army and courts have set. What if the same army decides, in the future, to invade the streets again without your consent and hold the country by the gun? It’s dangerous to have an army that doesn’t operate under the country’s constitution. There is nothing legal about that coup. So we need an overhaul of our judiciary. We want them to be independent of the executive levers and authority, to be able to safeguard our constitution against the monster that invaded our streets. The military that is bend on instituting what they want on the electorate and a conniving ruling party and cowering judiciary. Make no mistake, Emerson; a day will reckon when someone in your party will use the same army to hold you at gunpoint like they did to Robert and call it a coup that is not a coup, and with a stupid judiciary like the one that has just sanitized the coup this army will remove you from power too.
The other reform area is to do with the electoral law. Let’s have an independent justice body that deals with the election contestation issues. Don’t forget every time there was a dispute this judiciary has just sat of the cases that the opposition had brought to the courts. None have been dealt with; some never saw a court date. It took the judiciary 5 years to the next election to not decide the 2002, and 2005 election disputes, and then the cases became null and void as another election became due. We need an election body made up of representatives of several facets of the government, country, parties, experts, civil society, NGOs, local authorities, religious groupings…, and these would decide on elections matters and do so before a president-elect is inaugurated. There is no free and fair election in subjecting the electorate to a president who has won a disputed election.
The last issue I want to touch on is of allowing observers and monitors to observe and monitor our elections. Allow all those who want to come to observe to come. Allow and protect party monitors to monitor elections without fear for their lives. We want to see an election where the opposition can be able to deploy monitors in areas like Muzarabani and Uzumba Maramba Pfungwe without fear for their lives. Without which, don’t lie to us and your cohorts of ZANUPF supporters like SADC and AU that the election has been free and fair
These are areas I want to see tackled before elections next year. As you can see, Emerson, it’s a lot of work that needs your focus, rather than trite issues like you have refused to use the limousine crap. We know ZANUPF party is a master at deflecting people’s views to buy into an illusion that things are now fine to win over their vote. Those are only trapdoors that don’t get us home. Mugabe’s regime was our knowledge pond: we are graduates revolting. Code to the core, Mnangagwa you do so move, always you do so move man, to maim us, and now you do so move, you move to soothe us. We know this gimmick; we know this thing about limousine, of catching the said to be thieves is just useless noise. You are hiding from the election reform issues, cradling to your old ways, hidding, stealing, thuggery... If you are really serious about growing Zimbabwe again, do the reforms first and give us a free and fair election for the first time. If you win as I have noted that before we will support you to the hilt as you rebuilt the country you destroyed. It’s a museum of things for us to forget too, always afraid we might forget the distance we have travelled, the trouble of stopping now. Oh we can’t afford to stop now. There are no stops in these roads of gravel. The angry gestures over our former authorities and current authorities in the letter are only means in the roads we are travelling in. These roads of gravel we are travelling in will lead to freedom of the constructions our dreams. We are in phases of tilling and harvesting, November’s rain fire lures us to our freedoms.
We will accept you on one condition! First of all declare what you have, and how you got it. Tell us how much you looted from that Well in Marange. Everyone in your new government should do that too. If you can at least prove to us what happened to the 15 billion you found in that Mubvamaropa box in the Well in Marange, then we will believe all this noise. I said first of all pay back what you stole, show us what you benefited from through corruption, push your cabal in the ZANUPF to declare what they benefited from through corruption, and then the whole country will do likewise. Otherwise this is just a sad excuse you are using to blindfold us to steal an election with, and when you have won then you will revert back to business as usual in something that is continuous, alooter continue. Oh don’t confuse democracy and alootercracy, even if they both end in –acy…no, not that! Stop it, subjected!
Another gimmick you have narrowed on is the land issue. You know it is an emotional issue. You have promised the white people you are going to pay them for stealing their lands. Who is going to pay for that? I never got a piece of land from that exercise, never stole land from the white people, never benefited from it, in fact the bulk of the country didn’t benefit from that, why must our taxes be used to pay for what we never benefited from. Rather the exercise has made the whole country poor. Those who looted the farms must pay the white people for the loot. We are waiting for the land reform audit. Those who have more than 1 farm, they must return these to the white people they displaced to loot. They are practically hundreds, if not thousands of these farms that can be returned to their rightful owners before you start making us pay for your looting. How can we Zimbabweans be made to compensate white people to allow people like Robert Mugabe, Edna Madzongwe, Shuvai Mahofa to keep more than 5 farms each, farms they are not even using. Don’t forget when you arm twisted your skull to enter the farms and allow your goons to displace the white people you lied to us that you will each only get a farm, not 5, not 14 for one person. If you want to earn our respects, stop subjecting us under taxes we didn’t benefit from. It’s us people who have suffered from these stupid policies like the land invasion. You meted poverty on us. And we have become who we are and learned how to cry and produce material evidence of our sadness. Don’t think we will be patient as you continue subjecting us to this callousness. We are wild now, we are not afraid of your tanks. Look, we are saying, “we are sad”, we are hurt enough, we won’t accept more pain. You and your band of crooks benefited from the land reform, so please payback the whites from the rent you have accrued from using those farms for nearly 20 years. There is no excuse why you can’t payback the white people what you stole from them. We see this for what it is. It’s another election gimmick.
In the meanwhile open up industry, clean up the mess you created with the indigenization programme. Chunk that law into the Robert Mugabe dustbin. Create attractive investment opportunities environments in the country to allow industry to grow. Create free tax zones in the country. Use the Silicon Valley/ Shanghai method that has made China and the USA super rich, allow investors to invest in tax free heavens, especially companies that employ more people, thus this will cut back on unemployment rates and boast government tax base. Focus on creating solid banking structures in Zimbabwe, stabilize the currency, and control the financial sector. Clean up the mess at the mining sector; make it secure for investments and also secure our taxes from the mining sector. We can’t afford to lose another 15 billion dollars. Make tourism and services industries grow. This is an easy cash cow as they are fewer investments involved to make money in this sector, than in industry, mining and agriculture. Clean up our image in the international community. This will encourage more tourists to visit. We have enough tourist attractions sites to make Zimbabwe a world class tourist destination centre.
As you can see there is a lot we want you to do before we warm up to you, and you don’t have time or our patience. Of course we will tolerate you for next few months problematically; don’t forget a hungry educated pen is both a gun and pen. First of all, and I repeat it, give us free and fair elections!
I think I am a no one or nation and this outrage is justified, there is no purpose of nation if it doesn’t allow a frame where happiness zigzags with beauty.
This letter has two distinct cries. One is called Chiduce, an omen of good, and the other is Huitreu, which is extremely unfavourable! Hope you have heard both cries.
Thank you, Ndinotenda, Ngiyabonga
Free and Fair Elections!
“What is your name, Skull?”
There are a couple of years at school I want to talk to you about. There is the year we got a really difficult insufferable Head boy at school. He was too strict. Even if you were friends with him, if he found you on the wrong end of the school rules, he will book you for punishment. And I had my full share of these bookings and detentions. Yes, admit I was a difficult student. But what I also realized, even for those who were never punished by this head boy, they still didn’t like him. Deep down all this insufferable strictness, he was driven by a streak of cruelty. He wallowed in cruelty. The students finally realized this about him. Even on issues where the whole student body was fighting for against the administrators, he always found his side with the administrators, yet his other job was to represent the students to the powers that be. So the students ended up resenting him. The students liked his deputy who was a far better person, wished the deputy was the one at the top. This deputy treated us as adults, respectfully. But the deputy never got the chance to lead us. With the end of this head boy’s term of office we selected another head boy. What the old head boy had made us feel was that office was against the students; we distrusted it, so that this new head boy took off with a student body that already despised the office he was taking over. We didn’t give him time to adjust and show us what he was all about. We distrusted him straight off. We shut him out, we resented him. And he responded exactly like the previous head boy. He punished us. He blocked us. He harassed us and we wished his deputy would get a chance to lead us. But the deputy can only become the head boy only if the head boy leaves his office during his term of office. At school that was highly unlikely, so we had to figure out a way to deal with that, and moved on with our lives.
Emerson, you are the second head boy at this school we are enrolled in for all our lives. This school has a name; Zimbabwe. Emerson you have inherited an office that we despise, that we don’t like because that office was made a monster by Robert Mugabe. It is so offensive to us. Robert used that office to punish us, to kill us, to maim us, to destroy out economy and country, to make us feel like we were nobodies in our school. It’s only him we had to listen to and obey. We learned to hate Robert and the office of the president. Don’t be fooled into thinking we only hated Robert. We hated the whole system, the whole government. We never wished for you to take over like we wished those deputy head boys to take over at school so many moons ago. You were Robert. You are Robert. Here is a tale I want to share with you, Emerson
Some time ago, not so long ago there was this man who felt he had shadows he didn’t understand. He told himself there were shadows that spoke to him when he was asleep but never really grasped what they wanted him to do. And then they started to speak to him even when he was awake, when he was listening, when he wasn’t listening. He heard those shadows speaking deep inside himself. The voices of which were an amalgam of light and shadows flickering, sizzling him with restlessness he didn’t understand or know how to deal with. They told him he had to go to a Well by the end of the village, a disused, dumped Well, where naught kids circled, around the close of the day, singing, calling the old prophet to come and awash them with gold. There is a story, a legend that the Well had dried in another lifetime with the death of an old prophet man of this village when he fell in this Well and died in this well. It was said the prophet man had tried to retrieve a blood tree (Mubvamaropa tree) box that was full of gold. So that, even when the villagers managed to retrieve the dead body of this prophet, it was thought the Well was cursed, yet some thought a ceremony dance around this Well helped to soften the restless and hunger inside souls, a hunger of wealth. These kids were propagating this folklore, though playfully, but in this old man the voice kept whispering to him to go to the Well. It told him that deep inside the Well there was definitely a Mubvamaropa tree box full of treasures. The voice told him to go the Well and excavate this treasure trove.
This man, deep in his dreams left for the Well. He knew he had to listen to this voice and free himself from its restlessness. He had to go there to find wealth for himself and his people. In this night the moon was a bruise on the skies, it emitted reddish wounds of flowers of light, the whole night was in bubbles of voices beckoning, wishing him to keep going, to keep moving, and he could only obey these voices. He couldn’t make himself stop. He got to this Well in the early hours of morning. It was surreal, he searched around for the rope the people of that far off time had used to excavate the old prophet man with and he found it was still there, waiting for him like a left over log to use to light up a fire in a world of no trees. He took a small stone and threw it into the Well to measure how deep the Well was; by noting the time it took for the stone to hit the box of treasure. The thumb hit of this mubvamaropa tree told him the rope was long enough to reach the bottoms. He immersed the rope with a hook attacked to its end into the Well. He felt it hit something and he felt it hook it. He starts drawing it out. He felt the weight. He knew he had finally rounded up on his voices. The expectations he had for the treasures. He kept drawing it until something hang on top of the Well’s mouth. It had the shape, not of a box. He reached his hand to touch it, to see it. He was asleep so he couldn’t really see it with his shut eyes, but he used his fingers to feel it, to see it. His hands closed on this object. He touches two holes on its top; and a opening below them belies a mouth. He knew it was the skull he was holding. He asks this skull,
WHAT’S YOUR NAME, SKULL? But the skull didn’t answer him. He was angry and like Moses throwing the tablets on the ground in the bible, he threw it on the ground. He cried to the space above him
WHERE IS MY BOX OF WEALTH, WHY DID YOU SEND ME THIS SKULL?
Nothing answers him. He takes the skull in his hands, he looks at it again with his fingers, and he felt a song in his heart telling him it was the skull of his mentor. The skull looked familiar, like his head on his body. He touches his head, he felt he was touching his mentor’s head. So he looked at the skull again and tears begun flowing down his face. The front porch of his brain knew he was himself in this skull. He was the skull. He asks the skull again,
WHAT IS YOUR NAME, SKULL?
Only he heard his own voice askance
He took the skull and put it on his head, and it fitted him well. He knew he was the skull.
This is how we know you are the skull. It is your story’s life, Emerson. Don’t ask us how we came to know of this, we only know! This is how we know you are Robert. This is how we know we are dealing with Robert’s skull. No, Emerson we are not going to give you time. No, I have no reason to think you will be different from your skull. Don’t forget we know you were with Robert at the Well trying to excavate the box full of wealth in Marange, and that you helped him make us hate the office of the president, the government. Don’t be surprised when everything you do or touch is going to create noise, anger, bitterness and displeasure with the people. What are the sounds for but to hear what isn’t there. It’s your voice you will be hearing. Dear president, our apologies, we will chop you off the living skull on your head.
You are Robert Mugabe. It’s you who hurt us for 37 years. It’s you who destroyed the country for 37 years. The country is empty. I think if I were to go home now and knock on the Zimbabwean blue skies, I would hear the hallow sound of my own empty hands penning this missive in all that Zimbabwean blue. It’s you who stole the elections for 37 years; it’s you who burned down our homes, maimed people who were against you. If you think I am fibbing go to Kwekwe today and ask the people there what they think of you. Ask the Kwekwe people who burned down Blessing Chebundo’s home, who killed a number of activists in Kwekwe. Emerson, it’s you who killed thousands of the Matabele people. Despite the fact that you are always saying it’s not you who led the genocide, ask the Matabele people who killed their families. They know it’s you. The whole country knows it’s you. Yes, we know they were a lot of people involved in that madness (Sidney Sekeremayi, Perence Shiri, Solomon Mujuru and the army, Edson Shirihuru, Kevin Woods, Menard Muzariri, the CIO people, and you Emerson, Robert Mugabe, his deputies and cabinet, even Chiwengwa… all these a closeted plausibility of chihauhaus, come back Joshua Nkomo!). Oh, Chiwengwa can as well say what you saying too, to excuse himself since he was at the 1 Infantry Brigade in Bulawayo not the monster 5 Infantry brigade based in Kwekwe that Perence Shiri lead as they grounded down the Matebele people. Chiwengwa provided support to Shiri’s 5 Brigade. You two can say you were not there when you were there, but we all know it’s a lie. Even a wind takes with it evidence of where it has been. Violence is a product of systemlessness as much as a pillar of lootercracy, Emerson. Who did the target killing of the politicians and leaders of the Gukurahundi? It’s the CIO. Who tried to kill Nkomo as he skirted out of the country in woman dressing, running from your thugs the CIO who were on his tail. You were the minister of security, Emerson. Tell us why Mugabe fired you, if you were not involved. Don’t think we are such fools we will accept you didn’t know what your subordinates like Kevin Woods were doing in the ministry you led. Don’t think we are dump goats we don’t know the army couldn’t have done that work without the intelligence knowledge it got from the CIO. It is the CIO that helped the army extirpates the Matabele. You were the head of the organisation, you crushed them in your hands, you are covered in blood that dripped from the people to become empty shells, like testimony. So don’t tell us lies, no amount of lies will ever make us think of you differently as your skull, Robert. A caterpillar out of botulism does not become a butterfly. Stop trying to persuade us you are clean, prove it. Come out clean. Tell us what really happened in Matabeleland. This experiment is to see who has been killing us, Emerson. The experiment is about a lot I don’t know, the experiment is about silent things talking in the dark of now. You are Robert and the Zimbabweans have no engagement rings for you man; they can’t commit themselves to a thug boss!
Emerson, it’s you who killed your rivalries and Robert’s rivalries in the ZANUPF power soaps we have come to expect over the years. It is you who has pushed out those who blocked your ambitions to one day succeed Robert and come to terms with your voices inside you. It’s you who we blame for the killing of Solomon Mujuru, Learnmore Jongwe, the generals, the political commissars (Movern Mahachi, Elliot Manyika, Border Gezi), and everyone who was against your ambitions and your skull, Robert. It’s you we blame for everything that Zimbabwe is; oh we might as well blame you for global warming! Let my pen reveal what you can’t revel to us and if I am free to speak loosely, the predator could easily be revealed. It’s you who forced Robert to take farms from the whites, you who gutted the white people. Don’t think you can fool us now when you say you have changed, that you now want the white people back. An eagle no matter how much it cleans itself is always black. Do you know each pattern is different, like a snowflake but none is as cold as you are? It’s you who pushed Robert to send our soldiers to the DRC to fight a war that has never benefited the generality of Zimbabweans, but rather depleted every foreign currency reserve the country had and pushed us into inflation. It’s you who looted the DRC of its diamonds and made billions out of that Lootercracy. Ask the United Nations, they know your money was from blood diamonds you looted in the DRC and at that Well in Marange. It’s you Emerson who stole elections that the opposition had won in 2008. Wasn’t that you we heard who told your skull that he wasn’t going anywhere, and took the whole country to ransom as you played with the work of our pens until Chiwengwa’s gun ruled us again? Emerson, it’s you who helped create the securocratic leadership style that now subject us to poverty, it’s you who re-created the monster Joint Operations Command that has run the country, de facto basis since year 2000.
It’s you Emerson who took the country through a coup just a few weeks ago, and hauled your skull to the ground. You opened your big mouth which can only be described as that of a comic book character, gulped everything down at once. Didn’t we hear you from foreign lands asking the skull what his name was? Didn’t we hear your voice in the voice of your chummy Chiwengwa asking Robert who his name was whilst his distance from our streets disagrees with us, by imprisoning Robert in his beautiful blue roof casket? With frightening speed, actions took hold of Robert in a matter of a few days. Didn’t you repeatedly lie to us that it wasn’t a coup, didn’t you say it had no name. You called it operation restore order, you called it a coup which was not a coup, you called it capturing thieves surrounding the president, so why did you capture the skull back into your hands and took it to be yours, why did you fit the skull on your head at the end of the coup. Yes, there was so much love lost between Robert and us. We had buried our love of Robert so many years ago like that village had buried the body of their prophet who had died in that Well. We supported you, we danced around the Well with you Emerson, and we were little children looking for something we didn’t know, whittling away at the silhouette that had kept us captive so that the night of his resignation we all might sail into drinks and talk and the shared adulations of this small army of joy, the vibrations, the vibe, buzz, bizz bizz, the fear, and in the morning the sweepers would follow the parade march. But you hijacked that dream for us too. Even though we danced with you we knew the Well was not clean. We knew you were not clean. We supported you because we felt it was better to deal out one monster at a time. Now Robert is gone, don’t think we are fools to think his Mugabeism is buried with his body, no. You have his skull on your head, Emerson. We still see the shadows. We know ZANUPF is a group of look alikes/ dress alikes/ think alikes/ looter alikes, near insanity Bono rock music look alikes who concocted to distance themselves from their boss when the people called it quits, and your ZANUPF supporters even know you are interchangeable, and that when these look alikes are kicked, other Robert Mugabe look alikes will take over like allusions of the Mussolinis eating Ethiopian checken (chicken) bones in the form of the Mengestus. You are just a new leader of an old sect. We even know you are more dangerous than Robert; that Mugabe’s imaginations have hybridized into monster crops in you! Yet it’s better to deal with the head of the snake than its tails we have been doing all along. Now you are out on the open.
We are going to fight you until you are gone too. We are on you, until we eat your footsteps in our sleep. I cast out a proud call to you Emerson; we will swallow stones, grasses, poison, bitterness, molasses, stuff our mouths with emptiness, depth and height for the next few months until the elections. Emerson, we will consume birds, beasts, locusts, monsters, fish, glue, sadza, wind clay salt, ripples…, until we become this for you, stone and only stone, until we push you out too. We know it is good to be alive, even on a leash, to test our reflexes. You are from ZANUPF. So as far as we concerned we gave you 37 years and you rundown the country. 37, 37, 37!. We are not going to give you another 37 years to ruin us further. We have waited too long for uhuru, and the georgics of waiting beyond now are time as a torn cloth. We know you have nothing to offer us. We know you can only resort to buying our votes in the next 8 months or so until the elections. We see you have started the buying us programme. You think it impresses us that you have refused to use Robert’s chariot of fire, the limousine, gold plated with black gold of the blood he bleed from us over the years as he paraded and cocked all over our roads. Of course your emergence demand a makeover that would seem to impart change, simplicity and maturity, perhaps a whiff of Africa’s present darling, a magufulication! If you think it impresses us you cut back your congress expenditure from 8 mil to 2 mil. If you think we have bought into those promises you made that you are now born again and should be absolved for killings you did under Robert, and that you now want the white people back, now that you have the crown, making it seem as if it was Mugabe only who was wrong all along. If you wanted this done you should have done it yesterday. Everyone knows Mugabe was against farm invasions, tried to fight you and the goons to leave the farms. If you think we can easily buy into this fluffy thing that you now want to compensate the whites for taking their farms forcefully, with what money, Emerson. I will come to that letter. If you want it done right now put pride aside man, and tell us the truth and pray to space. Achieve a better form of purity, Emerson! If you think we have bought into your lies that you now want to resuscitate the economy you destroyed, that you have started by cutting down the number of ministries in your government, and if I may ask you, why is there some process toward militarizing the government. This unassembled cabinet is waiting for its own loot in this mineral rich country. I might come back to that, no promises. Emerson, just know that all that you have done or purporting you will do doesn’t impress us. First thing first, Emerson!
We have an election next year. Make that right, first of all. Give us a free and fair election. Win or lose it fairly, then if you win fairly we will start trusting your good intentions. Rest awhile; we are not even there yet, not even with a fair election. There are sins you have to apologize and pay for, for humankind’s swelling expenses. I will come to that later. Let’s stay on the elections now. I said we know all these promises were to buy us into believing you now care for us as we toward the elections. Whereas your skull gave us food and agric implements, sometimes used panties to cloth up our open business, you thought you could better your skull by offering us what we have clamored for all along to fill up our flesh, thus to flesh up your skull too. I said we know you are not the deputy head boy of this school. You are Robert, the head boy!
On free and fair elections here are the areas I want you to right. Fire Rita Makarau and her gang at ZEC. We know she is the dust that clung around the skull you have in your hands. She is Robert’s lapdog, she stole the 2013 election for Robert, awarding him and his party ZANUPF the two thirds majority they have now. Just think of it. How could your old decaying skull get a two thirds majority in a village that so hated the shadows of your skulls. No, she has to go. The second issue is ZEC should be totally independent, chosen by civil society institutions like the Judiciary Service Commission, or be chosen by the Parly, with equal representations of parties that constitute our Parly. Not by the executive, not by the immediate players, not by oncoming players. The Registrar General is another public office that needs to be removed from your tentacles. Let’s have the Parly overseeing that one too, or the judiciary.
The next reform area is on the military and security establishment. Zimbabwe is now a blank terrain, surrounded by two armies, one wields a gun and another, a pen. We want the army off our political processes. Tell Chiwengwa and his power grabbing goons to go back to the barracks. Tell those monsters to focus their energies on military issues, not political processes. We need a law that makes it clear that its treason for the army to enter our streets to temper with political process, payable by jail sentence. If they have nothing to do at the barracks, they should help in the construction of schools, clinics, roads etc. If they are tired of mooching off our taxes, if they are tired of training without a fight to engage in, export them to the world over, the world is full of strife. It would earn us foreign currency. Employ them to farm the millions of hectors that remain uncultivated every year and grow our agricultural industry and other industries. Apparently those goats are employable and there is a lot that needs to be done to build back Zimbabwe. They should leave politics to politicians, law to lawmakers and judiciary, theirs in military. We don’t have a war in Zimbabwe. Nobody is killing the other in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has next to nothing possibility of degenerating into a war situation like Somalia which your chummy used as the cry call to enter the streets. We are civilized. We don’t kill each other in Zimbabwe. This is not bloody Central or West Africa! Emerson, the military needs to be reformed, and those who have nothing to do should be retired. The heads of the military have to be retired too. We need new thinking, fresh perspectives in this organisation. We have over 30 000 active soldiers- that’s too much for a country as small a Zimbabwe, a country that has no possibility of generating a war. What do we need all those soldiers for? There is nobody in the SADC region who wants to attack us, we don’t even have any territorial dispute with any country in the SADC. And on top of that we have over 22 000 reserve soldiers in the form of war veterans, and these have been used to destabilize us, destroy opposition parties and make Zimbabwe ungovernable by messing with our political processes. Retire all these veterans, too. They have no use. Those who want to be politicians, let them do that on a personal level, not using our taxes to rape us further. We need a small highly technological and advanced force that focuses on their mandates in the constitution. It’s no longer a game of numbers nowadays. Look at American wars for the last few years. They are winning fights without deploying a lot of soldiers on the ground. Cull this lot. We need about 15 000 soldiers for the size of Zimbabwe. Still on security reforms, the police and civil security establishment needs reforms. Their mandates are to protect the civilians and uphold the law. They should move from the police state that they are now and have made Zimbabwe to be, into a people state police. The CIO should focus on country security not politicians security, or party games that they are involved in.
The next reform area I want see done before the elections is on the media. Open up the airwaves. Licence more players in this important field. Make this “fourth organ” of state strong and independent. We need new independent broadcasters. For us to still have 1 TV station, 37 years down the line is an insult on us. For us to still have only 6 national radio stations that are all controlled by the government, one way or another is an insult. For us to have very few local community radio stations is simply bad. Open up the airwaves and leave the journalists and media people to do their jobs in a free and fair environment, not to report according to party lines. ZANUPF is not Zimbabwe. I know that because I didn’t see the memo that changed Zimbabwe to be ZANUPF republic. The media’s job is to serve the people not politicians. Allow free and fair reporting on the national broadcaster, give competing parties into the next year’s elections fair share of airwaves time. Leave the internet alone. Leave people to express what they think in these internet social platforms. Let the information be shared in a free and fair way. It’s laughable you have a ministry that focuses on that. I wonder what flimsy ministry you are going to create next, the ministry for love!
The other reform area is on the commission that deals with constituency demarcation. The job should be given to an independent organisation, independent from your executive power mongering hands. The constituency delimitation and demarcation should be overseen by Parly or judiciary appointed organization. We know how you have used this exercise to give yourself and your party unfair advantage over opposition parties. This is how you got two thirds majority in the Parly now. How did I come to this when I am not a statistician? When I realized the impossibility of counting to infinity the millions in Zimbabwe, I have decided to vomit these numbers. It’s a big flat joke to think that a city like Chitungwiza that crawls with people from every hole, over 1.5 million people, will have 5 constituencies, yet a district like Gokwe will have the equal number of constituencies. And this capital should be damned, Harare, which has plus 2 million people has not more than 20 constituencies yet provinces with fewer people than Harare have more constituencies. Don’t lie to us that three major urban centers (Harare, Chitungwiza and Bulawayo) with more than 4 million people combined together would not even have a fifth of the constituencies of Zimbabwe. 4 million people is almost a third of Zimbabwe’s population. Protest all you want, but there is a grain of truth in these vomits. Let the statistician illuminate this beyond mathematical doubt, if you want. We know you and your party have used this organisation to give more constituencies to rural areas that have more ZANUPF supporters more constituencies than those that are predominantly opposition. Get your power mongering hands off this cake, Emerson.
The next port of call is the judiciary. I find a judiciary that legitimatizes a coup suspect. A coup is a coup, that’s the only name it is known by; otherwise we might as well call it a soup. We all stumbled as we were struck in the shock of it! But a simple truth is soldiers in a constitutional democracy can only come into the streets in times of war or civil emergences, not to right a party. Chiwengwa was clear why he decided to enter our streets from the beginning of it. He wanted to clean up the mess in the ZANUPF party, period. What happened later with major general SB Moyo is known as sanitizing a wrong. I have said it before ZANUPF is not a country. Why didn’t he enter the streets to right the MDC when it had power problems? We have an election to sort the country, not the army. And the sick thing is if a judiciary is blind to how the law works, how are we going to have faith in such an institution like that. Chiwengwa is not the commander-in-chief of Zimbabwe Defense Forces. Mugabe was the boss. So for Chiwengwa to come into our streets it had to be signed off by the president. It was Mugabe who had the right to allow the soldiers to invade the streets and break down government as they did. It doesn’t matter if it was for the right causes or wrong causes. It’s a wrong precedent the army and courts have set. What if the same army decides, in the future, to invade the streets again without your consent and hold the country by the gun? It’s dangerous to have an army that doesn’t operate under the country’s constitution. There is nothing legal about that coup. So we need an overhaul of our judiciary. We want them to be independent of the executive levers and authority, to be able to safeguard our constitution against the monster that invaded our streets. The military that is bend on instituting what they want on the electorate and a conniving ruling party and cowering judiciary. Make no mistake, Emerson; a day will reckon when someone in your party will use the same army to hold you at gunpoint like they did to Robert and call it a coup that is not a coup, and with a stupid judiciary like the one that has just sanitized the coup this army will remove you from power too.
The other reform area is to do with the electoral law. Let’s have an independent justice body that deals with the election contestation issues. Don’t forget every time there was a dispute this judiciary has just sat of the cases that the opposition had brought to the courts. None have been dealt with; some never saw a court date. It took the judiciary 5 years to the next election to not decide the 2002, and 2005 election disputes, and then the cases became null and void as another election became due. We need an election body made up of representatives of several facets of the government, country, parties, experts, civil society, NGOs, local authorities, religious groupings…, and these would decide on elections matters and do so before a president-elect is inaugurated. There is no free and fair election in subjecting the electorate to a president who has won a disputed election.
The last issue I want to touch on is of allowing observers and monitors to observe and monitor our elections. Allow all those who want to come to observe to come. Allow and protect party monitors to monitor elections without fear for their lives. We want to see an election where the opposition can be able to deploy monitors in areas like Muzarabani and Uzumba Maramba Pfungwe without fear for their lives. Without which, don’t lie to us and your cohorts of ZANUPF supporters like SADC and AU that the election has been free and fair
These are areas I want to see tackled before elections next year. As you can see, Emerson, it’s a lot of work that needs your focus, rather than trite issues like you have refused to use the limousine crap. We know ZANUPF party is a master at deflecting people’s views to buy into an illusion that things are now fine to win over their vote. Those are only trapdoors that don’t get us home. Mugabe’s regime was our knowledge pond: we are graduates revolting. Code to the core, Mnangagwa you do so move, always you do so move man, to maim us, and now you do so move, you move to soothe us. We know this gimmick; we know this thing about limousine, of catching the said to be thieves is just useless noise. You are hiding from the election reform issues, cradling to your old ways, hidding, stealing, thuggery... If you are really serious about growing Zimbabwe again, do the reforms first and give us a free and fair election for the first time. If you win as I have noted that before we will support you to the hilt as you rebuilt the country you destroyed. It’s a museum of things for us to forget too, always afraid we might forget the distance we have travelled, the trouble of stopping now. Oh we can’t afford to stop now. There are no stops in these roads of gravel. The angry gestures over our former authorities and current authorities in the letter are only means in the roads we are travelling in. These roads of gravel we are travelling in will lead to freedom of the constructions our dreams. We are in phases of tilling and harvesting, November’s rain fire lures us to our freedoms.
We will accept you on one condition! First of all declare what you have, and how you got it. Tell us how much you looted from that Well in Marange. Everyone in your new government should do that too. If you can at least prove to us what happened to the 15 billion you found in that Mubvamaropa box in the Well in Marange, then we will believe all this noise. I said first of all pay back what you stole, show us what you benefited from through corruption, push your cabal in the ZANUPF to declare what they benefited from through corruption, and then the whole country will do likewise. Otherwise this is just a sad excuse you are using to blindfold us to steal an election with, and when you have won then you will revert back to business as usual in something that is continuous, alooter continue. Oh don’t confuse democracy and alootercracy, even if they both end in –acy…no, not that! Stop it, subjected!
Another gimmick you have narrowed on is the land issue. You know it is an emotional issue. You have promised the white people you are going to pay them for stealing their lands. Who is going to pay for that? I never got a piece of land from that exercise, never stole land from the white people, never benefited from it, in fact the bulk of the country didn’t benefit from that, why must our taxes be used to pay for what we never benefited from. Rather the exercise has made the whole country poor. Those who looted the farms must pay the white people for the loot. We are waiting for the land reform audit. Those who have more than 1 farm, they must return these to the white people they displaced to loot. They are practically hundreds, if not thousands of these farms that can be returned to their rightful owners before you start making us pay for your looting. How can we Zimbabweans be made to compensate white people to allow people like Robert Mugabe, Edna Madzongwe, Shuvai Mahofa to keep more than 5 farms each, farms they are not even using. Don’t forget when you arm twisted your skull to enter the farms and allow your goons to displace the white people you lied to us that you will each only get a farm, not 5, not 14 for one person. If you want to earn our respects, stop subjecting us under taxes we didn’t benefit from. It’s us people who have suffered from these stupid policies like the land invasion. You meted poverty on us. And we have become who we are and learned how to cry and produce material evidence of our sadness. Don’t think we will be patient as you continue subjecting us to this callousness. We are wild now, we are not afraid of your tanks. Look, we are saying, “we are sad”, we are hurt enough, we won’t accept more pain. You and your band of crooks benefited from the land reform, so please payback the whites from the rent you have accrued from using those farms for nearly 20 years. There is no excuse why you can’t payback the white people what you stole from them. We see this for what it is. It’s another election gimmick.
In the meanwhile open up industry, clean up the mess you created with the indigenization programme. Chunk that law into the Robert Mugabe dustbin. Create attractive investment opportunities environments in the country to allow industry to grow. Create free tax zones in the country. Use the Silicon Valley/ Shanghai method that has made China and the USA super rich, allow investors to invest in tax free heavens, especially companies that employ more people, thus this will cut back on unemployment rates and boast government tax base. Focus on creating solid banking structures in Zimbabwe, stabilize the currency, and control the financial sector. Clean up the mess at the mining sector; make it secure for investments and also secure our taxes from the mining sector. We can’t afford to lose another 15 billion dollars. Make tourism and services industries grow. This is an easy cash cow as they are fewer investments involved to make money in this sector, than in industry, mining and agriculture. Clean up our image in the international community. This will encourage more tourists to visit. We have enough tourist attractions sites to make Zimbabwe a world class tourist destination centre.
As you can see there is a lot we want you to do before we warm up to you, and you don’t have time or our patience. Of course we will tolerate you for next few months problematically; don’t forget a hungry educated pen is both a gun and pen. First of all, and I repeat it, give us free and fair elections!
I think I am a no one or nation and this outrage is justified, there is no purpose of nation if it doesn’t allow a frame where happiness zigzags with beauty.
This letter has two distinct cries. One is called Chiduce, an omen of good, and the other is Huitreu, which is extremely unfavourable! Hope you have heard both cries.
Thank you, Ndinotenda, Ngiyabonga
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