President Morgan Tsvangirai’S Tuesday Message To The People Of Zimbabwe
April 6 2004
We buried Francis Chinozvinya (22) at Granville Cemetery in Harare on Sunday afternoon, a week after he was gunned down in broad daylight when a rowdy band of Zanu PF supporters raided the home of James Makore, the MDC candidate in the just-ended Zengeza by-election.
Francis could not be buried earlier because the police kept on delaying the processing of his clearance papers, saying there was a shortage of pathologists to conduct the post-mortem.
Zanu PF tried to put a brave face over the death of Francis. But a day after the tragedy, that party sent an emissary to the Chinozvinya family with a strange proposal. Zanu PF wanted to buy a coffin for Francis and to assist with the funeral expenses. The party claimed Francis was a member of that party. The family was surprised by these insulting overtures. They accordingly rejected them.
Hundreds of our activists and supporters lost their lives at the hands of state security agents, rogue war veterans and Zanu PF supporters during the past five years. No arrests or prosecutions were made, even in cases where the perpetrators are known to the community.
The latest election-related death of Francis highlights one of the major problems confronting the democratic movement in Zimbabwe since the emergence of the MDC on the political scene. Our opponents have to resort to force to deal with the rising MDC support every day, contrary to Robert Mugabe’s view that our party is ready for burial.
For two years, there was absolute peace and tranquility in Zengeza. Hell broke loose immediately after Zanu PF deployed thousands of party militias and soldiers into the constituency. It is a pattern Zanu PF is using to drive away people from voting stations, to promote apathy, and to cause alarm and despondency as a way of discouraging people from exercising their right to vote. In Zengeza, the militias randomly attacked the residents, with the result that some Zanu PF supporters were caught in the melee.
The questions I posed at the beginning of the Zengeza campaign remain unanswered. Why would a popular party or government beat up its own supporters? Why would Zanu PF, if it is popular in Zengeza for example, bus in thugs and soldiers to attack and kill residents of that constituency, including young Francis?
I stated that militias are a product of failed regimes; regimes that thrive on terror. In the case of Zengeza, peace returned to the area as soon as the militias were withdrawn, immediately after the announcement of the result.
We understand 50 000 thoroughly brainwashed youths have since graduated at various training camps countrywide. Their brief is to create as much chaos as possible and confuse the electoral process in favour of Zanu PF. Their skills were tested in Zengeza; the practice will be perfected in Lupane next month.
Zanu PF’s idea is to remove the partisan members of the civil service from the front-end of the party’s campaign in an attempt to sanitize violence. The party wants to present a picture of an election distressed by inter-party political clashes arising from political turf wars. Zanu PF wants to argue that such electoral patterns are common and acceptable in Africa and therefore the election, though slightly imperfect, is the best Zimbabwe can produce and must be deemed legitimate. This is incorrect. A firm restoration of the rule of law could prove this opportunistic theory wrong.
Francis Chinozvinya’s death shows that Mugabe and his party are left with only one political card: violence. Without violence, they can't get anywhere. That is why they want to give violence what they perceive to be an acceptable face; to make violence part of our political culture. To them, withdrawing violence as a formula means giving up power to the MDC.
As long as Zanu PF invests in these idle youths by turning them into killing machines devoid of any morals or a conscience, Zimbabwe will never see a free and fair election. The militias must be disbanded. Their continued presence in politics is a sign of Zanu PF’s weakness.
After Zengeza, the regime bombarded the nation with all sorts of make-belief theories and over-boiled propaganda in a futile attempt to portray Zanu PF as a party on a recovery path. Zanu PF will never recover because the wounds it inflicted onto the people are too deep to be forgotten quickly.
By clinging to power into his dotage; by ruining the economic and social fabric of Zimbabwe, the only impact Robert Mugabe could have on the nation could arise out of a graceful exit.
We are on record indicating our willingness to assist with a programme that could lead to a soft landing for a beleaguered regime considered, nationally and internationally, to have outlived his usefulness. We wish to state once again that we have no intention of pursuing a campaign of retribution once we assume power. There is no need for Zanu PF to go on a warpath against the people, purely out of fear of the MDC.
In March 2001, I wrote a personal letter to Mugabe in a bid to halt the downward slide our nation was facing arising from a selfish approach to the resolution of the crisis. Nothing came out it.
The MDC leadership has done its best to try and break the impasse and clear obstacles to national dialogue. We believe we have a national responsibility, beyond our personal interests, to seek a lasting solution to our problems and end the current wave of anxiety and untold suffering that has befallen our people for some time.
Zanu PF can force itself onto the people. They can celebrate their paper crowns as victories. But the solution to the crisis will remain elusive. They are wasting time, abusing national resources and driving the nation towards anarchy.
Killing Francis Chinozvinya and scores of MDC activists will never produce an amicable solution to our deepening crisis. If anything, such actions harden people’s attitudes and further polarize the country making the process of healing and nation-building even more difficult.
Despite Robert Mugabe’s public utterances on the need for unity and political discussions between his party, Zanu PF, and the MDC, his regime continues to push itself away from the people through a web of repressive measures.
As leaders, we can register a significant shift in our political mindsets and in our personal attitudes if we were to confer directly to identify the main impediment to sincere and principled dialogue. The Church has tried without success.
Our neighbours have put a lot of effort in attempting to rescue us from inflicting further damage onto ourselves. Mugabe told the nation in December 2003 that he was willing to open the way for formal dialogue between Zanu PF and the MDC. What happened to that pledge?
We must clear our misguided suspicions, address deep-rooted misconceptions and accord the nation the necessary confidence to push our country towards a final resolution of the crisis. Zanu PF is refusing to accept its responsibility in this regard. The nation cannot withstand any further battering. At a great risk to our own political credibility as a political party, we continue to advocate patience and self-control to our supporters. Our task could be made easier if our opponents in Zanu PF were to reciprocate.
While Zanu PF stands in jubilation over fraudulent results from fake elections, the crisis in Zimbabwe is now at a frightening level.
The endurance of the people has now been stretched to the extreme limit and there is no telling how much longer they can continue to tolerate the anguish that is multiplying itself almost on a daily basis. Zimbabweans are in a mess because of serious questions, demanding serious answers, which our people are asking every day. People need to know why we cannot have a clean voters roll.
A record of the public hearings of the Mugabe-sanctioned Constitutional Commission in 1999 shows that Tobaiwa Mudede, the current Registrar General of Elections, has been thoroughly discredited and unfit to run elections in Zimbabwe. If the Mugabe regime is serious about democracy why does it allow Mudede and his administration to preside over our national elections? In short, people want an explanation as to why Zanu PF is not interested in an Independent Electoral Commission – a body the people said was an absolute necessity during the same Constitutional Commission hearings in 1999.
One of the issues highlighting Mudede’s incompetence is the perennial dispute over the state of the voters roll. Zimbabweans wonder why Zanu PF and the regime are against the introduction of a completely fresh voter registration exercise done by an independent statutory body with the help of the United Nations.
A new voters roll could be distributed widely to all political parties. Zimbabweans are asking why the actual voting process cannot take place on a single day, using translucent boxes, with the counting of the ballots done at each polling station.
The majority have yet to get answers as to why it takes two days for a mere 16 000 voters, as in the case of Zengeza, to cast their ballots. In other countries, with a relatively lower literacy rate than Zimbabwe, the process is completed in a single day.
In South Africa next week, for example, more than 20 million registered voters are expected to vote in a national election in a single day. That election has 35 political parties contesting for political power. The counting of South African ballots will be done at the polling stations. The results will be endorsed by party election agents on the spot. Surely a tiny nation like Zimbabwe, with two main political parties vying for just about five million registered votes, does not need three or four days of voting?
Why must we have ballot boxes, made of scrap wood and containing material so sensitive that can make or break the nation, being carted from one place to another over a period of time? As was the case in the last election, MDC election agents were assaulted and chased away from 40 percent of the polling stations and barred from verifying the exercise.
People cannot understand why Zanu PF is keen to legally limit their basic freedoms by restricting the frequency of their meetings through the Public Order and Security Act and by refusing to allow the majority access to the public radio and television.
Strangely, Zanu PF does not seem to have any answers to these basic questions. We are challenging them to search for the answers and explain to the people if they are as democratic as they claim to be. We are challenging them to explain why they think killing voters, like Francis Chinozvinya, is a cause for celebration and an indication that, by so doing, they were burying the MDC.
Free and fair elections must pass a public confidence test. Why do Zimbabwean elections always fail that test? By raising these issues, we are not asking for a favour from Zanu PF. These are the minimum standards required for a legitimate election. They are based on the SADC protocols, which Zimbabwe ratified in 2001.
Zimbabweans are determined to stop Zanu PF from abusing the electoral process by claiming to be organizing an election when, in fact, what Zanu PF seeks to do is to engage in a fraud that leads to a pre-determined outcome.
The people are ready to take on the regime for it cannot continue to cheat the nation all the time. The people are determined to overcome their problems and to pursue a transparent, rights based approach to national development.
Morgan Tsvangirai
President.
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