The Sunday News
Khumbulani Vodloza Sibanda
Over the past few months, the opposition, the civil society organisations and their owners in the West have been all worked up over what they term the Crisis in Zimbabwe. They lurched from one individual to another and one issue to another in spirited attempts to create the impression of a crisis of global proportions in Zimbabwe but all to no avail. Such is the desperation in the opposition and their handlers’ camp ahead of 2023.
There is no crisis in Zimbabwe
Despite the fully funded desperate efforts to tarnish the image of the country, Government has acquitted itself very well notwithstanding challenges such as the sanctions, the Covid-19 pandemic, two consecutive years of drought and brazen diplomatic attacks from the United States embassy in Zimbabwe, which has virtually reduced itself into a local opposition. Even progressive nations such as Russia have noted the country’s resilience and duly noted it.
When the Russian Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Nikolai Krasilnikov handed over to President Emmerson Mnangagwa a donation of eight tonnes of Covid-19 personal protective equipment from his country recently, he dismissed the reports from Zimbabwe’s detractors that the country was unstable and in a crisis. The Ambassador said that “Zimbabwe is a peaceful, stable and a very strong country. We appreciate the measures being undertaken by Government under the leadership of His Excellency, the President Cde Mnangagwa to curb the (Covid-19) pandemic.”
Even the Ace Magashule-led African National Congress (ANC) team which visited Zanu-PF recently could not be bullied by the usual forces to endorse the crisis in Zimbabwe false narrative. They noted that, yes, the country was battling a number of challenges which included the illegal sanctions, but it was not in a crisis. People were going about their normal lives. This is the same message that President Mnangagwa and other progressive Zimbabweans have been telling the world.
Desperation
The opposition and other anti-Government elements have been dazzled and dizzied by Zanu-PF’s continued stay in power despite their best efforts. This is especially so as the 2023 harmonised elections beckon. Each passing year adds to the cumulative indictment against the MDC leadership’s failure to unseat Zanu-PF. It is a bad report for the United States which desperately wants Zanu-PF out of power for daring to reclaim her land from white former commercial farmers.
Following senior MDC-Alliance member, Tapiwa Mashakada’s veiled revelation that the US embassy had a hand in the fake abduction of Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA) president, Dr Peter Magombeyi in September last year, it is now a public secret that the West is going to great extents to create a crisis to justify removing Zanu-PF from power. The claims in May of the alleged abduction of MDC-Alliance activists, Cecilia Chimbiri, Joana Mamombe and Netsai Marowa demonstrate the depths to which the opposition and its backers are prepared to achieve the unachievable. The US Ambassador to Zimbabwe betrayed his desperation last week in an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (Sabc) when he counted a drought among the challenges which the country is set to face in 2021 despite the 2020/21 rain season forecast indicating normal to above normal rainfall.
Even the push for protests ostensibly against corruption despite laid down lockdown regulations by journalist, Hopewell Chin’ono and Transform Zimbabwe leader, Jacob Ngarivhume in July indicate a determined effort to bolster the crisis claims by accusing Government of using the Covid-19 pandemic to suppress citizens. This is despite other countries such as Australia being on the news for arresting a pregnant woman for inciting people to protest.
Some South Africans such as Sabc Foreign Correspondent Sophie Mokoena, former Democratic Alliance (DA) leader, Mmusi Maimane and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader, Julius Malema have also been roped in to build the non-existent crisis in the country. Even Zimbabwe-born Peter Ndoro of the Sabc has been at the forefront the desperate attempts to present his home country as being in a crisis. Malema has castigated President Mnangagwa for the compensation of white former farmers but the world knows that he (Malema) is under spotlight for wrong reasons after, together with some of his senior members were fingered in the looting of the VBS Mutual Bank to its knees. Going by Maimane’s tweets, it is clear that the crisis narrative is calculated to place Zimbabwe on the Southern African Development Community (Sadc), African Union (UA) and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) agendas with the ultimate aim of unseating Zanu-PF through an American invasion.
The incident in which two criminals shot two soldiers, killing one and injuring the other in Chivhu recently, further exposed the MDC-Alliance’s desperation for a crisis in Zimbabwe.
When the criminals were killed a day after the incident in a gunfire exchange with the police and army about 15 kilometres outside the town, the party’s spokesperson, Fadzayi Mahere and, Human Rights Watch Southern Africa Director, Dewa Mavhinga led other detractors in accusing Government of killing the murderers extra-judicially. However, most Zimbabweans saw through the trick and called them out for asking the police and the army to do the impossible tasking of apprehending criminals who were shooting at them. Not even members of the American army negotiated with Osama Bin Laden when they located him in Pakistan on 2 May 2011. They just killed him.
Staring at defeat
The frenzied chants of a crisis in Zimbabwe have their origins in Westerners such as the American embassy in Zimbabwe and the fractured opposition who have spared no resource or effort to ensure that Zanu-PF is removed from power. After two solid decades of debilitating sanctions which were calculated to set Zimbabweans against their Government and put the opposition into power, they failed dismally.
Instead of Zanu-PF falling, the ruling party has been running rings around the opposition every election season. Instead of Zimbabwe collapsing socio-economically, the country remains stable and peaceful. As Zimbabwe celebrated her 40th independence anniversary, its detractors were also evaluating their efforts and the report card did not look good hence the renewed and spirited onslaught on the country and its people. How can the US Embassy in Zimbabwe and its local hatchet men in the MDC-Alliance explain how the millions of dollars, which were sunk into the anti-Zanu-PF fight over two decades by the US government, all went down the drain?
It is therefore clear that both parties are staring defeat in the face and this is getting to their brains to the extent that they are now seeing a crisis in everything Zimbabwean. The MDC-Alliance leader, Nelson Chamisa seized the party’s reins with the promise of undoing his predecessor, the late Morgan Tsvangirai’s 17 years of playing second fiddle to Zanu-PF. His electoral loss in 2018 continues to haunt him especially as 2023 beckons. Each successive US Ambassador to Zimbabwe comes to the country under the pressure of succeeding at what his predecessor failed to do. This explains the incumbent, Brian Nichols’ undiplomatic behaviour which has seen him behaving like the MDC-Alliance’s political commissar. This is why he was desperately seeking audience with Magashule’s team.
Instead of looking for a crisis in Zimbabwe, Chamisa should, instead, look for it in his fractious party which is on the brink of an umpteenth split. Instead of believing the crisis in Zimbabwe hogwash, the world should seriously consider security crises in countries such as Mali and Mozambique.
