While preaching the gospel of peace during the elections, a position which some gullible international officials have believed, on the other hand he is planning with some in his party to employ dirty tricks to get him and his party to win, and turn a blind eye to the election crimes and continue to preach peace on public platforms.
Emmerson Mnangagwa continues to endorse child abuse by paying a blind eye when school children are forced to attend his rallies. There is irrefutable evidence from the rally addressed by Mnangagwa in Mutare where a media story showing a photograph of a child in the company of other children is putting on oversized tee-shirts is shown.
Just like Mugabe, Mnangagwa continues to use chiefs to campaign for him. Fortunately, when Mnangagwa gets excited at the prospects of winning the elections he speaks his inner mind, and told a rally in Mutoko this past weekend that he wants chiefs to continue to back him and Zanu PF in this election. The story is published in The Standard, whose owner has publicly thrown his weight behind Mnangagwa’s candidature – thanks to the independent editorial policy at The Standard as the journalists and the Editor want to report things as they are.
While the constitution is very clear that traditional leaders must not take part in party politics, a chief has even been elected as a Zanu PF candidate for the elections, and Emmerson Mnangagwa has not said a word about it, and it is only the civic society making efforts to block the chief’s unconstitutional candidature through the courts. It had to be a court decision which also ruled that Chiefs should stop campaigning for political parties when Chiefs were openly and publicly campaigning for Mnangagwa and Zanu PF. But despite the court decision, the Chiefs have not stopped campaigning for Zanu PF. What can the chiefs do when Mnangagwa himself says at a publicly rally that chiefs must back Zanu PF in the election as he did at Chizungu Primary School in Mutoko on 9 June 2018? What could they do when they were given cars just before the elections, when the country has no ambulances?
While denying using the army in its election campaign, evidence now following the Zanu PF primary elections is that the army has indeed been involved.
The absence of violence does not translate to free and fair election. It is good that the country is experiencing relative peace in the run up to the elections, but Mnangagwa cannot claim credit for that. The 2013 was relatively peaceful as well, but again we all know how chiefs were being abused then. Chiefs have been abused to cow people into voting for Zanu PF since the emergence of the MDC.
With all the evidence contained in this open letter, I:
- Call upon the United Nations to make a pronouncements that preparations for the Zimbabwe 2018 general elections so far have not adhered to constitutional provisions and the results will not be free and fair, and persuade Emmerson Mnangagwa to punish or cause to be brought to court the culprits from his party who have abused children by forcing them to attend his rallies, named chiefs who have made utterances that they will campaign for Mnangagwa and Zanu PF candidates
- Appeal to one brave Zimbabwean, or civic society, to sue Emmerson Mnangagwa for the unconstitutional utterances he made at Chizungu Primary School on Saturday 9 June 2018 that Zanu PF leaders should engage traditional leaders to ensure that the party wins next month’s elections
- Appeal to Zimbabweans registered not to endorse an unconstitutional President who encourages Chiefs to cow people into voting for him by not voting for him. If an aspiring President makes unconstitutional promises while campaigning, what do you expect him to do when you give him presidential powers?
- Zimbabweans in the Diaspora who have been denied their constitutional right to vote by Zanu PF MPs who voted against positive legislative proposals tabled by the MDC-T parliamentarians to encourage families and friends back in Zimbabwe to vote against Emmerson Mnangagwa. Keen to return to a constitutional and prospering Zimbabwe, Diasporas must know that a win by Mnangagwa prolongs their stay abroad as real growth is only possible after a free and fair election, and this election is not free and fair anymore after the evidence provided here and other evidence which other people have shared. If the violator of the constitution, Emmerson Mnangagwa wins, real investment will not take place in the country.
The real tragedy for most third world countries like Zimbabwe is that the opposition and internal civic organisations are either corrupt or incompetent and sometimes both and so fail to defend the voiceless majority who are regularly abused by the ruling elite. And so, it is to the international organisations like the UN that most people in the third world turn to. It is therefore most disheartening when it turns out the UN representative such as Mr. Parajuli, in this case, turns out to be just as corrupt and incompetent as the local leaders.
Mr Parajuli’s praise of President Mnangagwa and his junta regime as worthy of international support was totally unfounded as it ignored the reality on the ground. President Mnangagwa is rigging these elections just as blatantly as he has done with Mugabe in the past, nothing has changed here!