Are you Zim? Zim people smile tooooo much.

The British government has just taken a beating in its own local government elections - no syncronized elections for them.

Go after the Conservative party MPS’s re the Security Council meeting. They are feeling chipper. The Shadow Foreign Secretary is William Hague and is in a very good mood.

He was leader formerly, do you recall? He has a good sense of humor. When asked what was the biggest act of faith he had ever taken, he said: immediately volunteering to lead his party after its biggest election defeat in history. Well they are on a roll, now. He is our man in the UK. Germans here are on to it. Muk is beavering in the States and there is a demonstration there today.

I’ll keep an eye out on this board to see what we need to do this weekend.

Both Martin Olds and Gloria Olds were murdered in that same area under the watch of the same MP; which is why we were especially concerned for the farmer and the farmworkers trapped in that situation.

So much for all the phone calls to the police from outside Zim. Warm and fuzzy doesn’t work with criminals.

It should be equally clear there will be no meaningful intervention on our behalf from the rest of the planet.

Good luck to us all…but as for me “Give me liberty or give me death” because life without liberty IS death!

Hamba kahle

There is a modern English poet called David Whyte who says this

“When your eyes are tired, the world is tired also. When your vision has gone, no part of the world can find you”

We infect each other with our despair and in the end that is all we see. When we talk of our dreams, we encourage each other and other people “see” us. We have to help see our dreams for them to share and support them.

See the main post - ZEC has announced. Well there is our work for the weekend. Where have the numbers changed? Find the V11’s or whatever they were called.

Start mobilising the world to send observers, etc. etc.

The election agents will be working hard right now trying to find where the “differences” are in the two figures.

We are talking about 30 000 votes? Is that right? There were 900 polling stations or thereabouts. A good accountant will find where the numbers don’t match and then what?

First find the discrepancies and then work out what happened.

My belief is this. If the result was announced as 48% is was more likely to be very much more. That means this is a ruse for negotiating. If they get an acceptable deal, they will let us find the arithmetical errors (oh so sorry!).

There has to be some sort of deal anyway. For purely practical reasons. All the senior civil servants are still in place. They have employment contracts and they have information that the new ministers will need.

Also remember, the process is that a crime is named, there is an investigation, there is a prosecution, then there is a judgment. Until then people are presumed innocent.

That is why it important to know what we will do with Zimbabwe. All that takes a long time. In the mean time, we want to have good lives and we want to be respected for delivering good lives to people around us as well.

Tell me what is your dream for Zimbabwe?

As others have stated…in different ways…get real…

People try and make allusions to Ghandi and Martin Luther King, however both these comparisons ring hollow when one considers that both of these men were shot and killed when they ventured into confrontation with the real murderous powers of their day…and never formulated much stretegy as to how these new found level of dictators should be dealt with, though King did hint at more confrontational methods before his death.

The lack of responsibility in some presuming you can effect a regime change in a Maoist influenced state, behind the facade of civilian protest is shocking, see China and how their state deals with the same issues for details and compare Zimbabwean state suppression methods. the Chinese have had their foreign affairs people ‘insurgency specialists’ in Zimbabwe for a long time…

They have been advising the Zanu government (fellow Maoists), from their own experiences of crushing and suppressing pro-democracy movements since 1989 and before.

TOTAL WAR theory…stresses using economic breakdown and social pressure as a weapon to effect political change. If only people would just stop the lies.

Accept that its a putsch..you dont want these people in power….Do the job properly and let people get on with their lives. People should just stop trying to pretend to be playing nice.

To confuse the facade that… we come in peace …with the fact that covert methods are actually being used to try to oust a regime from power is beyond a joke.

The SA government… are they really so blind or so stupid.
Mugabe can do no wrong???…Or do they see more than what some think they see.

Either the world is hearts and flowers or the actual reality is actual global geopolitics.

Zimbabweans should not be fodders for such games.

If there is an election re-run, the international community should be insisting that Zimbawean citizens in exile must have the right to vote.

Forget about international help right now: If there ever had been at time when external intervention was needed, them we missed the opportunity in 2000. Is it not true that a people get a government they deserve and is not also true we are ultimately our own liberators.How many of us throughout the years have failed to add a voice,to speak up and to vote against what was evidently a creeping directorships? How many of us went about our business in the mistaken belief that doing our civic duty of confronting intolerance was someone else’s problem? Or that the growing pains we were experiencing would go away? Varume how many of us never bothered to vote because we thought ndezwekumusha kana kuti zwevanhu veku Mbare? And can you blame Mugabe for concluding kuti tiri madofo over whom he could ride rough shod. We lack sophistry Varume and I admit I am part of the coward brigade that can only rave and rant at my computer screen. I hang my head in shame and right now I cannot shake the feeling I am personally responsible for those gruesome acts convulsing our beloved country- by the mere fact of having done nothing over the years:

To think kuti for 28 years we have been ruled by a madman who has relied on the vote of an innocent and uninformed rural mass some of whom can be excused from bearing the responsibility of propping up this despot.Zwinorwadza varume!! Ah-it hurts!!! Mugabe is being abated by our brothers and siters, vanasekuru,ambuya nevazukuru kumusha uko. Strangest of all is these are the same people bearing the brunt of the country’s voodoo ecomonics. And are you surprised kuti the run-off (to where?) will be fought over these hapless souls?

I dislike making comparisons, we are not Kenyans, and neither are we any of those people who have chased out their local tin-pot dictators. We are unique and perish the thought someone will come to our aid, no that’s too late, and we have been traumatized enough to know what is good for us- humble yourselves and tremble before the mighty Mugabe. What then is the game-plan: To wait Varume for one wrong move we are finished and we can kiss our democratic experiment goodbye. Mugabe won’t live for ever, and I give him 12 months before Alzheimer’s inexorably sets in. Let nature take its course. Then we can cleanse Zimbabwe of the rot. Munangwagwa or any of the possible heir apparents won’t stand the heat and they will yield but that’s only post Mugabe.

And Tsvangson ? Dutch courage plenty but political sophistry?- needs improvement. The smartest thing to do, hand over Mugabe illegitimacy, don’t lock horns with a madman; go back to your constituencies, and comfort the the weak and bereaved, you have lost the battle but there is still a war to win. Use your time to groom yourself, travel and learn from other’s democratic experiments, but otherwise keep Zimbabwe’s hope for change alive; and for goodness’s organize your structures into functional departments and start acting on your vision: Don’t concede defeat for to do so is to betray the many lives that have been lost since 2000 in the name of freedom.

I also suggest the MDC spend time and money hunting talent, they are sorely lacking in strategy and intelligence gathering and how are they supposed to run a country if they can’t get to know what the other side thinks or is doing? This is quite apparent as they are always on the defensive.

What happens in the meantime to the rest of us? I don’t like much of the academic stuff that I read from Zimbabweans. This is not the time to talk about marxism and it failings or to warn us about the implicit dangers in capitlasm. I even read one piece where someone is still talking of land as being an important means of capitalist production: My my!! wake up Zimbabweans, land capital etc have since been replaced by intellectual capital ( that’s what the rest of the world thinks at least for now) as a means of comparative advantage( but then can we be blamed if we only have the Herald as our reference point).

Courage varume, courage even of the screen variety!!
I have heard economists say if the diaspora stops sending in money then the whole thing ( I cannot describe ZANU any other way) collapses; that’s people power. The Chinese arms ship saga shows the extraordinary impact of civil society once aroused. We know the money from the diaspora is supporting this pernicious system and why not take off the life support system and see what happens.

I haven’t yet digested all that you say, and I’m quite busy today. But whilst I don’t have much hope that Mugabe will go easily, and probably will engineer a run-off to his advantage, I still have a great deal of optimism for an eventual negotiated settlement coming about by force of ungovernable circumstances.

Thank you for your response.

The reason for my post to you is to hear more about your views on a deterrence factor inside Zimbabwe. Your gut feeling? As far as the use of Sokwanele and others is concerned, there is no dispute, the issue is one of realistic method.
Its deterrence…not just pressure.

As you stated a robber is in your house…even your neighbour calling the police is seeking direct intervention.

I have a problem with the mendacity…one cannot actively participate in a power struggle in the Third World and then act like a crackdown or conflict isnt inevitable or that rules apply.

The side you are seeking to depose has INTEL links to several other agencies of other states and knows, the idea was to launch a ‘colour revolution’ the same type as in Eastern Europe, Venezuela..and sees all parties opposed to it as a fifth column.

You say there are no strings attached…the research says follow the money trail…(who is funding certain opposition groups and why?)

The new idea after this election fiasco will be to apply economic pressures until the situation escalates….this is unnecessary and is not non-violence.

Of all the parties involved…MDC/opposition haD a responsibility to be realistic…look hard at what it was doing. The idea that things will change only if you garner pressure from outside is false…

The SA-CHINA veto shows 100% international isolation of any errant regime is a myth where global interests hold sway.(look at Sudan, Burma…)…

I’d like to get some ways to get the message across to the world;
Is there anyone in Zim who can get hold of actual video footage of the violence, maybe shot on a mobile phone? Can the Munroes possibly record and somehow upload their war veteran gangs on video? The world needs to see the faces of the perpetrators.

Can someone tell me where I can get good info and pictures of the generals, police and gov officials behind the carnage, so I can create a video and put it up on youtube,viddler, etc, for all to know who they are, and what these thugs are guilty of. I’ll find means to create massive hits on this stuff so these cronies will really be known worldwide.
I’ll contribute in any way, so if anybody can help.
Any other ideas?
from Sydney, Australia.