The kleptocrats in Zimbabwe are trying all recipes to redefine patriotism. It unfortunately can never be confined to doing as they please, as a don’t ask don’t tell, but it is exactly the opposite of that wish. Patriotism entails the liberty to exercise my rights for the good of my country rather than individuals. Maybe they should try to transpose patriotism with brainwash instead. A sellout is the greedy politician who exploits our resources only for the good of his clique and family.

Simba Makoni is not enigmatic. He apparently can be read like an open book. And this is the guy whose presidential ambitions President Mugabe once dismissed, calling the former finance Minister a “political prostitute.”

Recall that early this year, Makoni did invite Mugabe into a coalition which many are still trying to figure out how it was going to work.

Sometimes Simba Makoni does make statements that could easily have come from Idi Dada Amin who famously said “Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking.”

Now he has withdrawn from the presidential race, and following accusations in the past that he was a spoiler effectively stealing victory from Morgan Tsvangirai’s mouth, his latest proclamation that he is willing to work with the same people he only yesterday said were worse than Robert Mugabe makes his chameleon persona something those he seeks to work with must certainly watch.

Makoni does give meaning to the aphorism “This is quite a game, politics. There are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends, only permanent interests.”

One does not need to use language borrowed from the Zanu PF hate speech lexicon, but can this guy be trusted?

Someone tweeted yesterday after Makoni made his BREAKING NEWS announcement that “His family, his only supporters must be disappointed!”

Some would say Makoni is looking for relevance, but that should not sway Zimbabweans from the bigger picture, and that is a tolerant Zimbabwe of which Zanu PF has been the antithesis.

SAPES Policy Dialogue Forum

The Role Of Political Parties In Resource Governance In Southern Africa

Date: Friday 28 June 2013
Time: 5pm – 7pm
Venue: SAPES Seminar Room, 4 Deary Avenue, Belgravia, Harare

Moderator: Gilbert Mudenda, SAPES Trust (Zambia)
Panellists: Yao Graham, Third World Network (Ghana), Masego Madzwamuse, OSISA (Botswana)

All Welcome

Harare’s fresh water sources are slowly being eroded by a certain of weed. I remember hearing these two foreign guys sitting next to me on a plane asking each about the green patches on a dam as we were about to land at Harare International Airport. From an aerial view it looked like the river is totally gone and the green carpets forming on the riverbed are also slowly swallowing the dam. Some time back I remember reading an article on Harare’s fresh water sources being under threat from a certain type of a weed but I never realized the extent of the problem. A report published by UNEP Global Environment Alert Service in April 2013 says that the spread of water hyacinth declined from 42% in 1976 to 22% in 2000. But in 2005 a new invasive plant, called spaghetti weed (Hydrocotyle ranunculoide (UNEP 2008) surfaced. It seems the weed is now choking the life out of the few fresh water supply sources that feed into Lake Chivero.

Zimbabwe’s election is in legal shambles – But no one really seems to mind. Yesterday, Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court postponed indefinitely Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa’s half-hearted application to have the Court’s 31 July election deadline extended. Chinamasa’s application came at the recommendation of SADC, which, understandably, was concerned that President Mugabe’s proclamation of a 31 July election date was done unconstitutionally, and set Zimbabwe up for an election which was illegal before it even started. Instead, the court will hear Morgan Tsvangirai and Welshman Ncube’s applications about the need for an election extension tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Nomination Court is also scheduled for tomorrow, in which parties wanting to contest in the illegal and unconstitutional 31 July election will put their candidates forward. Zimbabwe’s political parties have had their primaries, fair, rushed or otherwise. According to David Coltart, the Movement for Democratic Change led by Welshman Ncube will nominate candidates tomorrow because “although 31 July election is illegal, we must contest.”

Attempts to get an answer to the question “Given that 31 July date for #ZimElection is illegal, will yr party be nominating candidates tmrw?” from the MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai have yet to be responded to, but it seems likely they will also be fielding candidates at nomination court tomorrow.

But, on 13 June, Morgan Tsvangirai himself said of the 31 July election date: “As Morgan Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe and the President of the MDC, I will not accept a situation where Zimbabweans will yet again be railroaded and frog-marched to another illegitimate and violent election.”

So – What does refusing to be railroaded mean, exactly, if it doesn’t include refusing to contest in an illegal and unconstitutional election? As Marko Phiri pointed out when the 31 July date was announced, “if Mugabe can unilaterally call for polls, what is to stop him from declaring himself the winner” (regardless of whether he actually won or not.

If you contest in an election which you know is illegal just based on the date for which it was scheduled and the way in which it was proclaimed, what leg do you have to stand on if you try and protest its legality later?