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Cracks in the ZANU PF House
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition
Extracted from Crisis in Zimbabwe Weekly Update
May 31-June 06, 2004

The Crisis Coalition believes that the confusion in ZANU PF over the holding of its primary elections is a microcosm of the lack of democratic and clear guidelines in running transparent, free and fair elections that has been associated with contemporary body polity in Zimbabwe.

The confusion over ZANU PF primary elections started last December when Daniel Shumba the ruling party’s chairman for Masvingo province declared himself the candidate for Masvingo Central constituency for the March 2005 Parliamentary elections.

This confusion was intensified when the architect of Zimbabwe’s ruthless media law, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, Jonathan Moyo, followed suit and declared himself the candidate for Tsholotsho.

But in a typical circus stance President Robert Mugabe unexpectedly put an end to this undemocratic wave and told the nation in a television interview that the primary elections will be held just before or after the party’s December Congress.

The point to observe is that if the ruling party cannot hold transparent, free and fair elections among its members, how then can it be entrusted with administering a national election that involves the opposition.

ZANU PF goes after its own
But the political confusion in ZANU PF continues, this time with the arrest in South Africa of business tycoon and a long time sympathiser of the regime Mutumwa Mawere over allegations of prejudicing the state of more than $300 billion through failure to submit foreign currency declaration forms and externalisation of foreign currency.

It is now a case of the ‘revolution devouring its children’ as happened during the French Revolution in the 1790s when the likes of Robespierre and Napoleon Bonaparte executed thousands of French citizens who did not share their views of how France was to be governed.

In this week’s The Financial Gazette publication Mawere miraculously realises that Zimbabwe is a ‘den of lions and is not keen to not walk into it’. It has dawned on him that Zimbabwe does not respect the rule of law, something civil society has always said and called upon Zimbabweans to fight against to reduce the current injustices taking place.

Mawere’s case has shown the highest level of hypocrisy associated with the regime’s bootlickers. It is unbelievable that a person of his stature had dual citizenship despite his previous pontificating that he loved Zimbabwe so much. He is now refusing to come to Zimbabwe to face his alleged crimes and is a holder of a South African passport.

The Coalition suspects that Mawere knows that if he comes to Zimbabwe he is likely to spend more that two months in jail without being given bail because of political interference. What it means is that Mawere has now admitted the lack of due process in the administration of justice in the country.

This brings us back to the issue of having a democratic constitution where the justice delivery system is fair and not selective. We should not have one law for the politburo and another law for the rest of the citizenry.

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