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Editorial Comment: Fashioning a crisis where none exists

President Mnangagwa

Just as the world grapples with the novel Covid-19 pandemic, so is Zimbabwe.

In response to the global plague, the country has introduced a raft of measures to curb the spread of the pestilence that has changed geopolitics and brought a new normal.

In order to curb the spread of the virus, the Government recently tightened the lockdown measures in accordance with the World Health Organisations (WHO) recommendations.

Human movement is being limited, a night curfew was imposed, and restrictions of public gatherings of more than 50 people are still in place as saving lives in the wake of lethal pandemic is paramount as has been repeatedly said by President Mnangagwa.

However, the country’s opposition parties, in total disregard to the lockdown regulations, that are lawful and therefore legally binding, sought to breach those measures to effect an illegal regime change through demonstrations.

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When the Government enforced the regulations, as has been indeed done across the globe with the blessings of the UN, the country’s opposition parties, in connivance with some Western embassies and some Zimbabwean fugitives outside the country decided to fashion a humanitarian crisis.

The hard measures taken have taken their toll on the economy, but regardless of the dark shadow cast by the pandemic, there are signs of economic growth, something that has unnerved the country’s detractors and their poodles in Zimbabwe who want to see the country in perpetual turmoil and misery.

Recently, a British think tank, the European Intelligence Unit (EIU), predicted that President Mnangagwa will romp to victory in the 2023 harmonised elections because of the positive economic growth that will be registered in the next few years.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the EIU also forecast an advancement in Zimbabwe’s economic performance anchored on improvements in power generation, agriculture and mining, among other factors.

This has resulted in the doomsayers roping in regional opposition players like former Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane to concoct a narrative that there are gross human rights violations in the country warranting outside censure and interference.

Contrary to such aspersions, Zimbabwe’s democratic tenets are flourishing, political reforms are being entrenched with incongruent laws such as the Public Order and Security Act and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act being struck off.

The Second Republic’s democratisation process has indeed given every Zimbabwean a voice including malcontents on social media platforms such as Twitter, who daily spew vitriol in the name of freedom.

With the aid of Western donors and public relations firms, another hashtag movement was born and its aim was to project the Second Republic in bad light following the same old tricks that the country detractors employed since the country repossessed its land.

No doubt, the players who have been roped in to create a non-existent doomsday scenario in Zimbabwe have an unerring instinct for hype, and through their hyperbolic nonsense peddled to a gullible audience resident on social media platforms.

They shamelessly appeal and reach out to some celebrities to parrot about non-existent crisis.

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It is unfortunate that some regional political parties such as the African National Congress (ANC) have fallen prey to these evil machinations.

If anything, the crisis that Zimbabwe has is a crisis of an unpatriotic crisis-mongering opposition party. A party that exists to solely sabotage efforts by the Government to improve the lives of the ordinary man and woman.

It is beyond doubt that if there is no crisis in the country, the MDC-A, itself a party with no nationalistic grounding, no identity and therefore rudderless, will cease to exist.

Inventing a crisis, through faking abductions, and as in the present scenario of creating political storms where there is none, is thus a survival strategy of the MDC-A.

A case in point is the alleged abduction of the three MDC-A officials namely; Joana Mamombe, Cecilia Chimbiri and Netsai Marowa, where investigators poked holes into their phony story.

Because abductions by their nature are emotive, eerily callous, the opposition has developed a template along with non-governmental organisations to stage them just before important events so as to smear the image of the Second Republic.

These machinations include Western nations, with a former opposition top official recently revealing that the country’s opposition parties have been captured by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to generate numerous gigabytes of negative information about Zimbabwe to get money from foreign donors.

In their project proposal templates, the problem statement must be extremely adverse and alarmist, supported by empirical evidence (which is often fake) to substantiate and justify the request for funding and these adverse statements go into the CIA reports database and are used not only justify funding, but to justify the maintenance of illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe.

It is apparent that a foreign hand is behind the latest campaign against Zimbabwe and is working hand in glove, with fly-by-night organisations in the shape and form of Tajamuka and other hashtag movements.

Only that this time the Government is the wiser and cleverer.

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It is refreshing to note that the Cabinet Committee on National Peace and Reconciliation has recommended that all political parties should be placed under a uniform code of conduct, which will among other things ban hate speech and criminalise campaigning against Zimbabwe.

Hopefully, the process of enacting such laws and a code of conduct for all political parties will be expedited though relevant legal frameworks so as to ensure that Zimbabwe rids itself of rotten apples who thrive on seeing people suffering.

HERALD