Letter from America:with KENNETH MUFUKA
I want to support my supreme brother Ibbo Mandaza and his attempt to shed light on the last election in Zimbabwe. But, first allow me to illustrate what happens when protagonists in a battle come into the arena with dirty hands.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump gave his annual state of the union speech. Democrats, who have been planning to remove him from office, starting six months before his election, came to the occasion prepared to negate everything he said.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sitting behind him, mumbled words throughout the speech. Even when there were memorable occasions, like when a black nine-year-old girl was given a scholarship to attend a school of her choice, they sat on their hands.
They were busy finding fault with everything. Their media surrogates went on to deny the obvious. The US economy is the best I have seen in over 30 years.
Trump has lowered taxes. A low income family of four earning less than US$25 000 can come home with a supplement of over U$$4 000. Democrats deny all these improvements.
Through a spy system, they set up to trap Trump, and hurried their case. Harvard professor Jonathan Turley warned them in December that their case was inadequately supported by evidence and they should have waited.
The weakness of their case is that they are supporting former vice-president Joe Biden, whose family became enormously rich while he was in office.
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While visiting the White House, James Biden (a brother) was informed of opportunities in Iraq. Soon afterwards, he was awarded a US$1.6 billion contract to build 1 000 houses there. The vice-president’s son, Hunter, travelled with his father to the Ukraine on US business. Soon after, a Ukrainian company, Burisma, offered him a directorship at $83 000 per month.
The story goes on. When Hunter went to China with his father, he received a US$1.6 billion contract from a Chinese bank, which invests in spy technology.
Trump is not allowed to talk about Biden and his family. These are the people who went to the Senate, accusing Trump of corruption, bribery and being a threat to the security of the US.
In impeaching Trump, Democrats want to impose Biden on the electorate and remove Trump, Biden’s formidable competitor.
As you shall see, Biden is a flawed candidate, and has no chance of rising above his past.
This is a perfect example of what an ordinary man would regard as a dirty messenger.
The senate, in its wisdom, found Trump not guilty.
Jonathan Moyo’s book Brother Jonathan Moyo has written a book, Excelgate, How Zimbabwe’s 2018 Elections Were Stolen.
The first rule in graduate school is that one cannot criticise a book unless one has read it.
Because of space, I find Moyo’s book easy to read and free from the convoluted sentences, which were his trademark. Moyo comes from a school of thought that regards convolution and complication of ideas as a mark of much learning.
Moyo says that there were two conduits through which electoral results were sent from district level to the electoral head office. I was favoured by results of 17 precinct results in Masvingo province. I was shocked to find that while the local Zanu PF candidates did well, presidential results were less enthusiastic.
This is shocking because Masvingo is President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s stronghold. My observation would favour Moyo’s theory — that local results were different from national results.
My sample, however, is too small to be definitive.
Moyo’s second assertion is that presidential votes were sent directly to the national office whose oversight was handled by the military authorities.
Moyo accuses military authorities of rigging. If we accept the view that Moyo would have more information than was at my disposal, shall we then believe his story?
My own view is that Zanu PF has not won a free and fair election since 2000 when Moyo himself tried to persuade us that the land is the wealth. That theory was a “big lie”. Now we have the land and 3.5 million people have fled the country from enhanced poverty.
But that is beside the point. Like Democrats in the US, the real issue is not what Moyo writes in his book, which is reasonably acceptable. It is his dirty hands. He is the dirtiest politician I know.
In 2002, I had a nasty encounter with this “baddest” brother. (black English) My book, Letters from America, was best seller and I had received an award from Reuters International. Booksellers Kingstons took a half window display in its favour. Ordinary Level students had found a secret weapon for acing English essay examinations.
Moyo, in a rage of jealousy, ordered a truck and ordered that all copies available be sent to my mother’s house.
Moyo broke the sacred rule in graduate school: You cannot criticise a book unless you have read it.
But there is more worse (black English). Moyo has been described in various websites as Robert Mugabe’s spin doctor.
But there is most worse (black English). Moyo is a dirty politician as you will ever find. I have before me, Moyo’s rendition of a story about the murder of his father by Gukurahundi forces.
I have read somewhere, where Moyo absolves Mugabe of these atrocities in an attempt to lay all blame on the generals, whom he calls Gukurahundists. He has a way with words.
He is a chameleon. When it suits him, he absolves Mugabe from the atrocities. I am also of the opinion that he is corrupt, from his own words. At Bindura University of Science Education, he tried to exonerate his misuse of a $400 000 fund meant for technical education by dabbling in magical mathematics. Since this sum was 3% of the value of the monies in his trust, his transference of that sum to his use does not constitute a crime.
Moyo did not have a problem with Mnangagwa; the Tsholotsho document attributed to him would have made Mnangagwa the Zanu PF successor to Mugabe.
I can only offer an academic solution to this problem. If you want to discuss with some confidence Zimbabwe’s electoral horizons, you must have a copy of the book, for the simple reason that Moyo is a witness — like US Democrats) whose hands are dirty, but, nevertheless, an eyewitness.
If, as a reader, you decide not to read the book, you cannot at the same time criticise what you have not read.
Peace.
l Ken Mufuka is a Zimbabwean patriot who writes from the US. He spent 10 years researching Life and Times of Robert Mugabe, Dream Betrayed, available in Zimbabwe at INNOV Bookshops and in the world at kenmufukabooks.com
