.... And from Here !

This is yesterday's cartoon from The Standard;



The caption reads; "See, He's scared I'm going to beat him in a free and fair fight!", and it was pointed out to me by one of my commentators (- you see, I DO get nice ones as well!)

I hear that Tsvangirai has officially given a letter into the electoral commission resigning from Friday's run-off, but not to worry, as Uncle Bob hasn't missed a beat and is campaigning full on for his one horse race!

What Zim looks like from here ...

How I see it is that it is absolutely no surprise that Morgan Tsvangirai has pulled out of the Zimbabwe run off election that is scheduled for the end of the week, because surely with Mugabe openly saying he'll never let him win, torturing any opposition supporters he can get his hands on and meanwhile locking up the MDC leader at every given opportunity he can, the fellow is bollixed if he participates in the run off and .. well, frankly, bollixed if he doesn't, so what to do?

I understand he is currently holed up in the Dutch Embassy, and meanwhile All Africa news reports that the Justice Minister in Zim's response is as follows;


The Justice Minister described Tsvangirai's decision as a nullity saying: "This is the 11th time that Tsvangirai has threatened to withdraw from the presidential run off and on each occasion I have challenged him to put it in writing as required by law."

He told The Herald newspaper that "Zanu PF is not treating the threats seriously."

"It is a nullity. We are proceeding with our campaign to romp to victory on Friday," Chinamasa said.


It sounds a bit like a scrap behind the bike sheds to me!

Gado, the Kenyan cartoonist, summed it up perfectly months ago with this cartoon:


Robert Mugabe couldn't honestly give a flying fart what anyone thinks. For some obscure reason, the world seems to be leaning on Thabo Mbeki to get the fellow to see some sense, but let's get real here people, Mbeki is not the man for this job. He'll never rock the boat with the neighbours no matter how much pressure he's put under - rumour has it our end that the two are somehow related for goodness sake.

So really it's "Na, Na, Na, Na, Na" for the whole lot of them. Mugabe will win and will stop at absolutely nothing to do so.

Been a bit quiet …..

It’s not like to keep my big mouth shut for so long, but I have been moving house, - which 9 out of 10 dog owners agree is highly stressful!

Anyway I have survived the ordeal and can now report that every last box has been unpacked and every last picture has been hung up on the various walls, and although my back hurts, my legs hurt and my arms feel like I’ve been heavyweight boxing (oooooh nice pun J), I am so very proud of my little self for getting it all sorted so that I can finally sit down and get down to some serious blogging.

Have been trying to keep up with the Zimbabwe elections – as you may have gathered from my hurried few words I’ve sent in from my Blackberry.

I have been a little concerned about their plight after seeing what happened to us lot here in Kenya after what we all felt was an extremely peaceful election, and now look at the mess we are involved in, and I might add, are STILL in the process of fighting our way out of.

Although we have light our end, we are yet to be basking in its full warmth, like we felt we would be by now. Coalition governments are not all that bed of roses that Kofi Annan seemed to promise us all.

Kenya is still waiting to sort out that little problem that we call “The Cabinet” that is supposed to be running this place. Both sides seem to be blatting each others decisions on who, what, and even how, and all this nonsense that is being bandied about as to how many members this cabinet should have is becoming a bit of a joke, as once again, our marvellous elected ministers fight over which position they can have and how much of our money they can get for the title!

The latest news we have on that front is that “the cabinet shall be named on Sunday” – according to the latest Nation media update. Actually, it’s not the first ‘breaking news update’ we’ve had through in the past couple of weeks telling us that they are on the verge of naming the cabinet, so I’m not quite sure how seriously we should be taking this last bulletin.

As for the situation in Zimbabwe, I saw a brilliant interview on one of the international news channels, I forget which one, but it was a journalist interviewing one of Mugabe’s staunch supporters who is currently ‘Minister for the Totally Blind and Corrupt’ – or something like that – and he was arguing that all those reports coming out of Zimbabwe about Mugabe and the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai having talks were just a bunch of “April fool’s jokes” and “who says that just because the Zanu-PF party had perhaps lost the majority in parliament – it was according to this knowledgeable fellow – only by 96 to 93 seats so would have no bearing at all on the Presidential result !!

Also the most remarkable thing being reported about 3 of the parliamentary seats that have been won, is that the chaps with the winning votes had recently died.

So it seems not only do they have a bunch of phantom dead voters, even the candidates can be corpses too ! (Mind you, if you’ve ever watched the Parliamentary proceedings live from any country in the world, and watched them all sleeping, I’m sure it wouldn’t really make much difference if a few turned up in coffins.)

So my headline of April 1^st of “Will He? Won’t He?” still looks very current. Latest news on the All Africa website says “they are having talks”, and yet according to the incumbents “”It’s all a load of rubbish made up by colonialist Westerners trying to assert their influence on Africa.” So it still looks a lot like very much a ‘wait and see’ situation.

Personally I wouldn’t be surprised if they declare the Presidential result as less than a 50% majority on either side, have a run off with the two of them (which chances are Tsvangirai shall win hands down), but in the meantime Mugabe will have weaselled himself some kind of a deal where he can live out his days in a secluded life of luxury in Zimbabwe where those ‘colonialists’ won’t be able to take him to task for the incredibly suffering he has caused his people.

Whichever way it goes I do hope that Zimbabwe had learnt one thing from Kenya, suppression of the majority does not get you very far, and I also hope that if Uncle Bob has any slight semblance of decency left, it will be to succumb to the inevitable, sooner rather than later.