Political Round Up In Zim Since The Aug 23 Elections

Political Round Up In Zim Since The Aug 23 Elections

1. The Elections were held to be a sham by SADC via their SEOM Final Report, which meant that the gvt that emerged from that was illegitimate.

2. ED & his regime tried to fight off the SEOM Final Report domestically & regionally using a cocktail of measures such as a sustained campaign of propaganda, intimidation and the subversion of institutions such as Parliament, ZEC & the Judiciary.

3. Domestically, the regime was hell bent on 3 main strategies to defeat the charge of illegitimacy: a. delegitimise the opposition through a sustained campaign of disinformation attacking the opposition / Chamisa’s own democratic credentials, b. violently seek to destroy the opposition or force it to submit or accept a GNU; c. use infiltration or proxies combined with the use of state institutions via recalls so as to reconfigure Parliament to get a two thirds majority.

Sustained Campaign Of Disinformation / Propaganda Directed @CCCZimbabwe

a. In order for propaganda against your opponent to be effective, it must come from a credible source, someone the public trusts in large numbers.

b. That vehicle should be trusted by some opposition figures, diplomats and state entities to help achieve maximum confusion, have the capacity to cause confusion and disarray via the widest possible circulation of damaging information while framing a new dominant narrative to supplant the previous one.

c. That vehicle should also have excellent communication skills – the ability to select credible damaging information and stick to a believable script, so that the script can be easily packaged and accepted as credible analysis.

d. That vehicle should also possess the skills to organise and rally key sections of society around certain causes – which maintains visibility and solidifies credibility while creating a solid foundation for interacting with virtually all of them without arousing suspicion concerning the possibility of ulterior motives.

e. The same vehicle should provide the regime with plausible deniability, the ability to convince the wider public that it’s not possible for such a vehicle to be working with the regime.

The Results

a. Since August 2023, the last few months has seen a relentless narrative being pushed into the public domain.

b. Although the opposition is not in power and is being devoured left right and centre, the dominant narrative is now that the opposition does not have a Constitution and structures and is fractured and is thus unfit to govern.

c. Another dominant narrative from the sustained disinformation campaign is that the opposition did not invest in V11s & Polling Agents, lost because of Strategic Ambiguity, its leader is obsessed with Bible Verses, is not supporting Job Sikhala, has side lined his fellow leaders and is unable to mobilise his supporters onto the streets, amongst other things – and therefore, the country should either “move on” or ditch him.

d. Note that all of the above issues are credible and capable of being accepted as genuine analysis or criticism.

e. The key difference however is this – if that script is interrupted say by abductions, Parliamentary recalls, the return of load shedding or hyper inflation, it’s shoved back to the top of the pile – over and over again, like clock work or a military drill, until the stuffing is knocked out of opposition supporters and the subject of illegitimacy of the regime has been totally supplanted and incredibly replaced by that of the opposition!

f. Any critics who challenge that dominant narrative can either deftly be muted or made the subject of smear campaigns!

g. At present, it would appear that the regime has been successful to reshape the dominant narrative via it’s proxies, which in turn deflates any momentum whether regional or domestic, to seek recourse following the illegitimate election.

h. Bizarrely, rather than being seen as victims, it’s the opposition itself that is now being assailed for failing to reform and confronting a brutal regime that is armed to the teeth and spoiling for an opportunity to unleash mayhem & blood letting.

The Violence

i. This has primarily arisen because of a combination of @nelsonchamisa refusing the offer of a GNU to cure illegitimacy and bafflement from the absence of street protests.

ii. The abductions are used to terrorise, instil fear and achieve submission to the regime’s demands while also serving as a warning on the futility of continuing to support the opposition and the vulnerability that arises from it.

iii. The absence of specific information pertaining to the opposition’s office holders from their structures has made the regime’s job of choosing who to target to collapse the structures extremely difficult – and part of the clamour for structures to be made public is to make that task easier!

The Recalls

1. This is the least complicated part of the equation. The absence of official structures made it virtually impossible to instigate a genuine rupturing of the opposition.

2. This forced the regime’s hand and caused it to rely on a clumsy and amateurish clown of an imposter – Tshabangu.

3. The regime’s obvious goal is to attain a two-thirds in Parliament to help engineer a 3rd term which is currently outlawed by the Constitution.

4. The likely route to achieve this is via an unlawful amendment of the provision requiring a Referendum and the rely on judicial engineering to give this a seal of approval should, as is likely, be challenged in the captured courts.

Conclusion

All routes for seeking a peaceful and constitutional change of government have been firmly shut. The opposition is currently helpless.

Court proceedings and participating in further sham by-elections will only, at best bring temporary respite.

The regime itself is likely to end via an internal implosion, this time a very dramatic and violent one once matters come to a head!