Tinashe Sambiri|An MDC Alliance Youth Assembly official has urged Zimbabweans in the diaspora to fight for their democratic right to participate in the 2023 polls.

MDC Alliance UK and Ireland Province Youth Assembly Organization Secretary, Valeria Karimakwenda challenged the Zanu PF government to allow Zimbabweans in the diaspora to participate in the 2023 Presidential and Parliamentary elections.

See Valerie’s statement below:

By Valerie Karimakwenda MDC Alliance Youth Assembly Organising Secretary
UK and Ireland Province

ZANU PF, remittances and the vote denied diaspora…

It doesn’t matter where you are, be it Ottawa, Sell, Mombasa or Sydney, ZANU PF perpetual violation of your fundamental constitutional liberties is will always haunt you.

Your right to vote, is violated on the grounds that you are in the diaspora.

ZANU PF can’t stomach a diaspora vote, which is pro-opposition, a constituency that is politically informed, a divorce from the usual native political apathy.

Shamefully, for ZANU PF, remittances from the same diasporans are more than welcome, for one, they don’t threaten ZANU PF entrenched hold on power, on the other, they bolster its stay by providing an avenue for rent seeking and subsequent patronage.

One would almost say, ZANU PF deliberately forces its own citizens into the diaspora so that the foreign currency it cannot generate at home is generated elsewhere, where it thus is expropriated by ZANU PF. 

If the diaspora vote had been realized in the last election, and added, thus to the two million votes garnered by the charismatic, vibrant and people’s choice leader, President Nelson Chamisa, ZANU PF would have missed goodbye the power it desperately has held on for at least three decades. Consequently, restoration of rule of law, equality before the law, transparency and accountability would have seen corrupt, self serving and enriching politicians rotting in jail, while loosing all they had illegally gained. This was a situation ZANU PF wanted to avoid at all costs. 

To insulate itself, against the combined power of the opposition, propped by both local and diaspora votes, ZANU PF, on grounds of technicalities such as security, funding, ruled out involvement of the potentially game changing diaspora.

This is regardless of the fact that international funders, interested in seeing a morphing of Zimbabwe into a fully fledged democratic space had indicated a reliably dependable interest in funding the crucial diaspora vote.  The sidelining of the diaspora in this regard thus served to illustrate the insecurities of ZANU PF and the accompanying fears. 

Remittances expose ZANU PF hypocrisy, incompetence and failure. This is the same ZANU PF that recently said it wants total control of all of elective  offices lost 2023 elections. Remittances expose ZANU PF by illustrating that the remittances are a symptom of a dysfunctional economy.

Immigrants, from Zimbabwe, leave Zimbabwe in desperation, which can only be relieved through usually an exploitative modus vivendi with some of the destinations, such as South Africa, where the exploitation is premised on the lack of proper and legal documentation of the migrants, and more stable but high living standards countries in the West, such as Sweden.

Remittances send home, on the individual basis, are also indicative of a dependent native population, counting on the remittances from abroad, worked for by people frustrated by ZANU PF’s politics of marginalization, exclusion, rent seeking and inconsistent economic policies which have attacked the industry, especially private sector, for example, through rule by law and active violations of sanctity of property, which consequently, discourages investments which would have created opportunities for the diasporas’.

Since this is a politically frustrated constituency, politically informed on issues like the need for civilian engagement and participation in governance, the primacy of accountability and transparency among other crucial issues, Zanu Pf has an existential fear of this diaspora force to contend with. In its attempt to seek change, which the opposition seeks to usher in, Zanu Pf finds, despite its existential need for the remittances, a survival and security guaranteed blocking of the diaspora vote.

But how does the remittances benefit Zanu Pf? In a political economy characterized by run away inflation, a ridiculously, profiteering motivated high cost of living, Zanu Pf enjoys a pacified population, which is the recipient of the remittances, which conveniently is in more stable hard currencies, among them, Rands, US dollars, pounds and Euros. With a pacified population in political apathy mode, constantly put in check by the ever present threat of unleashing the repressive, brutal state apparatus, Zanu Pf can thus continue to pillage and plunder the country’s natural and man made resources, preserving its power in the process.

In addition, Zanu Pf tentacles in so many sectors, among them, public transport in the form of Zupco, fuel industry among others, sell their services and products in foreign currency, in any economy in which helicopter money and apparent collusion between private sector and politically exposed persons with interests and active involvement in cartels for instance listed above, it becomes crucial for Zanu Pf to mop up the little foreign currency trickling in the form of remittances. With the little foreign currency taken away by Zanu Pf in this manner, the money is then used to buy, illegally,  gold, which is smuggled for more foreign currency which will be used for further political financing which will see a secured cartel flourishing. The political financing keeps Zanu Pf in power, enhancing it’s chances of survival.

The diaspora, although largely unaware of the impact their remittances have on ZANU PF stay on power, can change how ZANU PF gets to benefit.

They can make use of decentralized finance, such as digital money and digital money platforms such as cryptocurrencies, which can circumvent ZANU PF access to the little precious foreign currencies in remittances. In addition, the diaspora ought to encourage financial literacy, and development of self sufficient systems, to limit the influence cartels have on Zimbabweans, for instance the Mielie-meal l cartel, which can be circumvented by investments by the diaspora in small grains for subsistence consumption, cartels like fuel sector, can be paralyzed if the diaspora invested in nee, green sustainably electric and it solar vehicles, denying the cartels access to foreign currency, among other innovative solutions and responses to an exploitative ZANU PF. In the process, without diaspora vote, but diaspora strategic initiatives, ZANU PF is weakened by a strategy of attrition.

The article is meant to show that either way, ZANU PF benefits from the diaspora, be it through exodus of politically informed people, dangerous to its hold on power or through insulation of the native population against conflict petri dishes such as inflation, giving ZANU PF, in the process, a free hand for more plunder and looting.

However, the diaspora, can play a strategic role, in ensuring a strategic culmination of ZANU PF and its subsequent loss of power, ushering in alternative government focused on change