WESTERN countries, together with their local allies, have put in motion plans to discredit the forthcoming harmonised elections. 

The plan is anchored on maligning the outcome of the election which will be won resoundingly by ZANU PF as shown by several projections.

Several meetings have taken place within the country’s borders and outside since June 2022 where Western countries, in particular the US and the UK, have openly told CCC and NGOs in the country of reports from their officers suggesting that ZANU PF is headed for a landslide victory.

That, however, has done little to cull the West’s desire to diffuse the impending ZANU PF victory by sponsoring violence in the country before smuggling their preferred people into their proposed Government of National Unity (GNU) whose list include Tendai Biti who recently received huge sums of money from the Brenthurst Foundation and the US Embassy to sponsor his candidates within CCC while pursuing the violence strategy both within and outside of his party.

So daring is the US Embassy that, last year it brought into Zimbabwe US’ intelligence officers who were on a mission to assess possible areas where CCC and NGOs aligned to the project would use as focal points for instigating violence on innocent citizens.

The officers, who claimed to be ‘tourists and businessmen scouting for investment opportunities’, without formally notifying the Zimbabwe Investment Development Agency (ZIDA) and relevant Government entities, were sent back to Washington.

The US does not relent, however.

Late last year, about 120 Motorola mobile phones, said to have been sent to ‘young’ Zimbabweans from The Carter Foundation (CTC – founded by former US President Jimmy Carter) via USAID, were intercepted at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport by the country’s security forces.

The phones, sources said, were destined for activists, the majority of whom were said to be ‘underprivileged’ children with no access to phones and the internet. 

They were returned back to their malicious sender.

According to the CTC website, which is curiously replete with images of purported poor black children, the programme is designed to ‘educate, motivate and elevate the youth’.

Still the abrasive Uncle Sam is relentless.

So too is Zimbabwe in its vigilance.

It has been a nightmarish past few months for the US and the UK whose twin objectives of discrediting the 2023 elections revolving around maintaining the illegal economic sanctions and blocking Zimbabwe’s return to the Commonwealth, in that order, have spectacularly crumbled.

The US’ plan to smuggle unaccredited observer missions disguised as National democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI) officials way before proclamation of holding of those elections was foiled again by the country’s alert security forces, while the British faces an uphill task in convincing members of the Commonwealth that Zimbabwe is not eligible to return to the club. 

Hence the ongoing frantic manoeuvres by the two countries, working together with their inept local and regional cohorts to discredit the forthcoming polls, including attacking the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and its staff, attacking their persons and embarking on systematically co-ordinated violent activities.

Team Pachedu, a shadowy regime change outfit, has been mandated to relentlessly attack ZEC using a certain online publication to stoke fictitious stories of attempts by the electoral governing body to rig the elections in favour of ZANU PF.

Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, on the other hand, has been mandated to mobilise and create fake databases of violence and intimidation by the ruling Party and its officials.

A studio has also been set up in Harare to coach ‘victims’ of ZANU PF to ‘appeal’ to the world to ‘save’ CCC.

Videos to that effect will then be manufactured for onward transmission to SADC, the AU, the UN and Western capitals. 

And it is the continued pursuit by Western countries, led by Uncle Sam, of the violence trajectory as well as the continued participation of Zimbabwe’s rowdy neighbour whose hostile activities were first brought to the fore by this publication last year that is beginning to prick Harare’s nerves.

We are reliably informed that some of the funding that was promised to CCC and several anti-Zimbabwe NGOs during the so-called ‘pledging meeting’ which was recently convened by Uncle Sam and was attended by UK officials, among others, is being channelled through our neighbouring country.

A report carried by The Herald on Thursday last week titled: ‘US$37 million dangled to subvert harmonised polls’ buttresses the above.

The report said ZESN and the Election Resource Centre (ERC) have already received US$537 000 and US$577 000 respectively from USAID through NDI to run a parallel voter tabulation process they call ‘Sample Based Observation’.

“Insiders within the NGO sector where there is renewed vigour and activities following indications that the US is dangling millions for the polls, said there is massive lobbying and backstabbing to access the prized money,” reads the report in part.

“The insidious plot also exposes how local NGOs are now going beyond their declared mandates and are not only meddling in local elections with foreigners but also act as conduits of money laundering.”

It is incumbent upon Zimbabweans, particularly those of a nationalistic disposition, to keep in mind the fact that Western countries are a perpetually emotional machine, always on the prowl and ready to pounce at the slightest of opportunities.

Let us also not forget that there is a US military force which has been dangerously circling the precincts of Zimbabwe’s borders while claiming to be on a mission in neighbouring Zambia.