Friday 19 November 2010

What goes round comes round: Freedom Fighters are now themselves the victims of Zanu PF coercion!

There have been reports of retired Police Officers and War Veterans being appointed to beef up the ZRP with zealous Zanu PF party loyalist in preparation for next year’s general elections. A few weeks ago 300 to 500 Zimbabwe National Army soldiers reportedly matched through Masvingo with placards demanding that Mugabe must rule “forever”! Forever?!

The overwhelming majority of those in the Police and Army, still serving, retired or whatever are paupers living in total abject poverty. Their future like that of the millions of other Zimbabweans is grime. They, again like the millions of other Zimbabweans, know the whole nation’s future will only get worse with Mugabe and Zanu PF in power. The dramatic collapse of the Zimbabwe’s economic and its tragic human consequences are well documented and felt by millions.

The Zimbabwe economy shrunk by 84% is the sex period from 2002 to 2008; a world record. The looting by Mugabe and his cronies has been extravagant as it has been thoroughly criminal. They have been looting to satisfy their insatiable greed for wealth and luxuries; many of them have so much accumulated so much wealth it would take them more than the nine-cat-lives to squander it all. They have taken away resources like land and mines just to have see them lie idle just to stop anyone else make productive use, magpie style. In the last few years the looting has taken a more sinister slash and burn turn. Nothing would be more disappointing for Mugabe and his cronies than to see Zimbabwe rise from the ashes of the regime’s years of ruinous rule to flourish and prosper. And so the regime not been content is destroying the walls of country’s economic and social infrastructure brick by brick but has been hammering at their very foundations.

On the political front the regime is known for its heartless brutality. It has murdered tens of thousands of innocent Zimbabweans in its single minded drive to retain political power at all cost. It has even stopped foreign donors helping the country’s poor and vulnerable just to underline the fact that everyone was at the regime’s mercy. Freedom, liberty, justice, human rights and even sanctity human life all mean nothing to Mugabe and his cronies all they care about is power and the wealth and prestige it brings.

Except for Mugabe and the select few who have benefited from the looting and/or have played a part in the murderous past of the regime (a past they will commit even more heinous murders to ensure it remains hidden) no Zimbabwean would want Mugabe and Zanu PF to rule for another day longer let alone forever! Not freely!

Zimbabwe is a country that has been ruled by fear; the people feared the dire consequences that would follow if they elected anyone else other than Mugabe and Zanu PF to rule. Reason and common sense dictated that Mugabe was nothing but a thug who would bring nothing but misery to the nation and time has proved this right. But when one is looking up the business end of an AK4 rifle; one has no time for reason or common sense.

It was the Freedom Fighters who had their guns trained on the people in 1980 to ensure a Mugabe and Zanu PF victory. After independence Zanu PF had relied on its moronically overzealous members of the party’s women and youth wings and later the War Veterans to continue the intimidation, harassment and terrorising of the electorate. The country’s dramatic economic collapse has left millions living in abject poverty including the Zanu PF zealots forcing them to abandon the party in droves. Mugabe and Zanu PF’s strangle hold on power is totally dependent on the party not just maintaining this culture of fear but stepping up a gear. Deserted by the women and youths the party is turning to the Police, Army, CIO and other state functionaries to do its dirty work. But since the overwhelming majority of the low rank Police Officers, etc. have not benefited from the looting and they have faced the same economic hardships as the rest of us, they too want to see meaningful political change in the country. And so the majority of the soldiers matching in Masvingo recently and those deployed in rural areas to reorganise Zanu PF, etc.; they are all being coerced to do these things.

What goes round comes round! It was the Freedom Fighters who coerced the nation to accept Mugabe and Zanu PF denying the electorate a meaningful say in the governance of the country. It was the lack of democratic accountability that allowed Mugabe to establish the repressive dictatorship and to loot and destroy the national economy. The dictator has now turned the guns on the same Freedom Fighters, who have since learnt the error of supporting a tyrant, to once again prop up his rule.

Mugabe and his Zanu PF regime is doom; the people have since realised that they should have feared the dire consequences of years of tyrannical rule more than anything the tyrant could inflict on them fighting to end his rule. The only thing that has stopped the people in their drive for meaningful political change is that they have been let down terribly by Tsvangirai and MDC when they had viewed them as the alternative to Mugabe and Zanu PF.

The second reason Mugabe’s rule is doomed is that he now has to coerce his thugs to coerce the electorate, in the past they had done so freely. None of the thugs trust him and for good reason too; he has used them to do his dirty work in the past only to discard without a second thought as soon as the work is done.

To the Freedom Fighters coerced by Mugabe to join him in his last all out attempt to hang on to power; be careful that you do not end up with the blood of innocent Zimbabweans on your hands. The fight to end colonial rule and oppression was a just war and there are many took part in it for purely altruistic reasons. Unfortunately amongst the true heroes and heroines of the liberation struggle were the mercenaries and scum who saw this as an opportunity for them to enrich themselves. It will please Mugabe and his fellow thugs greatly to see the thousands of the nation’s true heroes fingered them!
This is the sunset period of Mugabe and Zanu PF’s rule and like the Nazi the regime has become reckless in its looting and repression. This is the most dangerous phase of their rule.

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