Manheru latch on to liberation war credential bull to give Mugabe electoral victory!

Nathaniel Manheru cum George Charamba has latched on, like binnacle to a rock, to Alexander Noyes’ erroneous assertion that having liberation war credentials will be the game changer in Zimbabwe’s next elections. Mr Noyes is the Oxford University scholar who claimed that Joice Mujuru’s war credentials will help her win the next elections.

“And if liberation war credentials impart a forte to Mujuru, how do infinitely better liberation war credentials residing in Mugabe who joins nationalist politics in the 1950s, and Mnangagwa who joins the ranks of combatants in the early-to-mid 1960s, stand them negatively in the same race?” demanded Manheru.

Alexander Noyes’s article appeared in the New York Times. The article was trash; devoid of any intellectual merit. Noyes assumed that the people of Zimbabwe hold their liberation war heroes and heroines in such revered regard they have completely failed to see the transformative change from liberator to corrupt and murderous tyrant. After 35 years of Zanu PF misrule, there a mountain of evidence that the freedom, liberty and human rights and dignity the nation had dreamt of have remained a pipe dream as millions have been forced into a life of abject poverty and despair. The people would have to be mentally blind not to see the reality of political and economic mess Zanu PF has dragged them into.

In fact it is our Oxford scholar who ignoring the mountain of evidence that the people Zimbabwe are not been blinded by the war hero rhetoric, they are not naïve and gullible as evidence by their rejection of Mugabe and his thugs. The whole world knows, except Noyes, that Mugabe and his cronies have stayed in power all these years not because they flaunted their war credentials, hypnotizing the electorate. They have stayed in power because they have used every dirty vote rigging trick there is; breaking the law, bribing officials, harassment and beating voters, they have murdered over 30 000, etc.

Manheru was only too pleased to take up Noyes’ theme of liberation war credential as the game changer only to further his own propaganda message that Mugabe is invincible. Mugabe has been harping none stop about his war credentials and not allowed the nation to talk about anything else.

If Mujuru and her People First should “win” the next elections it would be because she was able to counter Mugabe’s dirty tricks; after all she was in the tyrant’s camp for 34 years, even a simpleton like her would have learned a few of his dirty tricks. As long as the next elections are NOT free, fair and credible, it is possible that Mugabe will lose regardless his “infinitely better liberation war credentials”; it all depends on whether he is able to rig the elections, war credentials have nothing to do with it.