Sunday 24 July 2016

Given Zim is a dictatorship, if Mugabe is not accountable even to the rogue war veterans then who is he accountable to! By P Guramatunhu

The statement by rogue war veterans, madzakutsaku aMugabe (for those not familiar with the name dzakutsaku, this is derogative name given to Smith rogue black soldiers who would not fight the freedom fighters but terrorized unarmed civilians instead, sadly history is repeating itself with these soiling the good name of real committed liberation war freedom fighters), calling on President Mugabe to resign raises an very important political point – Who in Zimbabwe today can vote President Mugabe out office? These war veterans, dzakutsaku or not, clearly thought that had the power and authority to do so given their elevated position in the nation and so they did.

When President Mugabe realized that his popularity with the electorate was sinking fast in the late 1990s he instituted his no-regime-change mantra whose sole purpose was to deny the masses their freedoms and basic human rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections. He corrupted the war veterans in the security sector and those who had been disbanded to abandon their liberation war commitment to freedom, liberty and human rights to become the principal enforcers of his tyrannical mantra. He turned respected liberation war heroes and heroines into the despised dzakutsaku.

President Mugabe knew the people would resist his authoritarian rule and so he granted carte blanche powers to the rogue war veterans to harass, beat, rape and even kill opposition politicians, their supporters and innocent Zimbabweans alike; beating the nation into submission. After decades of exercising this carte blanche power and successfully keeping President Mugabe and his cronies in power by denying the masses a meaningful vote the rogue war veterans claimed credit for themselves since those in power were not doing it.

The rogue war veterans made it clear early this year that they “were the stockholders of Zanu PF and Zimbabwe” and everyone else including the President himself was a “stakeholder who can come and go”.

“The lizard that jumped from the high iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no one else did,” wrote Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart.

Our dzakutsaku lizards have effectively denied the masses the vote and felt it was now them who had the veto on who ruled the nation; when they reminded all that they were the stockholder of the party and the country, this was just the lizard praising himself! When they released the statement last week demanding that President Mugabe must resign, it was them exercising their veto!

If we put to one side for one moment the inherent injustice in President Mugabe’s no-regime-change mantra and the foolishness of madzakutsaku aMugabe one is left with the intriguing question; If the ordinary Zimbabweans have no vote and the rogue war veterans’ veto can itself be vetoed then who is(are) the individual(s) with the super-veto?

Everyone knows that President Mugabe has ruled the party and country with an iron fist, his word is law. His follow leaders in the party and in government have been reduced to cowing subservient minions, “vakadzi vaMugabe” as Margaret Dongo so aptly put it. So the one person wielding this super veto, the mother of all vetoes is President Mugabe.

"I watched ZBCtv (on Friday and learnt) that they made a statement, but I haven't read it. If they said the President must resign, then that is nonsensical. If they are true war veterans, the President is their Commander-in-Chief and they must be loyal and committed,” commented VP Mnangagwa.

"I don't think those who say such things are loyal or genuine war veterans. They must be loyal."

Is this VP Mnangagwa being his usual self of deliberately coy and obtuse? This is a very serious matter and demands to be treated as such. If President Mugabe is not accountable to the ordinary people, to his subservient harem and now we learn that he is also not accountable to the rogue war veterans too. He is accountable to absolutely no one but himself this is clearly a very dangerous scenario no nation in its right mind can tolerate especially when we have hen-pecked president whose wife’s insatiable greed for power and wealth knows no limit.

The prospect of President Mugabe appointing his wife to succeed him is real and I shudder to think what new depths of despair and depravity she will take us!

If VP Mnangagwa had any sense at all then he must surely see dangerous situation the country is in right now because President Mugabe has enjoyed absolute power all these donkey years. The situation is now so dangerous that there is no excuse whatsoever for allowing this situation to continue even for one more day; be it out of ignorance, selfish greed, political expedience, subservient nature gone nuts somukadzi mukuru waMugabe (as the most senior member in the Mugabe harem).

All those who thought that removing Mugabe now and replacing him with Mnangagwa was a strategic move must now review their position. If today Mnangagwa is asking loyalty to tramp over the urgent need to end this destructive culture of absolutism out of feigned loyalty to President Mugabe will he not do so again with ruthless resolve tomorrow to consolidate his own hold on power!


We must soldier on and demand the full implementation of the democratic reforms designed to end the Zanu PF dictatorship. The rogue war veterans’ demand for President Mugabe to resign so they can appoint another tyrant is just a clever way of preserving the dictatorship by giving the illusion of change. It is not a half-way pit-stop some people think; neither Mnangagwa nor his rogue war veterans backers will ever concede to give up their veto if they ever got into power. 

5 comments:

Zimbabwe Light said...

True but if would be foolish for the goat to assume the new hyena is a vegetarian just because it is fighting the resident hyena!

Zimbabwe Light said...

@ Father plus

I agree with that but you must admit that after 36 years of independence and we are still fighting for free and fair elections is not exactly making progress. If we do not ask why we are still stuck on first base then we will be stuck here for another generation.

My point is that we are stuck because we have been content with looking at our problem in a very simplistic way. We need to step up a gear or we will never advance. To still be calling for Mugabe to fire corrupt leaders is dangerous because people pick that up and run with it only to find it solved nothing! We cannot afford to raise our people's hopes of solving our problems but only to let them down again.


I see warning people against being over simplistic as part of my contribution; it is unpopular especially with those who want the easy downhill path. It is my job to tell you that if you are stuck in a hell-hole as we are now the only way out is a hard slog uphill climb. These easy downhill solutions have only taken us deeper and deeper into hell!

Zimbabwe Light said...

There millions of Zimbabweans out there who do not the abc of what we need to get free, fair and credible elections. The same people have locked on to the simple demands of Mugabe must fire corrupt ministers. What is important here is to understand that whilst the latter is simple to understand and easy to accomplish it will not, however, get us out of this hell-hole. We need to implement the democratic reforms so we can have free and fair elections if we are ever to get out of this hell-hole.

After 36 years of getting nowhere we must learn from the past and the single most important lesson here is that we are deluding ourselves if think simplistic solutions will ever get us out of this hell-hole. You want a downhill route out of a hole and after 36 years if drifting deeper and deeper into this hell-hole surely the penny should have dropped that the only way out of the hole in uphill!

After 36 years of corrupt and murderous tyrannical rule and someone thinks firing a few corrupt ministers is all Zimbabwe needs! Of course that is idiotic in its over simplification! The very fact that millions of our people locked on to that is also equally worry because it shows we have a very simple, naïve and extremely gullible electorate. We got into this mess because the electorate is naïve and gullible but one had hoped that the last 36 years has taught them something. Sadly, they are just as simple minded as ever!

We are not getting out of this hell-hole as long as we have naïve and gullible voters. A healthy and functional democracy demands an informed and wide-awake electorate who will ask searching questions instead of follow Pastors whose political thesis can be scribed on the back of a cigarette box.

If the mental Central Processing Unit (CPU) of the average Zimbabwean out there crush out be-cause it cannot anything beyond the twitter limit of 140 characters then no doubt we are in a mess! And, which is more worrying, unless we do something to snap out of this comatose mental state, we will never ever get out of this hell hole.

Zimbabwe Light said...

@ Choto

He has fallen out with war veterans and has already got the brainwashed Zanu PF Youths lined up to take their place as his shock-troopers. Kudzi Chipanga was in Rusape this weekend and showed the Zanu PF Youths 2 000 stands. Most of these Youths are unemployed so Zanu PF will have to service the stands, build the houses from foundation to the roof - I do not see the party doing that for all the 313 000 stands it has promised. All work on these stands will stop immediately after the elections!

These Youth will be expected to harass, beat, rape and even kill Mugabe's political opponents and critics just as the war veterans have been doing these last 36 years.

It is the willingness of some Zimbabweans to terrorize fellow Zimbabweans for a piece of meat, a beer and a joint of weed because that is what most of these thugs ever get from Zanu PF that I find disheartening.

Zimbabwe Light said...

MDC-T youths plan to ditch @thisflag for their own campaign.

These MDC youths correctly noted the country's worsening economic situation and have rightly blame Zanu PF for it. But I have yet to hear anyone of them acknowledge the role MDC leaders played in allow-ing Mugabe to rig the last elections. This is important because they would have been pushing the party to implement the reforms or remove the corrupt and incompetent leaders and get new leaders who would implement the reforms.

These MDC youths have not yet realized that not even one reform has been implemented since the 2013 rigged elections. So it is almost certain Mugabe will rig the next elections.

Yes street protests will increase the pressure on Zanu PF but come the elections the regime will once again rig the vote and retain into office!