Tuesday 9 May 2017

Chidyausiku "hero" for supporting farm seizures - he sold-out and was well rewarded too.

Hero: a person who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Robert Mugabe has just declared the late Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku a national hero and for the wrong reasons as far as the Oxford Dictionary definition is concerned. Mugabe said the top jurist ruled for Zimbabwe's planned seizure of thousands of white-owned farms that violated international law and common sense that the Supreme Court had ruled should be halted immediately.

Justice Chidyausiku overturned a ruling by then Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay that government should take all measures to protect the possessions and properties of white farmers who challenged the legality of the contested land reform programme.

"Considering the way we worked with him, the way he supported our interests, the values of the war of liberation, we found it fit to confer him with a hero's status," Mugabe said. “We could not just throw him into a pit.”

There was never any question of the need to redistribute the land after independence to address the historic injustices. The injustice of forcefully removing the blacks off their ancestral lands to give them to white farmers. In most cases the blacks were resettled in overcrowded communal areas with poor soil and poor rainfall.

By the time the country attained her independence in 1980 most of these communal areas were arid and badly eroded. There crying need to reduce the pressure of the land and aliviate the suffering of those eking a living off the sick and unproductive land by resettle some of the peasants on state land and/or commercial farms.

There is no double that the way went about seizing the white-owned farms was motivated by selfish political interests and by greed. It was no accident that the farm seizures started after Zanu PF lost the 2000 referendum on the proposed new constitution. The party blamed the white farmers and their workers for the defeat and thus set out to punish them. Later on the violent white farm invasion was used as cover for violence against the populous.

By the late 1990s the Zimbabwe economy was already in serious trouble and Mugabe was running out of loot to give out to his ever demanding but wasteful party loyalists. White owned farms were the only valuable assets left and Mugabe went for it regardless of the economic consequences.

Although Mugabe still insists that the land redistribution was to benefit “landless peasants” the chief beneficiaries was himself and his cronies. Mugabe and his family own as many as 13 farms and many rural areas as still as overcrowded as ever. It is no secret that Zimbabwe lost its break basket of the region accolade soon after the farm seizures. Ever since the farm seizures country has, more often than not, relied on imported food aid. We are starving in a country that is for all intent and purpose the Garden of Eden.

Zimbabwe’s economy was thriving on the back of a successful agricultural sector so when that collapsed the economy followed fast on its heels. The Zimbabwe economy shrunk by a staggering 50% in the decade following the farm seizures alone.

Last week AfrAsia, a regional Bank now based in Mauritius but once based in Zimbabwe, reported that Zimbabweans are the poorest in Africa. 37 years ago, we were in the top five of the richest countries in Africa! What AfrAsia should have said but did not say is that Zimbabwe’s ruling elite are some of the richest in the world!


The late Chief Justice Chidyausiku died in a hospital in South Africa. After declaring Chidyausiku a national hero Mugabe jumped on the plane to go to Singapore for his regular health checks. Zimbabwe’s ruling elite live in mansions, drive some of the lasted posh cars, they and their families use SA or overseas institutions for their education and health needs. Chief Justice Chidyausiku was a member of the Zanu PF ruling elite and therefore he was pampered, no doubt he too was given a former white-owned farm.

It is only the impoverished millions of ordinary Zimbabweans who continue to suffer eking a living in overcrowded rural areas, forced to queue for hours on end to withdraw 50 bond notes, who have to use the local health and education services that have all but collapse due to decades of underfunding, etc.

It is interesting to note that in her 37 years of post-independence history, Zimbabwe has had more declared national heroes and heroines than other nations with ten times her population even if we extend their historic period a hundred years. The irony is Zimbabweans have suffered and many, many lives lost from 37 years of economic meltdown and political tyranny because of the moral decadence and decay in Zimbabwe society; where were the true heroes and heroines to stop the madness.

If the truth be told, the very sorry state in Zimbabwe today demands that the truth must be told, declaring Chief Justice Chidyausiku a national hero because he overturned Justice Gubbay’s ruling to call a halt the madness of the violent farm seizure; underlines just how perverted and corrupt Mugabe is. Chidyausiku did exactly what any corrupt official in his shoes would have done; sell-out on the law, on common sense, on principles and on national interest to appease a ruthless tyrant for selfish gain.

Justice Chidyausiku will be interred at national Heroes Acre on Saturday 13 May. When the curtain is drawn on Zanu PF’s corrupt and tyrannical rule and the nation is finally free to review the regime’s rule objectively; Chidyausiku, like so many others at Heroes Acre, will never be judged a hero. He is a sell-out and Mugabe paid him well for his services.


6 comments:

Patrick said...

“Mugabe leaves ‘developed’ Zimbabwe for medical checks in Singapore” screamed the headline in Nehanda Radio.

That said all that needed to be said on President Mugabe’s naked lie about Zimbabwe being a developed country.

In 1980, when the nation attained her independence Parerenyatwa Hospital was one of the best hospitals in the world giving expert health service comparable to any in the world. Certainly, Mugabe would not need to fly half way round the round for an eye check-up. He is doing so now because the standards in the hospital have fallen off the cliff due to decades of poor funding and his short-sightedness and selfish greed has been a big part in this.

If the money spent on President Mugabe’s two trips (minimum) per month at $3 million each giving a total of $72 million per year was spend funding our hospitals Zimbabwe will have a three-star health service at least. Some of our hospitals in the rural areas catering for the health needs of hundreds of thousands of people are so poorly equipped and staffed they cannot do something as basic as a blood transfusion!

President Mugabe is a corrupt and murderous tyrant and, like all tyrants, he is a curse to the nation’s development and wellbeing.

Nomusa Garikai said...

The last 37 years have been some of the darkest years in Zimbabwe’s history. In 1980, when the country attained her independence, every thinking Zimbabwean out there thought this marked the end of white colonial oppression and exploitation and the dawn of freedom, justice, peace and economic prosperity for all. Little did they know the country turning from the dark shadows into the blackness of hell-on-earth.

President Mugabe has ridden roughshod over the people’s hopes and dreams of a happy life to establish this corrupt and tyrannical de facto one-party dictatorship. The roll call of many of those who have sold their principles, humanity and their very souls to the devil are now on the head stones in Warren Hills cemetery.

Time will judge many of those Mugabe declared heroes and heroines for helping him establish and retain his corrupt and murderous dictatorship not heroes but the scum of the scum!

Nomusa Garikai said...

@ Patson Maseko

Yes, the struggle was about land but a world more beside the land issue; there is a world of difference between the two.

The struggle was about ending white colonial oppression and exploitation and replacing it with a democratic system of government in which all Zimbabweans would enjoy freedom, liberty, peace, human rights and have a fair share of the nation’s wealth and resources. President Mugabe’s farm seizures were not about redistribution of land, he only used that as a cover to fool the naïve and gullible.

If farm seizures were about redistributing the land there was no need for sending in thugs to beat and kill farm owners and their workers. If it were about redistributing the land there was no need in doing it in a way and ending up destroying the country’s agricultural sector and the nation’s economy. If it were about redistributing the land to the landless peasants then why did so many of the farms end up in the hands of the Zanu PF ruling elite and their cronies with so many peasants still waiting to be resettled?

President Mugabe has used the seizure of the white owned farms to further his goal to establish and retain his one-party dictatorship and people like late Chief Justice Chidyausiku were some of the men and women the tyrant corrupted along the way. Chidyausiku did what Mugabe paid him to do no more no less than any of Mugabe’s cabinet members have done over the years.

Tsvangirai and his MDC friends too fall under the tyrant’s spell and for five years they too did Mugabe’s bidding and forgot about implementing the democratic reforms. No doubt President Mugabe would declare Tsvangirai a national hero for helping him retain the dictatorship throughout the difficult and uncertain years of the GNU!

Nomusa Garikai said...

Joice Mujuru has already proven beyond all doubt that she is corrupt and incompetent, the only reason why she still has followers is that some Zimbabweans are too lazy to think out for themselves what they want in a good leader and so resort to recycling the same old rubbish!

Patrick said...

MDC-T accept Mass Public Opinion Institute/ Afrobarometer report saying MDC will be beaten if it enters the 2018 elections outside a coalition with other opposition parties.
President Mugabe had 62% of the votes in 2013, if we accept he did not rig the vote, which means the coalition opposition candidate would have got 38%! The maths simple does not add up to support this coalition being the panacea to break Zanu PF political hegemony!
This is just another nonsense report designed to encourage the opposition to contest in flawed elections which even they have already admitted will be rigged! The stupid report has not produced one bit of evidence of how a coalition will stop Zanu PF rigging the vote.

The right to free, fair and credible elections is at the very heart of Zimbabwe's current status of a failed state. We know that the only sure way this country is going to have meaningful economic recovery and good governance is by having meaningful political reforms leading to free and fair elections. We must now put our shoulders to the wheel and demand the implementation and the reforms and stop playing Russian roulette with the people's suffering and human lives.

The opposition coalition will not stop Zanu PF rigged next year's elections, only implementing reforms will do that!

Nomusa Garikai said...

Dr Masimba Mavaza, please do not try to distort historic facts to suit your narrow-minded craving for “national heroes” to worship!

The late Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku was just one of the many Zimbabweans who have used their high public office to help President Mugabe create and sustain the corrupt and tyrannical de facto one-party dictatorship that has turn Zimbabwe from “the jewel of Africa” to a basket case of a failed state.

“He (Chidyausiku) pointed out without hesitation where there was a mistake and where a correction was needed. He led the country in the path of fairness. He was never confused by public opinion but stood resolute behind the law,” you wrote. What a truck load of Nonsense!

President Mugabe instructed Chidyausiku to overrule Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay allowing the tyrant to indulge his lust for gratuitous violence and insatiable greed for power and wealth in seizing the white owned farms. The tyrant pampered the Judge; like so many other Zimbabweans in high places who sold their principles, body and soul to the devil; by showering him with new cars, generous salary and allowances and, no doubt, a former white owned farm(s).

Where was Chidyausiku’s sense of justice when claimed a farm complete with its movable and immovable assets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars knowing fully well the owner was forcefully removed and not allowed to take anything with him other than the cloths he/she was wearing!

There is no doubt that Justice Chidyausiku was painfully aware of the grant theft and looting that was going on in the name of land redistribution and the dire consequences this had on the hundreds of thousands of black farm-workers and the nation at large. He never lifted a finger to help stop the madness he had played such a critical role in making it happen.

President Mugabe declared Chidyausiku a national hero but we all know that all those who helped him create and/or run the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship are “heroes” in his sick tyrannical mind. How can anyone who help create and/or run a regime that has caused so much human suffering and murder over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans be a hero!