Irony of ironies, we have more heroes in 40 than UK in 400 years, not one stopped Zim going to the dogs W Mukori

“President Emmerson Mnangagwa is the biggest thief,” said Thomas Mapfumo in a facebook video circulating in the social media.

Thomas Mapfumo, is a very talented Zimbabwean musician who has consistently spoken truth to power before independence and after and, without, doubt has paid for career wises and in many other ways. 

In the video he accused politicians of robbing the nation blind to pay for their lavish lifestyles and depositing the rest in foreign banks.

He said Mnangagwa could not stop corruption because he is the biggest thief himself and his subordinates would remind him to look in the mirror if he ever tried to stop them looting.

Zimbabwe’s corrupt ruling elite “are busy eating the fruit and cutting down the branches, the country's future.”

Mapfumo is 100% correct. Indeed, in Mugabe and now Mnangagwa’s Zimbabwe, the branch cutting has now reached alarming levels as whole forests are being cut down and burnt to create mass poverty. Once upon a time, Zimbabwe produced enough food to not only feed its own people but had plenty leftover to be the bread basket of Southern Africa. We earned fortunes from selling cash crop like tobacco and cut flowers. Not any more! Twenty years ago Mugabe seized all the farms and gave them to his cronies and agricultural production crashed and dragged with it the national economy. 

For the last two decades Zimbabwe has depended on food aid; we are so poor we cannot even pay for it. We are starving in a country that is for all intent and purposes the Biblical Garden of Eden. 

Poverty has left the rural peasants totally dependent of the State for food aid, agricultural inputs and other assistances. In Zimbabwe the distinction between state and the ruling party, Zanu PF, have become blurred with state institutions now all but party department in all but name. And so the party’s influence on the poor is so perverse the rural peasants are medieval serfs beholden to the party. 

Zanu PF has used its strangle hold on the rural people to make sure they vote for the party or they are denied assistance or worse. Intimidation, beatings, rape and even killings are all a very common occurrence in Zimbabwe. Rural areas are Zanu PF strong holds and no go areas for the opposition. 

The Zimbabwe economy is in ruins and unemployment has soared to nauseating heights of 90%, basic services such as health care have all but collapsed, etc. Abject poverty has now reached the country’s urban dwellers and with it increased their dependence on Zanu PF’s generosity and political patronage for aid, vendor licence, etc. 

Thomas Mapfumo is one of the few Zimbabweans who have condemned Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs’ betrayal of the very essence of what the nation had risked life and limb in the fight to end white colonial oppression and exploitation. Whilst most professionals chose to turn a blind eye to Zanu PF abuse of power, others joined the regime to enrich themselves; Maphumo chose to confront the regime. 

When Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends too sold-out and betrayed the people and wasted so many golden opportunities to implement the reforms and end the Zanu PF dictatorship. Mapfumo was one of the few Zimbabweans to criticise the MDC leaders. 

In a country where the majority have a binary mentality, they either support Zanu PF or MDC no matter what; he lost many fans, a complete disaster for any musician. Zimbabweans, even to this day, are incapable of seeing logic even after their noses has been rubbed raw in consequences of their stupidity. 

The very fact that Thomas Mapfumo is still banging the anti-corruption, anti-thuggery, anti-Zanu PF treasonous oppression, anti-MDC betrayal, etc. goes to show he is a man of principles. His belief in a free, just and prosperous Zimbabwe for all and not just the few ruling elite and their cronies is unshaken. Talk of a true national hero, there is one. 

If only Zimbabwe had even a handful of true heroes and heroines like Thomas Mapfumo this country would have been saved from failed state it is today. Zimbabwe has had the great misfortune of having more than its fair share of scum, village idiots and sell-outs. Even seemingly rational individuals like Professor Mthuli Ncube, Kirsty Coventry and many others, given the thirty pieces of silver bribe, have propped up the corrupt, incompetent and murderous Zanu PF regime.

On Monday 10 th August 2019 was Heroes’ Day, a day put aside for the nation to remember its honoured heroes and heroines many of whom are now buried at the Warren Hill National Heroes’ Acre and Provincial Heroes’ Acres scatter all over Zimbabwe. In the last 40 years Zimbabwe has had more national heroes than many countries like Britain have had in the last 400 years! 

The greatest irony is that Zimbabwe has sunk to new depths of chaos and despair in the last 40 years than defy common sense! So where were all these heroes and heroines whilst the country was going to the dogs?

Answer: look who is declaring all these men and women national heroes and heroines - “the biggest thief”! Say no more!