It is now 100 days since the GNU was formed and yet the situation on the ground has not changed one bit. And yet some people have had nothing but praise for MDC and PM Tsvangirai and their get very angry with those who dare say otherwise.
In 1995 I wanted to visit a group of Homeless people who had been forcefully removed by Zanu PF from Churu Farm and damped near Lake Chivero. I was refused entry into the shanty camp by ill clad "Security Guards". The camp had no clean water, no toilets facilities and the people lived in structures made of sticks, plastic sheets and anything else the people could get. It was the rainy season and so the whole camp was one large mud bath. Life in the shanty camp was hell-on-earth.
The Mugabe regime deployed Security Guards to stop outsiders seeing this hell-on-earth!
Mugabe has been the visible figure head of the Zanu PF dictatorship, the visible ears of the juggernaut whilst the body of the beast itself, the Green Bombers, the ill-clad Security Guards at Lake Chivero, the busy-bodies of Zanu PF Women League, etc. have often remained hidden in the muddy waters. What was it that turned one would assume are otherwise ordinary and rational members of society into foot-soldiers of a ruthless dictator willing to do his dirty bidding including murder?
People like Mugabe have created a suffocating political environment in which the people are corralled into seeing everything in the monochrome black and white, them against us, instead of seeing all the colours of the rainbow and the bigger picture the nation behind the petty individual and party interests. To the Lake Chivero Security Guards stopping outsiders coming into the Shanty Camp was more than a job. They really believed protection Mugabe’s falsehood of a happy, free and prosperous Zimbabwe was in the national interest. They never considered the possibility that sweeping Mugabe’s excesses under the carpet was not helping the victims of the abuses and, worse still, was strengthening the hand of the dictatorship. To them, they owned Mugabe and the ruling party Zanu PF and their considered it their patriotic duty to defend Mugabe and the ruling party at all cost.
Mugabe made them believe that their best interests and that on the nation were best served by giving him and Zanu PF their blind loyalty.
It has taken thirty long years for some people to finally realise that Mugabe had taken them for fools; the people’s blind loyalty has allowed Mugabe to use them to inflict suffering and pain on their fellow Zimbabweans and, ultimately, to destroy the nation itself. As a nation we have paid dearly for allowing ourselves to be duped by Mugabe.
Sadly, it seems, some people still want to hold on to this myopic view of life. They now give Tsvangirai and MDC the same blind royalty they gave Mugabe and Zanu PF in the past. Tsvangirai has been an unmitigated disaster for Zimbabwe but these people refuse to even consider the growing body of evidence to show this. They even exaggerate the fact to create the “success” story.
It is hardly a great success story that there is now good in Zimbabwe’s shops since the GNU took charge. The truth is there was little the GNU actual did here serve to end the price controls introduced by the Mugabe regime. The real challenge for the GNU was in getting the country’s economy back on track. That demands strategic thinking; and sadly the GNU has fallen flat on its face on this. It the last three month the regime has discussed endless the outstanding matters of appointing RBZ governor, AG, etc. The regime was created an even more bloated administration than Mugabe ever did, at a time when the nation is broke and therefore be cutting back. Tsvangirai should have addressed the land issue head-on; this important resource can not be retained by those not able to put it into productive use. His timid approach has emboldened Mugabe supporters to seize even more farms!
Zimbabwe’s greatest enemy to building a free, happy and prosperous nation back in 1980 was not so much Mugabe and his inner circle of thugs; it was us the people. Our willingness to be duped into believing that Mugabe can not do no-wrong allowed him to build a ruthless dictatorship. This tendency for blind loyalty is today allowing Tsvangirai to commit one blunder after another confident that we the people will be loathed to ever question him.
For years Zimbabweans have been crying for democratic change and yet we are loathed to hold our leaders to account. We must boldly tell Tsvangirai the honey moon is over, the 100 days are up and the GNU has achieved very little. He must give a full account for all the blunders he and his fellow MDC leaders have committed!
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