GERMAN NATIONAL'S HIS FARM IS LOOTED: MUGABE'S WILL IS LAW!

Mugabe and his cronies must have fallen out of the chairs and cried with laughter when they first heard that Germany will cut humanitarian aid to Zimbabwe in response to the seizure and looting of Heinrich von Pezold’s farm. The move will not hurt the dictator and his cronies in any way; it will make their job of controlling the Zimbabwe voters that much easier!

The key to Mugabe and Zanu PF’s iron grip on power and his total controls every facet of human activity in Zimbabwe is that he be above the law. Mugabe is fetish about upholding the law when it suits him only to contemptuously disregard the same law when it does not. The right to own property, the right to a meaningful free vote and even the right to life itself; they are rights only if Mugabe says so. In other words, they are privileges that he can give and withhold as he sees fit. Mugabe and his cronies are not subject to any national or international laws, they are above the law. Mugabe’s will is THE supreme law in the land.

It was Mugabe’s will to seize and loot all white-owned farms in Zimbabwe – it suited him in that he needed the farms to buy the blind loyalty of his cronies and as a smoke screen to hide his ruthless political repression of the Zimbabweans. Heinrich von Pezold may be a German national and Zimbabwe and Germany may have signed an agreement protecting Pezold’s property rights, etc. All that count for nothing when weighed against Mugabe’s will!

Mugabe has left no stone unturned in his drive to ensure he and Zanu PF has totally control of every facet of Zimbabweans’ lives. Thus it is a well known fact that all NGOs, for example, must handover the aid to Zanu PF leaders or, at the very least, distribute using the party’s structure. In 2008 Mugabe stopped a lot of the humanitarian aid reaching the needy to remind the voters of his overwhelming power over them. By cutting it humanitarian aid to independent NGOs, Germany will only reducing the number of NGOs Zanu PF has to police.

It is Mugabe’s years of mismanagement and corruption that has left 80% of Zimbabweans destitute and dependent on aid. By tightly controlling who gets the aid, it is Mugabe who is “cashing” in on the economic melt down and the nation’s misery. And Germany is helping him in that.

If Germany really wanted to expresses its displeasure with Mugabe’s contempt for the rule of law then there are other more effective ways of doing so. Germany and the West can turn the screw on Mugabe by extending the targeted sanctions beyond Mugabe and the 203 of his cronies to include the next tier of the Zanu PF ruling elite and their families and by policing the sanctions closely. Many of those on the sanctions list have their children studying and living in the Europe and North America after a simple act of changing the name on their passport, for example.

The West has always had the option of cutting aid to those nations propping up Mugabe. They must do so now.

After the sham elections of 2008 the West had good reasons to view Zimbabwe’s GNU as a white-washed Zanu PF dictatorship. Still, the West did nothing to pressure Mugabe to change giving Tsvangirai the benefit of the doubt that the GNU would bring about democratic change in Zimbabwe. It is clear the dictator had no intention of sharing power with Tsvangirai or bringing about any meaningful change.

The wealth from the Marange diamonds has become the wind under Mugabe’s wings; he is it to buy his cronies’ continued blind loyalty and to build a war-chest in preparations for Zimbabwe’s next elections. The GNU’s failure to bring about any meaningful economic recovery will only mean Zimbabweans will redouble their efforts to end Mugabe’s tyrannical rule. To “win” Mugabe will resort to brutal repression, worse than that used in 2008; he has money to pay for it. The West has always handled Mugabe with kid gloves; it is high time Mugabe is acknowledged as a ruthless dictator he is and treated accordingly. The scene is set for Mugabe be commit one of the worst man-made human tragedy in modern history; the West can stop him if only they had the political will to do so!