@ Fungayi and Dora
“A struggle that was waged to primarily wrestle land from a minority that looted the resource in a genocidal and punishable way,” Dora argued. “In the process of its finalisation you are created a proxy to resist same in deliberate manner to maintain the status quo.”
“Mariko Jones land was at the very top (of liberation war demands). You must have heard the Son of the Soil (Mwana wevhu!) slogan,” wrote Fungayi.
So that is your take on Mugabe’s usual excuse for unleashing his political thugs to beat, rape and murder innocent people; he is protecting the nation’s “independence and sovereignty” he claims.
This is all nonsense gentlemen and we all know it. The land was a very important and critical resource that the repressive white regime had commandeered and denied the blacks equal access just as they were doing with other resources like minerals and other national wealth. The struggle for independence was to restore natural justice in the distribution of land and all the country’s wealth. These rights are covered in the right to own property, the right to seek employment and be paid a just wage, etc. often referred as the basic economic rights.
The right to be recognised as a person before the law, freedom of expression, the right to have a meaningful say in the governance of one’s country and the right to life and some of the political rights.
Repressive regimes have often sought to hide their continued denial of political rights to their people in the guess that they are interested in delivering the economic rights. “Human rights do not put food on your table,” they would argue. In the case of this Mugabe dictatorship, having finally failed to post independence promise “gutsa ruzhinji” – mass prosperity, the regime has discarded all other economic rights to just this one – land.
First we must dismiss this nonsense that the people have a choice of economic rights or political rights. The citizen is entitled to all economic and all political rights and is nothing to suggest that these rights are mutually exclusive and therefore can not be enjoyed at one and the same time.
The extent all the citizens (not just a select few) enjoyment their economic and political rights and freedoms is the true measure of the independence and sovereignty a nation.
Oppressive regimes deny their people freedom of expression they do not want the public to know how incompetent and corrupt the rulers are. On the land issue, for example, Mugabe has been lying that it is the landless peasants who have benefited from the white farm invasion when it is he and his cronies who have taken over most of the farms. Mugabe, his wife and a few other Zanu PF big wigs have as many as five farms each! They then deny the electorate the free vote so they can not be booted out of power.
Mugabe’s autocratic rule is a flash back of my childhood. The image of my big brother towering over me slapping and punching me hissing “Be quite!” I wanted to scream my head off from the physical pain but even more so from the injustice of it all. He would be punishing me for not having done ALL the chores even when I had done more than my fair share of the work. My father would be disappointed to see that the dishes were not washed or the school uniform was not washed but he would never beat any one for that. He was really angry that my brother was beating me for not doing his share of the chores.
“Here,” my father said to brother once. “Here is some money. Go and find yourself a prostitute and father a child with her. Then you can beat up your own child!”
Zimbabwe finds itself in this nightmare situation today because it has a ruthless bully for a father figure with all the Stately power and authority of the Police, CIO and Army to abuse to achieve his singular goal of retaining political power at all cost.
Tsvangirai and MDC have not turned out to be any better than Mugabe in terms of sympathising with the suffering ordinary person. At a time when Zim Alloys, Zim Glass and Kariba Batteries, three big factories in Gweru, closed throwing hundreds of workers to join the 80% unemployed. In the same week that an MDC supporter is murdered in cold blood during an outreach meeting in a throw back of the political violence of 2008. Tsvangirai said nothing on these issues. Instead he sort to cause a “constitutional crisis” over Mugabe’s failure to appoint Roy Bennett and other MDC Officials into power.
Still no amount of propaganda can change the fact that the people’s right own land, right to be heard and share ideas, the right to be treated with dignity and, above all, their right to life was at the very heart of our struggle for freedom and independence. Sadly that goal of granting our people all these basic human rights is yet to be achieved. Mugabe’s notion of putting independence and the land before the people is as ridiculous as a father expending his energy rescuing toy but did not lift a finger to save the life of the child.
Fungayi, when it comes to governance all those in public will be well advised to remember that “Nyika vanhu!” – It is the people who give a country it worth. It is more poignant than “Mwana wevhu” – Son of the soil!
@Mariko Jones
We have the great misfortune, Mariko, of living in a country where those who a heroic war of independence, having won the war, they turned the guns on the very people they were supposed to be liberating to deprive them of liberty and human dignity. It is very difficult to urge much less do something staring up the business end of a gun.
“What was won by a gun can not be undone by a pen!” Was Robert Mugabe’s justification for waging war against defenceless civilians in 2008 in which the whole nation was subjected to three months of hell in an orgy of intimidation, rape, beatings and over 500 were murdered. In the past the Police, CIO and the Army had turned a blind eye to Zanu PF orchestrated violence and lawlessness; this time they spear headed the violence and carried out most of the kidnappings and murders in unmarked state vehicles. All this social upheaval was for one purpose and one purpose only; so Mugabe and Zanu PF can retain power.
In the three decades in power, Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs have destroyed the country’s economy initially through mismanagement, then corruption and in the last ten years in the worst kind of institutionalised looting in human history. At the peak of the looting inflation soared to 500 billion %, unemployment climbed to nauseating levels of 95%, schools and hospitals closed, there was no food and other good in shops, etc. Millions of our people now live in abject poverty.
Life expectancy, the ultimate litmus test, in Zimbabwe has dropped from 65 years when Mugabe came into power to 34 years or less today! The ordinary Zimbabweans is economically and politically worse off today than he/she were under white colonial repression; that is the sad and tragic indictment of Zimbabwe’s black majority rule to date. How did this happen?
It was clear from the outset that Mugabe and his Zanu PF may have been the leaders in the struggle to end white exploitation and repression but it was not out of the altruistic notion of restoring the freedom and human dignity of all. They saw it as a ticket for them to step into the white men’s shoe and become the new lords in the land with even more political power than the colonialists ever enjoyed. Many of those who should and could have stopped Mugabe from within Zanu PF itself and outside did opted to join him instead on the promise of a share of the spoils. As for the ordinary Zimbabweans, they simply resigned their future and that of posterity to whatever the mad and ruthless dictator decided. Fortunately there were a few Zimbabweans who had the courage and vision to stand up and say to this reign of madness.
Everyone can see the ruinous consequences of Mugabe’s rule and you, Mariko, are one of the few who have had the courage to condemn the Mugabe’s “outrageous trashing human dignity, hope and human life.” I agree, this must never be swept under the carpet.
Fungayi and Dora are some of those people who chose to aid and abet Mugabe in his madness in return for the thirty pieces of silver. Fungayi says he got a “plot of land” one of the looted former white owned farm. It is interesting to note that the situation in Zimbabwe is now so bad that not even the plot could entice him to live in Zimbabwe. The two have been busy painting a false picture the dictator and his regime but there is nothing that can ever hide the brutality of 2008 election violence or the genocide of Gukurahundi. These two are certainly guilty of instigating some of the serious human rights violations if not themselves shedding some of innocent blood. They must have the loot taken away and, if they have blood on their hands, they must hang together with Mugabe and all the other thugs!
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