Vince it is not so much that “we are caught
in a spider’s web of lies about our history, our potential and our future as a
country.” But rather that we have spin these lies of super heroes and the
nation’s greatness that when things started to go pear-shape we refused to believe
the facts. Even today with the nation in a real mess there are some people who
still refuse to believe we messed up and need to embrace change; they want us
to stay the course confident we can still have the free, just and prosperous
Zimbabwe we are all after.
"The most successful tyranny is not the
one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness
of other possibilities that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are
viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside,” wrote Vince Musewe,
quoting Allan David Bloom the American economist.
Allan Bloom was spot in his assessment it is
your interpretation, Vince, which is wrong. on but if we are to apply his
observation to our case then it is important to understand that Mugabe has very
successful dragged us into this hell-on-earth these last 35 years by convincing
us that we were on the right path and we will pull through if we remain united
and focused. We have not looked for other ways or possibilities because we were
convinced we were on the right path already.
“The archaic paradigm of victimhood which
accepts that we as Zimbabweans are incapable of creating our own prosperity and
cannot create self-sustaining economy despite the fact that we have all the
necessary knowledge base spread all over the world and the necessary resources
to do so must be rejected and expunged from our minds,” you are argued.
This is exactly what Mugabe has been saying
all these years; are you sure you did not up lift this rhetoric from one of
Mugabe’s UN speeches. You blame our failure to create the prosperous Zimbabwe
on Mugabe and he blames the “sanctions imposed by evil British imperialists and
their allies”.
In his recent speech to the UN a few days ago
Mugabe said Africa did not need hand-outs from donors or the West in its
development quest and Zimbabwe would have achieved her development goals if it
was not for the “illegal sanctions imposed by the West”!
Of course it is not because of the sanctions
that we are in this economic mess just as it is nonsense to blame the West’s
hand-outs for Africa’s backwardness. We are in this mess because we have
created this lie that we can do anything only if we believe we can. When you
hold such a strong view, over compensating for the years of being made to feel
we are inferior to the whites, you back yourself into a corner.
Zimbabwe is in this economic mess because of
three and half decades of mismanagement and corruption we have instinctive
recoiled from acknowledging this because to do so was tantamount to
acknowledging that we are fallible and thus inferior.
It is this absolutism that is behind Mugabe’s
imposition of this de facto one-party state and his unshaking determination to
remain president for life – he believes he alone KNOWS what is best for the
country absolutely no question. So imposing a one-party state becomes natural
in the circumstances.
Tsvangirai has already proven to be corrupt
and incompetent but that has not done nothing to shake his own belief in his
own capabilities and infallibility hence the reason why he has disregarded the
party’s own constitution to extend his stay as MDC leader beyond the fixed
maximum of two terms.
“We must now create a paradigm that says that
our country Zimbabwe has all it requires to create trillion dollar economy
within 30 years at the most. We must also believe that we can shape a
self-sustaining inclusive economy with full employment without relying aid on
the West, or the East for that matter, to determine what we can become. We must
stop being slaves to the self-serving political rhetoric or to international
capital. We can control our destiny as a country if only we believe,” you with the
absolutism of a tyrant who know-all the answers.
We are in this political and economic mess
not because people have been “blinded by the unceasing rhetoric and propaganda
of the Zanu-PF machinery” into believing there is no future beyond the present
the party is offering.
“The Zimbabwe we wish to build is grand and
in my opinion, we continue to be limited only by our imagination and
belief. That must change,” argued Vince.
If there is one thing this nation have never
lacked for the last 35 years it is imagination and self-belief; especial our
national leaders they have been punch-drunk.
Even with the national economy in the
doldrums caused economic mismanagement and corruption and the country up to its
eyes in debt because of decades misrule under his leadership; that did not stop
Mugabe producing his 2013 $ 27 billion ZimAsset economic recovery plan with
promises to create 2.2 million new jobs. It should be remembered that the
regime was not getting any financial assistances from anyone at the time, not
even from its “all-weather friend” the Chinese, because it had failed to
service it $10 billion foreign debt. Still the regime was confident it would
raise the necessary funds.
Of course Mugabe failed to raise the money
for ZimAsset and the regime has failed to create any new job but has been
losing jobs instead as more and more companies have closed. Even now with
ZimAsset dead in the water Mugabe still talks of the plan beaming with confidence
as if he only has to snap his fingers and the plan will be back on track!
As if not to be out done Morgan Tsvangirai
and the laid-back Joice Mujuru have each produced their economic blue-prints
for Zimbabwe’s economic recovery and prosperity called JUICE and BUILD
respectively. The two release their plans accompanied by some prolonged chest
drumming normally associated with silver-back gorillas to underline their
self-confidence and self-belief.
Tsvangirai would have done better is he had
listened to all those, including SADC Heads of State, who advised him to
implemented the democratic reforms agreed in the GPA; at least the nation would
have had its first free, fair and credible elections in July 2013. He did not
listen; a silver-back in the middle of its macho display does not listen to
chattering monkeys.
The nation’s military success in the war of
independence has left everyone beaming with self-confidence and self-believe
especial Mugabe and his fellow war heroes and heroines; they really do not
believe there is anything they cannot do. They won the war and ended white
colonial exploitation and racial discrimination but at great price. We have
become one of cockiest nation on earth because after defeating the whites we
have become absolutely certain that there nothing we cannot do. Nothing!
We can talk about mismanagement and
corruption being the cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown until we are all
blue in the face; Mugabe and many of his Zanu PF friends will never believe a
word. They believe it is the “illegal sanctions imposed by the British imperialist
and their Western allies” that has done all the damage. To spice up their story
further still; Mugabe has said the sanctions were imposed to achieve regime
change. What makes all these hen’s teeth stories “believable” is that Mugabe is
a war hero who is so cocksure of himself and there is his war record to “prove”
he is an extra-ordinary hero who can do anything!
India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru recognized the danger a cocky self-assured war hero can be to a
nation.
“What kind of leaders would an armed struggle
throw up?” asked Nehru of his fellow Congress Party leaders when the question
arose whether or not the party should abandon the Mahatma Gandhi’s none
violence passive resistance route in favour of an armed struggle to end British
rule of India. “Are they the kind of leaders we would want to rule our
country?”
We in Zimbabwe throw caution to the wind and
went for fully fledged and bloody armed struggle. We defeated the white
colonialist but at a great price – the war throw up the cocky tyrants who
believe they know best and consider being held to account in a free and democratic
election an insult, the leaders Nehru warned about!
Even those who did not fight in the war of
independence have copied Mugabe’s arrogant autocratic leadership style.
Tsvangirai has changed his party’s constitution to extend his stay as leader
beyond the original fixed two terms confident he is the only person competent
to lead MDC. He following Mugabe’s example who has remained his party’s leader
for 35 years and counting, he has rigged both national and Zanu PF elections
because he believes he is the only person competent of leading the nation
regardless of his track record of economic ruin and brutal oppression!
I too believe Zimbabwe has the potential to
be a great nation and what has dragged us backwards into the Dark Ages for the
last 35 years is not the lack of “imagination and self-belief”, as you think
Vince. We have a political system that has allowed corrupt and incompetent
tyrants to stay in power even when they have become so dopy they read the same
speech twice. That is what is wrong here.
What we need to do is implement ALL the
democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 GPA so that we have free, fair and
credible elections. The lack of democratic accountability has made our current
crop of leaders cocky and punch-drunk on absolute power; for the good of the
nation, that must end.
No comments:
Post a Comment