MDC mourns Mugabe globe-trotting yet did nothing to end the dictatorship. By Nomusa Garikai

“After the so called million man march in Harare where crowds were rented and school heads suffered extortion to surrender school buses by force, President Mugabe is at it again. His foreign trips never cease and it seems like he gets sick if he spends a single month in Harare,” mourned MDC-T spokesman Obert Chaurura Gutu.

“So far this year his trips have gobbled a whopping $80 million and there is not a single achievement made through his insatiable appetite for air travel.”

There is no doubt that President Mugabe loves globe-trotting; here is a man who loves travelling and delivering grand and officious speeches regardless how low key the occasion happen to be. His latest trip to Papua New Guinea, which prompted Gutu to write, being one such occasion; Mugabe will be the only foreign head of state attending the meeting.

Yes President Mugabe’s globe-trotting had gobbled millions of dollars every year and given he has been in power for 36 years and counting it has gobbled billions of dollars and the nation has precious little to show for it. The people of Zimbabwe have known President Mugabe is incompetent, corrupt and a murderous tyrant for years and hence the reason why they have risked life and limp to elect MDC on the understanding Tsvangirai and company would bring democratic change and regime change.

MDC had the golden opportunity during the GNU to bring about meaningful democratic changes in Zimbabwe and they wasted the chance because MDC leaders were distracted by the gravy train lifestyles being in government offered and they forgot they were there to implement the democratic reforms. It is rich that Comrade Chaurura Gutu should be mourning about President Mugabe’s insatiable appetite for luxuries and globe-trotting when it was the same insatiable greed that made MDC forget why they were is the GNU.

President Mugabe loves this highflier lifestyle and so did Morgan Tsvangirai the difference between the two men is that whilst the former in all his globe-trotting and wallowing in luxuries he has never for one minute lost sight of his goal of ruthlessly establishing and retaining a one-party cum one-man dictatorship. The latter, Tsvangirai, was so easily distracted from his set task of implementing the democratic reforms. The ease with which President Mugabe has con Tsvangirai and his MDC friends into doing nothing about implementing the reforms, which would have effectively ended his dictatorship, during the GNU years is the stuff of legend!

Ever since the day Tsvangirai was sworn in as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe his head swelled beyond all proportion blinding him to reality. Tsvangirai was given the opportunity to hobnob with the world leaders like President Barack Obama and Tsvangirai did not just have the cheeky of telling them Mugabe had changed but ignored their warning that the tyrant had not changed.

Tsvangirai, like Mugabe, loved globe-trotting but did not know where he was going

If Morgan Tsvangirai had not been so single track minded about the globe-trotting, the chasing of women and all the other trappings of high office and instead had implemented the democratic reforms then we would not be in this tragic situation stuck with a wasteful tyrant but worst of all stuck with the dictatorship! It is ironic that the people who should have ended the dictatorship are mourning about the globe-trotting as if that was an attainable dream with the dictatorship still firmly in place.