Friday, 2 December 2016

"We were used to prop Mugabe," complain Mujuru's war vets - they now prop her. By N Garikai

“Mwana wabata moto unodzidza juti unopisa, benzi ibenzi rinozvibvura!” So goes the Shona adage. (The child who touches fire soon learns that it burns, the fool never learns and so will roast himself!)

After 34 years at the very heart of the Zanu PF dictatorship plus two years cooling-off period one would have thought Mai Mujuru and her ZPF followers have finally learned something. Sadly, they are the same blunder idiots they were in 1980, remained so throughout the 34 years in Zanu PF and are set to continue blundering into the future!

“We want to apologise to the masses of Zimbabwe because we dumped them soon after independence. We are saying we are coming back to you. We want to listen and we want the problems that people are facing resolved,” said Elliot Kasu, the interim chairperson of the ZPF Freedom Fighters Council (FFC).

“After the liberation struggle we were dumped and we continue to be dumped. So, we are saying let us go back to the 1980s.”

In one breath, he acknowledges that war veterans betrayed the people but has clearly not thought through as how that happened, specifically the role Joice Mujuru and other ZPF leaders played and war veterans like him played. In the next breath he is back to his and Mai Mujuru’s favourite theme blaming Mugabe and those still in Zanu PF for “dumping” them!

Frank Badza, who is Secretary General of FFC said the same thing in different words.

“The revolution was derailed following the liberation struggle and it continues to go off the rails up to this day. So, we have been figuring out where we went wrong,” said Frank Badza.

“We entirely accept the blame for the fall of this country and the abandonment of the values of the liberation struggle. We did not realise our objectives because some of the forefathers were not there at the end and it was hijacked by some who wanted to build their names, yet their contribution was far less.

“As freedom fighters, we realised that if we follow People First, we will remove people from this dictatorship. We were used to put Mugabe in power and we were used to prop up his rule and maintain it until 2014 when we were hounded from the party.

Again the same thing, a quick acknowledgement that the Zimbabwe is in a serious economic mess and the most sorrowful and sonorous words of regret they were “hounded from the party”.

Joice Mujuru, who attended the press conference above, has given a number of press interviews herself since December 2014 has to apologized to the people of Zimbabwe for the mess the country is in. She has been a cabinet member for 34 years, the last ten of which she was President Mugabe’s number two and yet she accepts no responsibility for anything. She saw nothing, she maintains, because “puppies do not open their eyes the day they born”.

Well Kasu, Badza, Mujuru and the rest of these ZPF people have not been listening or they are all stone deaf because if they have been listening they would know by now that;

a)     they have all been at the very heart of this Zanu PF dictatorship and, after 34 years, they cannot walk away and pretend they saw nothing, heard nothing and they as dumb as the moon. They are all as guilty of landing the nation in this mess as President Mugabe, Mnangagwa, Jabulani Sibanda and all the others.

b)    There is a lot more to this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship than the one or two individuals that has allowed it to take firm root in Zimbabwe; it is the ethos that shared by most freedom fighters that by being a freedom fighter they know best and therefore everyone else must listen to them and do as they say. Well, history has shown that war veterans do not have the monopoly of knowledge, the nation would not be in this economic and political mess if they did.

c)     And, more significantly, if we are serious about ending the mess then it is not enough to just remove Mugabe and one or two others from power and change the name of the party from Zanu PF to ZPF. We must dismantle the whole dictatorship edifice including the erroneous belief that war veterans know best on which the dictatorship is grounded.

What Zanu PF has done since independence in April 1980 is systematically corrupt the nation’s democratic institutions so they served the party’s selfish interest of remaining in power at all cost. Security Chefs were brainwashed into announcing that they would not salute anyone “with no liberation war credentials”.

The war veterans were brainwashed into believing all opposition parties were sponsored by the West to bring about regime change. So, the regime granted them carte blanche powers to abuse the people denying them their freedoms and rights including the right to free and fair elections in the name of stopping regime change.

The sheer stupidity of both the security chefs and the war veterans was exposed by their failure to see that this no regime change mantra was incompatible with the regime’s claim that elections were free, fair and credible. If they had any common sense at all they should have also realised that the country’s failure to have a democratically accountable government was the root cause of the country’s economic decline!

“We know as war veterans that if we win elections it will be difficult for them to deny us power as they did with Tsvangirai,” said Badza.

In other words, he and his FFC friends still believe in they know best.

Chris Mutsvangwa who is leading the other group of war veterans who have remain in Zanu PF are right now in the middle of a serious power struggle in which Mutsvangwa and company still maintains the view that as war veterans “they are the stockholders of Zimbabwe” and thus wield the veto when it comes to deciding who rules the country.

Kasu, Badza, Mutsvangwa, Sibanda and all the other war veterans be you members of Mujuru’s FFC or Mugabe’s WNLWVA, it real does matter; President Mugabe, VP Mnangagwa, former VP Mujuru and all the other Zanu PF buffoons brainwashed you lot into believing that they, by virtue of having been the leaders in the liberation struggle, knew best. Well the truth is they are just as fallible as everyone else and the country would not be in such a mess if they were infallible.

The only way the country is ever going to get out of this mess is by completely dismantling the Zanu PF dictatorship and ending this political lie that freedom fighters are special. Twitting the dictatorship by change one or two leaders and/or changing the party name is not enough. Zimbabwe’s next elections must be free, fair and credible – that is negotiable! 

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