“As calls from Zimbabweans,
including opposition supporters, war veterans and even some in Zanu-PF for
President Robert Mugabe to step down get almost deafening, it is becoming
increasingly desirable for the nonagenarian to listen to the voice of reason -
for the sake of his young family,” reported the Daily News.
The truth of the matter is
President Mugabe will never ever stand down because he accepts that he has
failed and feels sorry for the people who have suffered all these years. It is
not in the nature of a tyrant to acknowledge he has failed much less to give up
power. He will have to be forced out of office kicking and screaming or dead!
Like every other public official,
if asked, President Mugabe will be adamant that he has served the people of
Zimbabwe well, they love him to bits and he has some unfinished business still
to do even after 37 years in office. He is here to serve the nation; although
he is not as strong physically and mentally as he was in the days gone by he
will soldier on regardless, he is the servant of his people.
The real reason he will not step
down is that absolute power is sweet and addictive and after a few years one is
hooked. After 37 years of enjoying absolute power and the earthly luxuries it
brings, giving it up now is simply unthinkable! It is not uncommon to hear of
heroine addicts failing to pay their rent because they spent the money buying
the drug. Absolute power is an even stronger addictive drug; it is no surprise
that President Mugabe spent $36 million globetrotting last year whilst public hospitals
under and up the country had no money to buy something as basic as painkillers.
People should not waste time
asking President Mugabe to step down, that will never happen, but focus on why
those within his own party Zanu PF and the opposition have failed to force him
to give up power.
When Margaret Dongo dismissed
Zanu PF leaders as “vakadzi vaMugabe” (Mugabe’s subservient concubines) many of
us laughed and soon forgot about it. She was on to something and we were
foolish not to pay heed to her warning. President Mugabe is a control freak who
has surrounded himself with some of the most incompetent, corrupt and useless
public leaders one can ever imagine. Zimbabwe has never held a cabinet meeting
in 37 years unless Mugabe was there to chair it; is it any wonder that even now,
when Mugabe can hardly stay awake for more than a few hours and weak and frail
from ill health and old age, still not even one of his subservient concubines
has dare to force him to give up power.
The opposition MDC had its golden
opportunity to force President Mugabe out of office by making sure the 2013
elections were free, fair and credible. All Tsvangirai and his MDC friends had
to do was implement the democratic reforms. The tyrant bribed the lot with the
trappings of high office and the $4 million Highlands mansion for Tsvangirai,
in return they kicked the reforms into the tall grass.
SADC leaders tried them best to
get MDC to implement the reforms but were ignored.
Mugabe went on to blatantly rig
the July 2013 elections. SADC leaders blamed MDC leaders for this accusing them
of “enjoying themselves during the GNU and forgetting why they were there!” Of
course, SADC leaders were right; MDC leaders are corrupt and incompetent and
the sold-out during the GNU.
In the last 37 years, there have
been many opportunities to end Mugabe’s corrupt and tyrannical rule; sadly,
there was no competent politician in the opposition camp and even less likely
within Zanu PF itself, to take advantage of one of these opportunities.
We, the electorate, have played
our part in this by failing to elect quality leaders. By failing to see people
like Tsvangirai and Mujuru for the corrupt and incompetent leaders they are,
even with the benefit of hindsight of their past blunderings, we are telling
the whole world that we are not yet ready to good governance.
Even if we managed to get President
Mugabe to step down tomorrow the chances are we will replace him with either
Mnangagwa, Mujuru or Tsvangirai – the nation is so desperate to see the back of
Mugabe that many will consider anyone of the three a very significant
improvement. We all know that each one of the three is corrupt and incompetent
and that should be enough to disqualify them from ever holding public office
much less hold the highest office in the land!
We are desperate for change only
because we have never made the effort to think through what qualities we should
be looking for is a good and competent leader and then go out and seek one.
People get the government they
deserve and in Zimbabwe we certain deserve this corrupt and tyrannical Mugabe
dictatorship complete with its entourage of corrupt and opposition parties. The
economic misery of decades of mismanagement and corruption have caused untold
human suffering and many, many deaths but clearly not enough to wake us up from
our sloth-like slumber and force us to take the business of select quality
leaders with seriousness and urgency the matter demands!
6 comments:
If Mugabe was to step down now we will have to appoint Mnangagwa, Mujuru or Tsvangirai president because we have no one else lined up. For the last 37 years we have failed to come up with a competent leaders and so are stuck with these three snakes! This bespeaks volumes of our failure as a nation to govern ourselves!
We have had 37 years post independence and God knows we have made some blunders already, which common sense would dictate that we have learned something from, and have the over 2500 years of human history to call upon in a search for answers on self government. And the best we can do is remove one dictator after 38 years of corrupt and tyrannical rule with another idiot we already know in corrupt and incompetent. This is like replace one snake with another and hope the later will not bite even though we already know it is a biting cobra!
Zimbabweans are no taking the business of electing competent leaders with the urgency the matter demands and they will pay dearly for it!
Speaking during a live interview on South African television station ANN7 on Tuesday night, Tsvangirai said the “big tent” that he has been talking about for months now was not only the best option to end President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF’s misrule, but it was also the right vehicle to manage the power transition after the polls.
“We all see the strategic need for it (opposition coalition) and … if we don’t succeed in having the change, we would have betrayed a lot of expectations of Zimbabweans … but it takes everyone to play a part.
“We are very committed to ensuring that we do not betray the national sentiment about coming together and forging a coalition … we are busy looking at everything,” he said.
Zanu PF is in power because it has perfected the art of rigging elections, without implementing the democratic reforms designed to stop the vote rigging there is no doubt that Zanu PF will rig the next elections just as they did past elections. Tsvangirai has failed to get even one reform implemented just as he did before the 2013 elections and now is wants the people to believe that as long as he can form this the grand coalition of the opposition he will win.
In the March 2008 Tsvangirai won 73% of the vote by Mugabe's own admission but this was reduced by ZEC to 47% after six weeks of recounting 5 million votes! Since then Mugabe has certain improved his vote rigging tactics and he has billions of dollars looted from Marange to bankroll his dirty schemes. How does forming an opposition coalition stop that vote rigging juggernaut?
Zimbabweans have been asking Mugabe to go for years now and as long as we allow him to rig elections and falsify an people's mandate to rule, he will never go!
“China is right now in no rush to throw good money into a bad situation. What will probably happen is that, to allow face to be saved all round, there will be some modest release of funds and drip-feed to selected projects,” said London based Professor Chan.
He was commenting on whether or not Zimbabwe was going to see the revival of the mega-deal projects China agreed to finance back in 2014 but never followed up.
Zanu PF’s ZimAsset recovery plan was dead in the water soon after the 2013 elections. President Mugabe thought after rigging the elections rigging economic recovery was going to be easy not knowing that by rigging the elections he showed the world that he has no regard for the rule of law. No one is that foolish to want to invest in a country with no rule of law.
So by rigging the elections Mugabe shot dead ZimAsset!
@Gandanga
I agree with you to some extend on the need to be inclusive. However, I do not agree with you in this case.
There is a real danger of seeing our problems in the simplest terms and thus pursue an over simplified binary solution. It is tempting to see the disgruntled war veterans as "fighting the same war with" us, for example, because they are fighting to remove Mugabe. But by looking closely, one can see that they are fighting to remove Mugabe and replace him with another dictator. By supporting the war veterans now we are per se agreeing they have the right to impose the next dictator.
We want to end one-party dictatorship in Zimbabwe and have free and fair elections and that is not negotiable; we must be very clear on that!
Jacob Mudenda said that the debates over Mugabe’s successor were a sign of a “lack of discipline and unbridled ambition”. He added: “No new sun rises before the old one sets.”
President Mugabe is a mortal like everyone else, he has had his long turn – 37 years - at ruling the country and, given the economic and political mess the country is in, made a dog’s breakfast of it; he must go. Why should the nation be stuck with him for another day longer?
Margaret Dongo talked of Zanu PF leaders being “vakadzi vaMugabe” (Mugabe’s subservient concubines) because of the way they all grovel before the tyrant and are totally incapable of thinking for themselves much less see reason. Jacob Mudenda is showing us just what a mindless concubine is like. Even with the nation in the gutter because of President Mugabe’s corrupt and tyrannical rule, Mudenda is still as faithful to the tyrant as a dog.
Mr Mudenda you and your fellow Zanu PF concubines may not see the reason for regime change, the rest of us do see the need. We want free, fair and credible elections in 2018 and you can do with your “sun” Mugabe as you see fit!
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