Respect for the dead Mugabe is no excuse to riding roughshod over his victims and the truth - he was a dictator P Guramatunhu

Robert Gabriel Mugabe was a ruthless tyrant who viewed the ordinary Zimbabweans as little more than pawns, sub-humans, to dispose of as he saw fit. In expressing their grief over Mugabe’s death many people are riding roughshod over the truth just as he had ridden roughshod over the ordinary Zimbabweans.

Mugabe had no qualms riding roughshod over Zimbabweans, denying them their freedoms and basic human rights including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country and even the right to life.

In his 37 years of tyrannical rule he left the country’s economy in ruins. He seized the former white owned farms for himself (he and his family have 13 plus farms) and his cronies destroying the country’s once productive agricultural sector and with it the national economy. Unemployment soared to 80% plus in the early 2000s and has remained there ever since.

The country’s basic services such as supply of clean water and health care have long collapsed. Mugabe, his family and the ruling elite have been going to Singapore, SA. India, China, etc. for all their medical care; povo have no choice but to make do with the substandard local care. The Minister of Health, Obadiah Moyo, admitted the country was spending US$400 million a year on outside the country health bill for chefs whilst local hospitals are starved of funds for medicine, equipment and pay for health workers.

On the political front, Mugabe has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans to establish and retain his de facto one-party dictatorship. “What was achieved by the bullet cannot be undone by the ballot!” he boasted during the 2008 presidential run-off when he unleashed his party thugs, rogue war veterans and state security personal to beat, rape and murder Zimbabweans. He was punishing the people for rejecting him in the earlier vote.

All those who say Mugabe is a hero are ignoring the suffering and deaths he visited on the people of Zimbabwe not because they do not know what he did but because, like Mugabe himself, they look at his victims. Of course, these people would be incandescent with rage if Mugabe had ridden roughshod over them or any other human beings out there. They find it impossible to react in the same way since he did all these things to Zimbabweans; it is not quite the same thing.

As a Zimbabwean, I find it hard to have been the victim of such corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF regime; denied my human dignity, hopes and dreams. But what sets me off glowing white-hot with rage is some village idiots belittle my suffering and that of millions other Zimbabweans out there by ignoring the facts on the ground and insist in calling Mugabe a hero.

Mugabe was a corrupt, incompetent and murderous dictator! Please, please do not insult the millions of us, whom he has ill-treated and crashed like bugs underfoot, by belittling our suffering and deaths and call him a liberation hero!

Mugabe fought to end white colonial oppression and exploitation but only to become the new corrupt, incompetent and ruthless oppressor. Zimbabweans are fighting for their freedom, human rights and dignity today just as they were doing during white colonial rule. You can help us in that fight but do not dare tell us we have been liberated because we know we are not!