Zimbabwe is crying out for a new liberation hero

By Lee Mwiti

While launching his much-watched Index of African Governance this week, Sudanese billionaire Mo Ibrahim scathingly asked Zimbabwe to “get its act together” with the hope that it would “somehow rise again”.

The once-proud country placed 47th out of 52 ranked countries.

Thirty-two years down the line after hard-won independence, Zimbabweans, among the continent’s most-educated and vibrant, firmly remain political prisoners and putty in the hands of the ruling elite.

A hegemony perfected by the Supreme Leader has systematically strangled all hope out of a large chunk of the nearly 14 million citizens, and barring his absence from the scene, looks set to extend its slavish grip past next year’s planned elections.

One telling poll earlier this year showed Zimbabweans have a morbid fear of politics, loosely defined as the affairs of the state. Most Zimbabwean youth have known only One Leader their entire lives, and out of work, are increasingly despondent. The cream of the country’s remaining thinkers have all fled.

The political elite’s tentacles tighten around the nation every passing day, slowly but steadily squeezing the life out of the national psyche. Economic figures flatter to deceive, while a weary international community dutifully goes through the motions.

It is a long way back from the heady days at the turn of the last decade, when a stunning constitutional referendum defeat, handed to the Main Man by brave voters, suggested a corner was about to be turned.

A false dawn, one of many, this succeeded only in further enraging The Beast, inviting a new and ultimately economically disastrous round of clampdowns on white farmers blamed for all the country’s ills.

The steady militarisation of the state ensures that things will not be changing anytime soon—everywhere you turn, there is an army badge, a police baton, a threatening militia machete brandished.

The all-powerful state security apparatus, oiled by patronage, public funds looting and cronyism, ensure that His Excellency’s vice-like grip is not in the least loosened.

Lucrative tenders

Tied inextricably to His very existence are the fortunes of the hangers-on: the lucrative tenders, the forcibly expropriated tracts of land ironically meant for the poor and landless, the plundered funds meant for long-suffering war veterans. With all this at stake, how could they let The Octogenarian, now 88, rest?

Any illusions of an African Spring in the country were snuffed out as quickly as they were imagined. A country’s national political discourse has been reduced to non-existentialism and sycophancy, a once proud economic powerhouse, a case study for many governance schools.

Once seen as the long-waited-for messiah, a certain trade unionist-turned-politician has seen the fire in his belly extinguished, in part by the wily machinations of The Incumbent, but also because having tasted it, an intoxication for power, the size of the morsel offered notwithstanding.

The Second Man is now dependent on scraps of power handed down to him by The Deity, and on what little enthusiasm the international community—read the South African led-SADC can muster for the region’s enfant terrible.

Once the country’s best hope of an electoral revolution–he has lately been distracted by the simple pleasures of life, among them foreign travel and the vexatious search for a life partner.

The country has conditions ripe for a new liberation, yet no talisman for the masses to rally behind, most candidates having been pummelled into submission. A planned referendum and election will only succeed in ensconcing the current plutocracy, and reform remains the promised land rather than an actual goal.

Who will step up to save a despondent Zimbabwe from itself?

Who will ensure the sacrifices of the Joshua Nkomos and the tens of thousands butchered in the quest for absolute power do not go in vain?

That is a question for Zimbabweans, not the outside world, not any number of mediators. Africa Review.com