Full Text: They want to lead us to war – Tendai Biti

By Tendai Biti

The on going shenanigans currently unfolding in Harare are obnoxious and unacceptable. It is self evident that the securocrats are mobilizing coerced lumpen elements to invade the streets of Harare.

The army and police were clearly visible as these crowds were forming. Needless to say this a response to the hash tag movement. This is an ill informed knee jerk response to a citizen that is becoming assertive and brazen.

A citizen that has been given voice and space by social media. A normal regime would interrogate and introspect. It would seek to understand the grievance and complaint of the citizen and seek to find a solution to those challenges.

In casu the citizen has no jobs,has no food on her table. The citizen can not access its cash from banks. The citizen has gone for two months without a salary and her 2015 bonus is still outstanding.

The citizen can no longer do cross border trade because of an import ban imposed by statutory instrument 64 of 2016. The citizen can not send its child to school and can not afford hospitals wherein there are no drugs any way.

The citizen is angry with police road blocks and pot holes that can swallow cars.

The citizen is angry at the destruction of its homes and the mushrooming of politically inspired illegal ZANU settlements .

The citizen is angry at a profligate regime that flies its children to foreign countries for maternity care and education and drives around in expensive air conditioned super SUVs.

The citizen is angry at an impotent opposition whose speciality is breaching its own constitution and the deity of a personality cult

The citizen is angry at an uncaring and indifferent regime whose sole obsession is power and power alone .

The citizen is angry at a clueless regime that can not offer solutions to present day challenges and majors in tired excuses such as sanctions and foreign interference.

So a normal regime and a decent elderly father would hear the wails and cries of its children and address them.

But this is no normal regime.

It is a bandit rogue regime that only knows one language.

That of violence and coercion.

It is a regime that understands the language of war ,the language of an eye for an eye.

After all it is a guerilla movement that has never demobilized.

The war of liberation which finished 36 years ago ended for everyone else but not this regime.

Now in this era of a nascent social movement and fresh young energetic voices that the regime can not understand ,the rogue state must reset the template to its own familiar settings.

A space that it controls and understands better.

The social movement and social media are an away game for the regime.

It has to move the game to its own home turf.

The regime s home ground,its own Rufaro Stadium is violence and war.

They want war ,this lot.

They want chaos this lot.

They want an excuse of reimposing the state of emergency.

They have an itch.

The itch needs to be scratched.

The response should be principled.

We must look the beast in the eye and not blink.

We must find convergence.

We must do well the things we have done well to date.

We must remain peaceful and operate within the four corners of the law.

We do not want their war.

We just want democratic inclusive sustainable change.

We just want jobs and education for our children.

We just want love care and compassion and a government we do not fear.

We just want to see leaders who come and go and respect us and are accountable to us.

We just want another president in our own life time.

Is that too much to ask ?