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Mugabe needs a few minutes in church

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26 November 2008

By Doreen Mutemeri

It is frustrating and quite unfair for many Zimbabweans in the diaspora to have their lives placed in limbo all because an 84 old geriatric called Robert Mugabe behaves like he owns the country. The current state of power sharing talks make it clear Mugabe has no interest in genuinely sharing power with the opposition.

Reports as I write suggest over 3000 people have died as a result of the cholera epidemic, a water-bourne disease that is easily curable. But in a country where medicines are now hard to come by and there are no chemicals to treat water, the password to survival is 'don't get sick or you die.'

Even as people die the government refuses to declare the crisis a national emergency. Instead the Deputy Health Minister Edwin Muguti focussed on the blame game, accusing so-called western sanctions for the epidemic. Is this not the same government that banned NGO's from doing humanitarian work a few months ago?

One might argue being in the diaspora is a blessing because you do not meet the suffering first hand, but I wish to argue that the trauma of not knowing which of your relatives is going to die next is very hard to deal with. Every phone call back home is a heart-stopping exercise. Its almost like marking the register or conducting a roll call to see who is still alive and who has died.

Food shortages, cholera, power cuts, erratic water supplies all combine to brew a tragic cocktail of death and despair. Of course all these miserable conditions do not visit our wel taken care of politicians. They live in plush homes in Borrowdale and have boreholes and generators that cushion them from their own mess.

There is a slim chance Mugabe will read this article but if he ever does, I want to ask him how he feels about every single person who has died in Zimbabwe, from the Gukurahundi Massacres, political violence, those who have starved to death, the white farmers needlessly killed? Is there any satisfaction in clinging to power through violent means.

It is not too late for Mugabe to rejoin the family of God where peace and love reign supreme. The Zimbabwean President is a Catholic to the best of my knowledge and I think a visit to the Cathedral, which is near his Munhumutapa Office is long over due. Surely the divine spirit will intervene and direct him to Gods path. The people have suffered enough.

Doreen Mutemeri is a gender activist based in the United Kingdom.


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