Mugabe: The hen that eats its chicks

By Courage Shumba

What is at stake in the drama involving the parties to the GPA, SADC and the electorate is the future of Zimbabwe. It is the understanding that the country needs a fresh direction defined by new politics and economics built on accountable ,democratic and transparent governance- something lost in the vocabulary and mindset of the defunct Zanu PF.

What Zimbabwe is looking for is leadership , a new focus, a radical divorce from the politics of I -know it-all to a new landing where everyone has a stake and where the definition of State includes all of us.

That is to mean, comrades, if we stumbled upon diamonds, or oil every one of us must expect and be assured to benefit either by way of jobs or increased investment in infrastructure implying long term economic stability for all of us.

We have never had such an attitude in the person of Mugabe or his party of crooks. What we have had is corruption in the allocation of farms,corruption in the diamond mines ownership,corruption in the award of tenders, corruption in the remittance of tax which is what has destroyed our capacity to run even the basic of things.

Today, as we speak, half Zimbabwe’s able population is elsewhere,abandoned there by poverty and desperation, all in the face of an acute shortage of critical skills back home. How do we celebrate an independence and a liberation which creates refugees out of its own citizens?

How do we cherish a struggle that creates POSA and AIPPA among a series of legislation that creates prisoners out of a people who ought to be free? In what way did we leave behind Rhodesia and all its repressive machinery that created a Zimbabwe for “have’s” and “have nots” based on some racial qualification which has since been replaced by political seniority within the ranks of the guerilla movement?

We cannot see how we can be called to defend a liberation which creates victims out of its intended beneficiaries, or why they should protect a system that makes us losers and hopeless in our infancy. We cannot be called to destroy our own future.

We have a personal and emotional stake in this election. Our future cannot be guaranteed or delivered by Mugabe whose hands are too dirty, mind too tired, sight too blind to depart from his stalinistic approach to politics and to begin serving with Zimbabwe’s future in mind.

When leaders steal that which must be shared among all of us, and divide the gains among themselves, they increasingly become enemies of all of us who look up to them for direction. When leaders decide to make scandal a way of life, they lose trust and respect, together with any legitimacy they purport to have.

They become a burden, a curse, an inconvenience and an albatross to a decent and dignified people such as we are. Mugabe and Zanu PF are such a yoke, chocking our nation into paralysis, through rampant corruption in public office which is why they should go.

Tsvangirai ,Ncube,Dabengwa,Makoni and all the progressive forces are right to try any available avenue to remove this yoke from our necks whichever way this gets done. There is no right or wrong way. The morality of the cause and pain of the hardship requires several combinations and contingencies until the gravy train comes to a screeching halt.

Running a country requires some brains. Running a country requires some love for your people not just yourself. Being in charge means taking responsibility, putting things in order,having an ambition and creating a consensus on where we need to go as a people.

Mugabe believes we have reached our destination all because his ministers, relatives and loyal party officials are now rich. He forgets that the rest of the population is wallowing in abject poverty. He fails to appreciate that the state runs the country for the nation not for the security and comfort of a few influential politicians.

What we have in Mugabe is a shameless, gullible and vulnerable old man who has been completely sidetracked from his responsibilities by his corrupt immediate circle and by his own lack of vision into defending irreproachable failures in the ability of the state to deliver an acceptable social order.

Nobody can dispute that this is the final chapter in Mugabe’s book. Nobody can expect that the events of the last thirty years can be allowed to go on. To do so would be delusional. The infrastructure incubating the dictatorship has been dismantled creating new expectations and challenges for those not used to accountable government.

A military government will never be recognised let alone survive in Southern Africa. However such is not an option. It is a military and political cul de sac. The region will not have it.

The only option is a peaceful election and a graceful exit. Everything else is too expensive and impossible once the vote had been counted in favour of a new future. For a people used to finer things in life being on the run is not so cosy when your only destination is Asia.

In saying that Tsvangirai must understand that what passes for a free and fair election in the eyes of foreign observers is not what passes for a free and fair election in the eyes of us the locals. We know better. We predict that in some parts of Zimbabwe a lot of aggressive hand holding and coercion will take place.

We are confident that some level of intimidation will happen obscurely but effective enough to deny those potential victims an actual vote. That is fact.

What we must do now is to call observers into the country irrespective of pending court decisions. What we must do now is to radicalise the observers into penetrating those areas where the coercion is likely to be intense. What we must call for is the United Nations to bring its own human rights monitoring mechanisms into play. There is no need to wait for any decisions whatever the outcome maybe.

Civil society must now get into gear for the take off and become vigilant protectors and witnesses of the vulnerable by deploying into the thicket of rural Zimbabwe.

Dabengwa, Ncube ,Makoni , Sikhala , Tsvangirai are required now more than ever to look into the future understanding that such a chance is uniquely possible only through a consensus candidate. A consensus candidate is a temporary gear-shift arrangement to get rid of Mugabe before we start again together as a nation. No doubt we all will shift back to our own camps or stay put in search of better leadership, vision and patriotic government.

But picture this, Makoni brings in the Zanu PF lot that is frustrated with Mugabe, Dabengwa brings betrayed Zapu, military experience and loyalty , Ncube brings the lot disgruntled with Tsvangirai, Sikhala brings eloquence ,drama and urgency whilst Tsvangirai brings a significant and decisive following.

You must accept that at Lancaster , Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo , worked together even though they had different loyalties and followings. They did that to bring to life Zimbabwe.

We cannot be too economical with the fact that unless ego’s are lowered and contained , this idea of a new future will be train wrecked and remain a pipe dream. Unless we are prepared, not necessarily happy, to work together, we will be forced into a coalition government with a retrogressive, counter-revolutionary and old fashioned thing called Zanu PF whose idea of the state is simply consolidation of power.

Such an outfit is completely radicalised against a free society, new ideas and development. It will be a wholesale betrayal of the people of Zimbabwe to bed this thing again. It would clearly announce a cosiness and comfort with a character that gobbles jobs and human rights as if it were an occupying force.

If our leaders of today decide to miss this chance, do their little plays here and there costing Zimbabwe a chance to decisively get rid of Mugabe they should hang their heads in shame, and take ownership for each needless death or continuing anguish our people will endure from then onwards.

Not only that, they should abandon any claim to any legitimacy that theirs is a selfless struggle for a free Zimbabwe. The might of our struggle demands selfless characters. Our struggle requires us to come to a consensus candidate and move our country closer to a new future.