The last call for Robert Mugabe!

By Professor Ken Mufuka | Letter from America |

Like every writer, the cherished moments are those when one is a witness to the great events of history. I had been away from Zimbabwe for two years, putting the final touches to my book; Life and Times of Robert Mugabe: Dream Betrayed.

As soon as I arrived, it became obvious that the last call for Robert Mugabe’s evil regime had been made. The regime, despite sitting on vast amounts of diamonds and precious minerals, had lived profligately and spent with measured abandon. Now, the regime was broke.

This is basically the reason for the regime’s problems today. It has no more money to bribe its various constituencies, the most stalwart being the War Veterans.

The solution is long term, reviving the economy, but the regime is as blind to economics as day old mice.

Veterans benefits

When War Veterans attempted to arrange a meeting with Mugabe in April, they wanted to present the following demands. Since British sponsored demobilization pay checks ended in 1982, the Rehabilitation and Re-Integration Program was supposed to carry over the necessary tasks required for Veterans welfare.

Mugabe never took an interest in long term planning, and from time to time, allowed them perks, which were then used to derive total loyalty to the party.

The $2,000 one time gratuity allowed in 1997 was soon eroded by inflation as the Zimbabwe dollar lost 70 percent of its value three months later. Transitioning to the US dollar 200 per month in 2009 did not see Veteran lives improve very much.

The present “demands” had something to do with school fees. These range from kindergarten to university. The long and short of it is that these fees had not been paid for the last three years, as indeed most scholarships for students studying abroad.

The regime has no money.

Godfrey Tsenengamu, War Veterans Secretary General, earns $250 per month, despite seniority and contribution to the struggle.

I short, afflicted by psychological and physical diseases, untrained in basic skills, living on promises of welfare help from a government that lives high on the hog, they constitute one of the most desperate strata in Zimbabwean society.

When we take into account the fact that since year 2000, Mugabe has not won a free and fair election, Veterans have been used as storm troopers, beating up voters, even burning buildings and committing murders on government behalf.

In a press briefing Tsenengamu mourned the behavior of Savior Ksukuwere, a non veteran who is Mugabe’s right hand man as Political Commissar. Resentment of Kasukuwere, though called ideological, is based on envy.

Kasukuwere lives a flamboyant lifestyle, was the owner of United Touring Company, has built himself a 17 bedroom house in Brookside, is a close associate of Sister Grace Mugabe.

Kasukuwere surrounds himself with toughs, who are probably on the ghost payroll. In Zimbabwe such “toughs”  are loud mouthed, really wear the legendary dark glasses even inside the Catholic Restaurant on Fourth Street, Harare.

They drive BMW’s and are masters of the universe.

While Kasukuwere, who never went to war, who sacrificed nothing and no one, is walking in Jerusalem with Peter and John, their children’s school fees have not been paid; nor has their medical treatment been given any priority.  It is a bitter pill to swallow.

The pill is even more bitter when they realized that the whole system they have shed blood for, was intended to shore up a personal family dynasty, Mugabe and his wife, Grace and their children. They are not part of the equation.

There is nothing worse than the feeling that one has been used and taken for a fool.

Mugabe, that old Machiavellian fox, had a pre-planned way out. No attention was paid to school fees and rehabilitation. Instead the leaders were expelled without as much as a hearing before a tribunal.

Proxy War Veterans under Mandy Chimene, supported by Women’s League, were brought inot play in order to soil the names of the War Veterans leadership.

The attack on Vice President E. Munagagwa by Chimene was pre-orchestrated in the president’s guest room. Details are emerging that previous attacks on Vice-President Joice Mujuru and senior members were hatched there.

The effectiveness of the President’s gimmicks lie in the rawness and volatility of their spontaneity. Now that the secret is out that they are neither spontaneous, nor of virgin birth, they show the degradation of the political system into gutter politics.

The king is naked

Once revered as an imaginative leader for whom these Veterans sacrificed lives and those of others by beatings, intimidation ad other acts, a sudden revelation has now occurred. The argument, as I have reported in these columns before, is about the management of the resources God has given His children.

“The leadership has presided over unbridled corruption and downright mismanagement of the economy, leading to national economic ruin for which the effects are now felt through-out the land.”

If the truth be told, War Veterans were willing tools as they spearheaded the jambanja (occupation of white owned land) of 2000-2005 which brought the economy to its knees.

Now the revelation has come to those who were one blind. “The President and his hangers-on, to our dismay, uses land as a reward for his foot soldiers, who have become his personal mercenaries.”

The significance of the War Veterans memo is that it has come from the inside. The courtiers have at last, after 36 years, appreciated what we have been saying all along, which is the thesis of my book.

Mugabe’s rule is narcissistic, he confuses the state and his private business empire, “respect of leadership should not be equated to fear,”  Mugabe uses unbridled power “without consultation,” the above mentioned instances ‘demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that the party leader has no absolutely no clue as to the difference between public funds earned from taxation of the people, and private individual income.”

Any opposition to polices is met with genocidal attacks on opponents.

The cat is now out of the bag.

The difference between 2013 and 2016 is that Mugabe has completely lost the narrative. His narrative was that Zimbabwe’s problems are caused by US and British sanctions. That song is now equated to the virgin who cried RAPE whenever he saw a man.

His own lifestyle reveals an embedded ideology that he owns the country. He withdraws Air Zimbabwe from schedules service whenever he wants to go to Singapore for family enjoyment. Police habitually beat up urchins, orphans and widows trying to see their wares on the Airport Road.

In addition busloads of depraved politicos wait at the airport for hours in order to welcome him back home. No schedule of his return exists and many have fainted while waiting. He then zooms past the crowds, showing utter contempt of the citizens who have congregated for hours to witness his return.

The moment of diminishing returns has been reached. His secret police no longer scare folks, who once stood in dread of it. Evan Maarire and a Rastafarian prince have used the social media to answer his charges.

As many as 40, 000 Zimbabweans cross the border every day. This means that every month, one in ten Zimbabweans have crossed the border seeking for opportunities.

My assessment is that at last the dam has cracked and it is no longer if the full blast will occur, but how soon. History shall record that the War Veterans made the last call to a faltering regime, which as tottering from the weight of immoral encumbrances and economic mismanagement.