A Tragic Cabinet: Lost Opportunities

By Hopewell Rugoho-Chin’ono

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s cabinet was announced last night, and the resounding feeling and common thread in and outside of Zimbabwe is that of resignation, disappointment, anger, surprise and shock, disbelief and most of all, BETRAYAL.

Many Zimbabweans who marched in the streets with the Army and War Veterans had hoped for a clean break with the Robert Mugabe years, yet they now feel thoroughly betrayed.

Thousands of them took to social media last night, as soon as the cabinet was announced to register their palpable anger.

Today Facebook and Twitter resemble a scene from an unplanned funeral, where a close relative who was on the mend suddenly dies.

Many public intellectuals and journalists like myself had written extensively before the cabinet was announced, urging fellow compatriots to allow the new President an opportunity to show us whether he is different or not from his predecessor, Robert Mugabe.

The main indicator we argued, was that of his cabinet appointments, they would give us an idea of the President’s thinking we all said.

Unfortunately, the appointments are not inspiring at all as they are a throwback to the Robert Mugabe years, with faces like Obert ‘Obedient Son’ Mpofu, Lazarus Dokora, David Parirenyatwa, Supa Mandiwanzira, Christopher Mushowe, Patrick Chinamasa, Oppah Muchinguri, Kembo Mohadi the list goes on.

This cabinet lineup is a huge miss by a mile and one wonders what reforms people like Obert Mpofu and Supa Mandiwanzira can bring to the table.

The army sought and managed to bring into cabinet their own people, but surprisingly, they brought in their best brains in Major-General Sibusiso Moyo, the new Foreign Affairs and International Trade minister, the man who announced the military intervention on Zimbabwe Television.

He has been involved in army businesses before and wit trade being part of his ministry, he is not totally in alien land.

I first met Perence Shiri, the new Minister of Agriculture, at a social gathering at the Zimbabwean embassy in London in 1999.

He is intellectually astute and a very polite and a respectful soldier for his rank, and I imagine that the army wants him there because they are involved in Command Agriculture programs.

He however will struggle with the Gukurahundi issue, as he was the commander of the 5th Brigade in Matabeleland and the Midlands, something that the new President needs resolve quickly to remove the issue by offering a genuine apology and compensating the victims.

That campaign was ordered and administered by Robert Mugabe so this is a good window of opportunity to resolve the outstanding issues. I am quite aware that President Mnangagwa came into the presidency in a very protracted, dramatic and unconventional way.

I am also aware that some of the people who helped him get there might also want to be rewarded for the work they did as his foot soldiers, when he was being persecuted by Mugabe and his wife Grace.

However, I see this as an act of short-term thinking because the military action and the removal of Mugabe had earned President Mnangagwa, General Chiwenga and ZANUPF a lot of unimaginable goodwill in and outside of Zimbabwe.

As a journalist, I received a lot of emails and phone calls from young intellectuals, elderly women and men, business people, unemployed youth, relatives and friends, all of them saying that they were going to give ZANUPF and the President a chance and vote for both.

I have family members who have never wanted to hear anything to do with ZANUPF, but suddenly they were saying that they were now considering voting for ZANUPF. All these people went to bed deflated last night after the cabinet announcement. Some have started phoning and emailing me, angrily saying that they were now changing their minds.

That is the goodwill that has been squandered by the President and his team, all in the name of short-term gains and rewarding loyalists. 

ZANUPF had miraculously earned itself an uncontested long-term mandate to rule, and a complete break with the Robert Mugabe years of election rigging, poverty, corruption and arrogance of power.

This cabinet unfortunately is being seen as an act of arrogance and dismissal of what the citizens might think or feel.

The fact that the G40 kingpin, Jonathan Moyo, is on twitter mocking the cabinet appointment outcomes, and that all those who were calling him names suddenly find themselves agreeing with him, is actually a tragic sign of failure on the part of the President and his team.

The President shouldn’t have given room for sympathy to those that were despised by the citizens; Grace Mugabe and the G40 cabal. Unfortunately, this cabinet does just that and more. More importantly, the western diplomats met yesterday to discuss donor funding for the new government, just over half were overly optimistic according to my sources and the other half was cautious.

Today most of them feel betrayed by the appointments and are suggesting a wait and see approach, something that President Mnangagwa can’t afford as the country is in a deep financial mess. Most of them are saying that it will be difficult to sell the announced cabinet to their governments and constituencies when it is more of the same Mugabe years.

Diplomats such as the British Ambassador, Catriona Laing, who have been ardent supporters of the President, are today being mocked by academics and politicians like Tendai Biti, Ibbo Mandaza and Miles Tendi. These public intellectuals warned Catriona Laing that ZANUPF was incapable of reforming itself. Today they feel vindicated whilst well meaning supporters, friends and colleagues of the President are left with egg on their face.

President Mnangagwa and the military intervention had managed a feat failed by Robert Mugabe, that of uniting the country under one flag, one cause and creating an optimistic and electric environment where citizens actually believe in their government. That can’t and won’t happen with this sort of cabinet that was announced last night. This cabinet lineup will undo all the gains of November 18 and further push ZANUPF into using the tactics of old when it loses elections.

This was unnecessary as ZANUPF was assured of a clean victory if it had delivered a sane and progressive cabinet & implemented the changes that President Mnangagwa & General Chiwenga so eloquently enunciated. 

I am a fellow at the African Leadership Institute and the optimism in that network of influential Africans about a new Zimbabwe, has now turned into a depressing chorus of disapproval of the cabinet and talk of new solutions being needed to assist Zimbabweans break away from the Mugabe years.

The President and his team had very good choices to choose from in his parliamentary ZANUPF party, people like Paul Mangwana, Joel Biggie Matiza, Fortune Chasi to name but a few. He also had an opportunity to pick technocrats like Shingi Munyeza, Edwin Manikai and from the army he could have picked competent doctors, surgeons such as Israel Dube and Jasper Chimedza.

This should have been a transitional cabinet working to deliver an assured clean ZANUPF victory.

Those who needed rewarding for their loyalty would have gotten their prizes after a resounding victory at the 2018 elections. After all, this was dubbed Operation Restore Legacy, how do we restore a legacy by appointing people like Mpofu and Dokora?

I am an optimist, I have lived under Robert Mugabe’s worst debilitating years which included Murambatsvina, 2008 post election violence, hyperinflation and many such horrible things.

I hope and wish that the President and his team will hear the nation’s outcry and respond accordingly. I also hope that he will be able to explain to his party loyalists the importance of winning clean elections, which are violence free.

I also hope that his party loyalists will also understand the need for attracting foreign direct investment to rebuild the country and how that will make their continued rule secure as opposed to short-term gains.

The President promised us a lean government, we got a cabinet with irrelevant ministries such as the Ministry for Scholarships, something that should be a department in the Ministry of Higher Education.

This might have been done to avoid further ZANUPF fragmentation, but how do you hold a party together with incapable ministers who were part of the problem that you are trying to fix?

Making a mistake is not the problem, what you do with the mistake is what matters.
Let us see whether the President and his team will respond to the public outcry or whether it is business as usual.

Hopewell Rugoho-Chin’ono is an award winning Documentary Filmmaker, Television Journalist and Column Writer. He is the 2008 CNN African Journalist of the year. Hopewell can be reached at [email protected]