By Patrick Guramatunhu
“The record is mixed, at best. No doubt he (Mugabe) gave black Zimbabweans dignity, pride and opportunity. In the early days of independence, we built a new school every day, every district got a hospital, all institutions were integrated and the task of creating a national army out of the tens of thousands of men who had carried arms in the war was successfully completed.
“Every significant town got a polytechnic and 14 universities were created. Life expectancy rose in 20 years to 63, literacy to 95% and hundreds of thousands of young people graduated with skills and knowledge that has made them a hot commodity the world over. Today 10 000 Zimbabweans teach mathematics in South Africa,” wrote Eddie Cross.
Zimbabweans have taken great pride in being the most literate nation in Africa without examining what that really means. The standard literacy test is that one should be able to read, write and do basic arithmetic. The three Rs. The test has proven to be woefully inadequate.
What is the value of being able to read, write and do arithmetic if one has no clue that it all means and, better still, cannot apply any of the knowledge to one’s own daily life.
Talking of Robert Mugabe, the man was a corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous tyrant. In his 37 years of tyrannical rule the dictator destroyed the nation’s once promising economy.
The country was once the breadbasket of the region and under Mugabe it became the basket case of a failed state. Zimbabweans are starving in a land that is for all practical purposes the Garden of Eden.
Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs’ greed for political power, wealth and good living was insatiable. Mugabe’s wealth is estimated in billions of US dollars and include 13 farms in Zimbabwe; mansions in SA, Hong Kong, Singapore and Zimbabwe; a castle in UK; cars; cash; etc.
The photograph of Mugabe’s lavish 25 room, three story Blue Roof mansion contrasted with the grass-thatched mud hut will go down in history as the epitome of human greed gone mad!
What good is Zimbabweans’ 95% literacy rate if they did not have the common sense to stop Mugabe’s greed and insanity!
“In his determination to dominate, to control and to make sure his power was never challenged, Mugabe wrecked the economy and left us with a currency that was worthless, a lower standard of living than we had at independence, a whole raft of failed institutions — hospitals without drugs and even cleaning materials, schools without chalk and an infrastructure that barely functions.
“He left us with unsustainable debts and crushing international isolation. On balance, I think he will be judged as the leader who failed his country and his people,” concluded Eddie Cross.
Even this MDC leader, known for praising Mnangagwa and his wishy-washy ideas, known for his blundering incompetence in MDC’s failure to implement even one reform, could not fail to see Mugabe for the corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous tyrant he was.
Even Eddie Cross could not ignore the mountain of evidence proving Mugabe was a dictator. Sadly, the same cannot be said of his fellow MDC leaders like David Coltart, Tendai Biti and Nelson Chamisa who have continued to praise Robert Mugabe, a carryon from their sell-out GNU years.
