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In all the hoo-ha about the election date, diamonds may have lost some of their news value but they are still there and still causing quite a lot of bother. Finance Minister Tendayi Biti says the country has no money to fund elections and an appeal is put out to the international community.
Apparently South Africans are about to be treated to a specially televised visit to Zimbabwe’s State House to witness the Mugabe family ‘at home’, looking and behaving just like any other family in the land.
The sins of the past are forgotten: Robert Mugabe, once regarded as a cruel despot responsible for the deaths of thousands in the Gukuruhundi, the horrors of Murambatsvina and countless other examples of civil rights abuse, has been ‘renewed’ as the leader of a modern democratic nation.
Reports that the MDC were involved in high level talks with the military really annoyed Zanu PF. Then we heard that Giles Mutsekwa the MDC’s shadow Minister of Defence had also been meeting with top generals and that made them even angrier.
Watching a grown man sink his teeth into another man’s arm on the football pitch in the UK was a reminder that nursery behaviour doesn’t end with adulthood. The player in question will apparently be sent on an ‘Anger Management’ course.
Just last week, Jabulani Sibanda, the war veterans’ leader, threatened widespread violence if Zanu PF loses the election. Strangely enough there was no ‘bold’ and ‘assertive’ reaction from the police to Sibanda’s threat of violence.
There was a report last week of Zanu PF MPs complaining that they had been sidelined by the ‘Old Guard’, the top chefs who benefit from deals in mining, agriculture and indigenisation. The MPs were not just whinging about not getting a place on the gravy train.
The news that Mugabe has dropped the court case over the June election date raises all sorts of questions. It was a surprising decision, given that we all know him to be a fairly intransigent sort of character, not given to changing his mind – in public at least.
At his 89th birthday celebrations, Robert Mugabe accused the MDC of lying about the level of violence and the number of deaths in the country. So who are we to believe, Robert Mugabe or the MDC?
Speaking on Thames TV last week, Robert Mugabe is reported to have told his interviewer that “opposition is a luxury”. What he meant, of course, was opposition to him and his views.