We all know that
President Mugabe is a control freak; only an “el classico” control freak would
banish cabinet meetings, forcing the country to grind to a halt, unless he is
there to chair the meeting for 36 years! Not content with controlling cabinet
the tyrant has extend his control freak obsession to every facet of the
nation’s life; he wants only his voice to be heard and is incensed that anyone
else should dare speak, especially when it is critical of him.
When Cephas Msipa
said he was retiring from active politics he never said he would give up his
basic human rights and freedoms including freedom of expression. Given that he,
like everyone else in Zanu PF, had been denying the opportunity to express
himself freely whilst he remained in the party; the political atmosphere in
Zanu PF is stifling, as we know. He might well have taken early retirement
(given that some Zanu PF leaders are 92 years old and are holding on to the seat
like binnacles to a rock, he is 85 and therefore a spring chicken in comparison)
to get away from the stifling setting for a breath of fresh air.
Cephas Msipa has
said a lot of home truths about President Mugabe and the tyrannical style of
leadership. Last week he said Zanu PF was a party that thrives on violence.
“They (Joice Mujuru
and her ZimPF) have a mammoth task before them. I know Zanu PF are good at
defending themselves and remaining in power. Since 1980, they (Zanu PF) have
been using the same tactic,” he warned.
“They will
do everything possible to destroy their opponents. They use all sorts of dirty
tactics, including violence and intimidation. They think to win an election
they need to use force.”
The talk of Zanu
PF using violence to stay in power is a political reality President Mugabe has
had to resort to many times in the past but it is not something he is proud of
given his obsession with portraying himself as a great statesman, Pan
Africanist and liberation hero icon! Using violence has been like gashing wound
in the great bull’s rump from the enemy horn which the bull has been at great
pain to pretend is nothing. Msipa knows the use of violence has done irreparable
damage to Mugabe’s pride and reputation; he deliberately bumped into the bull’s
rump to hear the bull issue an involuntary groan of pain.
“He now wants to
paint a grim picture of violence in ZANU PF and expects us to believe it,”
wrote Gwinyai Mutongi jumping to the defence of groaning President Mugabe.
“The discourse of
violence, which Msipa has now joined, is used to perpetuate the opposition
cliché that the electoral system is unsustainable and requiring reform. It is
also intended at casting ZANU PF's tenure in Government as illegitimate, having
supposedly been attained through a violent campaign.”
Our apologist
Mutongi cannot rewrite history! Even SADC and the AU could not sweep President
Mugabe’s use of wanton violence in 2008; they refused to endorse his electoral victory
as the true reflection of the free democratic will of the people and thus would
not grant him the legitimacy he craved.
SADC would only
restore his legitimacy on condition that he signed the GPA, agreeing to
implement a raft of democratic reforms designed to end Zanu PF’s culture of
vote rigging and use of violence to retain political power. President Mugabe
was forced to eat humble pie and signed the agreement and formed the GNU with
Tsvangirai.
"They would
make fun of us at AU,” President Mugabe told the war vets meeting in Harare
last week. He was recalling the GNU days. “They would tell me, that seat is not
yours. Tsvangirai should be sitting there, but I persevered."
How typical of
him, the meeting with the war vets was called to discuss the nation’s teething
economic and political problems and what should be done to alleviate the war
vets’ suffering and the nation at large and he was talking about how the AU members
had humiliated him. He had rigged the elections and “declared war” on his own
people to win the elections and he was angry that the AU had not embraced him
regardless.
Instead of
thinking and acting in the public interest and implement all the democratic
reforms during the GNU Mugabe had his own selfish devious plans. He bribed
Tsvangirai and his MDC friends into cooperating with him so that not even one
reform was implemented. “I persevered!” he know boasts as if he expects the
whole nation to applauded for landing us all back into this political and
economic nightmare.
It is a great
pity that Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have turned out to be so
breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent; they not only failed to get even one
reform implemented during the GNU they are not going to get any implement
before the next elections. So Zanu PF will have no problems using its vote
rigging tactics including using violence.
Still, because of
the country’s worsening economic situation, the people will be more determined than
ever to remove this corrupt and oppressive Mugabe tyrannical regime and end
their suffering. Mugabe will have to use even dirtier vote rigging tricks and
use even more wanton violence than he used in 2008, the whole world is sick and
tired of his dirty tricks and he will find that not even SADC and AU will have
an excuse to grant him legitimacy.
The thought of another election marred by violence makes me sick in the stomach but have to agree that, as things stand, we seem to be heading that way!
ReplyDeleteThe savage war that has been raging on in Zanu PF has left the party considerably weaker than it has ever been and, after putting so much on the line, each side will be going for broke. I do not see Mugabe developing cold feet now, he will do everything in his power to "win" and shedding blood is in his power to do.
Even if SADC and the AU finally throw Mugabe out with the sodomites, the damage he would have brought to the nation will cripple the nation for generations!
The nation was always going to pay a heavy price for Tsvangirai and MDC's betrayal in failing to implement the democratic reforms during the GNU; we are now beginning to have an inkling of the nature of that price!
I cannot get my head round the fact Mugabe stopped cabinet meetings unless he is there to chair the meeting for 36 years! Why did the cabinet members tolerate this nonsense for all these years? No wonder he has hang on to power for 36 years; if there is no one in his cabinet competent to chair a cabinet meeting whose decisions he can change, no doubt none would be competent to govern the nation!
ReplyDeleteWhat makes a complete mockery of his egotistic decision that he is the only one fit to chair cabinet meetings and to govern the nation is that his reign has been an unmitigated catalogue of failed leadership. So, like all control freaks, he has spent too much time and energy in controlling everyone and everything he neglected the important bit of looking where he was going!
The "el classico" control freak has dragged the nation into this hell-hole and because he will not accept he has failed we are stuck in the hole!
President Mugabe lives in his own bubble divorced for the real world the rest of us live in! If he was still with us in the real world then he would not be making a speech about the lack of discipline among the youths when he has been rigging elections, looting $15 billion from a nation seeing starvation, etc.
ReplyDeleteEvery breaking story about President Mugabe these days only reinforces the conclusion I came to a long time ago now - that we have a lunatic in State House and the longer we allow him to stay there the greater the damage he will cause and the reater the misery he will inflict on us all!
President Mugabe rigged the last elections, he is therefore per se illegitimate and we all know how reckless and irresponsible illegitimate people are. He knows he should not be in power and is being reckless and wasteful just to punish the nation for reject him!