War veterans want Mugabe remove but the dictatorship retained so they can crap on povo. By W Mukori

The difference between the war veterans and the people is that the former want Mugabe to be replace by Mnangagwa and the dictatorship to remain. We, the people, demand that the dictatorship be totally dismantles because we, at the bottom of the hierarchical perch, have suffered from being crapped on by the dictator, his ministers, party thugs and even the war veterans too have joining in!

War veterans are not at the bottom with povo, they too would want the dictatorship, pyramid of shit, dismantled!

Chris Mutsvangwa and his band of war veterans have good cause to be angry with Mugabe. The tyrant promised them economic prosperity in return for they helped him deny the people their freedoms and basic human rights to establish and retain his de facto one-party cum one-man dictatorship. They did all he asked, many have even shed the innocent blood of their follow Zimbabweans in pursuit of his no-regime-change mantra.

Mugabe did not honour his promise, many of the war veterans – except for the few lucky one holding top rank post in the security service sectors or government – are living in abject poverty. Their economic status is hardly any better than that of povo since they all use the same public health and education, roads, water supply etc. All these services have all but collapsed.  

Whilst Mugabe and his cronies regularly travel outside the country for their health needs and have been sending their children outside the country for their educations for decades now; war veterans and povo could not afford such luxuries. No wonder the war veterans are angry.

After all the years of being given the run-around with promises of economic prosperity tomorrow but always a day away, the war veterans were alarmed to learn was Mugabe now planning to have his wife as his successor. She had made it clear she had no intention of paying even the meagre benefits they are receiving now.

Without the allowance the allowance most of these war veterans will be on par with the poorest of the poor povo. No wonder they are angry!

“Angry war veterans have ratcheted up their worsening feud with President Robert Mugabe and alleged Generation 40 (G40) kingpin, Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo - provocatively telling Zimbabwe's long-ruling leader that the hated late Rhodesian prime minister, Ian Douglas Smith, had been a more formidable adversary to them than the increasingly frail nonagenarian,” reported the Daily News.

“Zanu PF bigwigs who spoke to the Daily News last night said the renewed and fierce attack on Mugabe by the disgruntled former freedom fighters - which echoes their damning communiqué of earlier this year which sealed their nasty fall-out with the nonagenarian - meant that the prospects for a much-needed reconciliation between the two parties ahead of the watershed 2018 national polls were now virtually "less than zero".”

War veterans want Mugabe to go and to replace him with VP Emmerson Mnangagwa the people of Zimbabwe want Mugabe. They are targeting the tyrant a select few for removal, blaming them and not the whole Zanu PF dictatorship, for the nation’s economic mess.

"So Jonathan's efforts to try and make scare crows out of the centre of power, calling us successionists ... we dismiss it like a duck takes water off its feathers. We only respect each other as revolutionaries. We have no fear of anybody," Mutsvangwa said.

"They are dull, and a completely unintelligent bunch this G40, intellectually barren and dumb. I have never suffered so much ignorance as I did during my time, in Cabinet and once you have no history you have no future. Where the G40 is there is no party because the party is with the people. Their barrenness is evident from the way the economy is performing. You can't see even a crane tower building skyscrapers for almost two generations and the G40 has been in power," he added.

This is very selective memory at its most cynical because Mnangagwa and many of those around him have played an even greater role than Moyo and others in the G40 now being targeted as the rotten apples. The whole Zanu PF dictatorship must be dismantled as it is corrupt and autocratic and serves no purpose other than to maintain the status quo of a hierarchical corrupt and tyrannical few prospering at the expense of the impoverished majority.

People like Mutsvangwa are clinging onto the notion that they are “stockholders of Zanu PF and Zimbabwe” and thus they wield the veto on who will be the party’s and nation’s leader. They are hoping that this super-duper power will secure for them the top-level perches in the crow pyramid.

What Mutsvangwa et al are refusing to accept is that every Zimbabwean has the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country. The notion of some people being granted the veto is simply preposterous because each successive generation will have to fight its own liberation war just to stop themselves being buried alive in the generation before’s crap.

Enough of this nonsense of war veterans harassing the people to vote Mugabe and Zanu PF and making a mockery of the elections. Zimbabwe is going to have its first free, fair and credible elections. The right to a meaningful vote is a birth right and therefore not negotiable.

Besides the solution to Zimbabwe’s worsening economic situation is good governance and that means free and fair elections.