Grace promises Mbare new flats but second guess them by insisting they did not want to leave! by P Guramatunhu

I have just been reading the report of Grace Mugabe’s Mbare rally. It is hard to believe the country’s First Lady could be so completely devoid of common sense and yet here is the evidence of her calling a rally and saying absolute nothing that makes sense.

It is hard to believe that Grace is actually aspiring to be state president and yet, like it or not, that is so. Indeed, these series of rallies are to increase her national profile and drum public support for her presidential bid.

“Amai (Grace Mugabe) says she will talk to His Excellency (HE) about the construction of new residential flats for the people of Mbare. I know that residents like their place. Most of you would not want to leave this place. So, we will see to it that we make it look better,” the reporter on the ground reporter back.

Sure all those people who have lived in those neglected flats, one on top of each other like rats, all these years because Grace had not talked “to His Excellency about the construction of new residential flats” for them. A very simple explanation, what could be simpler and yet they had all missed it!

Well, all is well that ends well! Now that Grace is going to speak to His Excellency we can consider the job done. When can these poor people expect to have all moved in their new flats? They could move in before this Christmas but next Christmas will be fine; they have waited for decent accommodation for the last 35 years or more, one more year of waiting will be nothing!

The reporter must wrong, she did not say “most of you would not want to leave this place.”  Is she for real! She jumped at the opportunity to stay in the Blue Roof mansion and divorced her husband to marry someone old enough to be her grand-father. And today she talks down to the millions of families up and down the land who have lived in Matapi flats or worse  all these years as if they all had the chance to get better housing but have stayed because they did “not want to leave”!

Most of those Matapi flats as with many other houses in Zimbabwe are not fit for human habitation and should have been demolished decades ago but when the alternative is a cardboard shack they are charming accommodation.

“First Lady has castigated young women for baby dumping and goes on to narrate a real life baby dumping story she heard while doing her PHD research,” continued the update.

 

Well that is interesting coming from someone who just a year ago was demanding that HE “baby dump” then VP Joice Mujuru for no better reason than that Grace consider Joice an threat to her set ambition to be president. HE moved very swiftly and kicked Mujuru and 150 of her supporters out of the party and/or government.

 

HE will not be so swift and decisive in building the new Matapi flats. If any such flat should ever be build it will be to accommodate a token number and HE will arm-twist the City Council or Ministry of Local Government to pay the cost – for such is the prerogative of tyrants!

 

Grace has been promising the people the moon on a silver platter but will deliver hell for such is all the nation has ever got from HE and Zanu PF these last 35 years. HE promised the nation mass prosperity but all we ever got was mass poverty. 90% of the people are out of work, millions are living in abject poverty, etc. and the situation is getting worse and worse. The situation is simply unsustainable. 

In what clearly was, for her, her most insightful moment she warned Zimbabweans against an Arab spring type uprising.

“They did (West bombed) the same in Libya, killing (Muammar) Gaddafi for no apparent reason. As we speak, bombs explode every day; people do not know when next a bomb will explode or when guns would be fired,” warned Grace.

“So in our country let us endure our hardships but in peace.”

It was clearly a monumental mental task for her to have finally reached the conclusion, obvious to many for decades but clearly a new revelation to her, that the present economic and political situation is not sustainable. The Arab spring type rebellion is now a distinct reality, not possibility but reality, given the stubborn refusal by the regime to accept peaceful evolutionary change.

 

What is disappointing is that even now at the eleventh hour Grace only understand half the story. She has clearly failed to understand that there is no such thing as “enduring our hardships in peace!”

 

A child who sits listless and lethargic all day and cannot sleep at night because he/she is hungry is not at peace!

 

A young graduate who is forced to sell airtime cards or trinkets for pittance expected a decent job to reward him/her for all the hard and expense at school and university. “Was that too much to ask?” he will demand of this society that clearly does seem to notice or care about his anguish and suffering. He/she is not at peace and the anguish is bubbling up and growing with each passing day and deepening misery.

 

The regime itself is on edge because it is fearful of an Arab spring uprising. There regime itself is resorting to the most brutal acts of barbarism to suppress all public descent; there is not peace.

 

This situation is unsustainable the anger of the graduate who cannot find a decent job is the anger of the nation as long as the root causes of the anger are not addressed it will never go away but build up like pressure in pressure cooker. The fires under the cook are now burning a frightful fury. Instead of allowing the cooker to vent and reduce the pressure it is now going to explode!

 

Grace was right that not all Arab spring type revolutions have a happy ending and gave the example of Libya. But periods of chaos, sometimes worse than that of the tyrannical regime, are to be expected; decades of tyranny and lawlessness will result in mistrust. It will take time to learn to trust and to rebuild the democratic institutions.

 

If Grace thinks the fear of Zimbabwe becoming another Libya then she even more naïve than she has shown herself to be. The human spirit will never endure dehumanizing injustice for long because people fear worse injustice; people seek justice so they will never fear to end the current injustice.

 

It is the tyrants who never learn from history. Gadaffi thought he would use more and more brute force to subdue the nation and thus rule forever, of course that did not work. President Mugabe is doing exactly the same today and sending his wife to issue veiled threat of more violence. Still in the end this regime will too crumble, it is crumbling already.

 

Just one more thing Grace, whilst we still talking about Gadaffi and Libya. Although the people of Libya have been fighting each other and never seem to agree on anything, they were unanimous about what to do about Gadaffi and all his cronies – recover the looted wealth then nxiithii!