Mutasa fishing for sympathy for 7 years out of cabinet but has none for suffering povo. by Patrick Guramatunhu

"Myself I was out of Cabinet for seven years because I challenged him over Esap (the country's Economic Structural Adjustment Programme of the 1990s) and he only brought me back after realising that he had failed.

"If you criticise him or his relatives, then good heavens it is something that you will pay for dearly," Mutasa said.

People were asked to “tighten their belt” when ESAP was introduced because all price controls, price subsidies, free health, free education, etc. were all being cut back and soon disappeared. ESAP marked the end of socialism to povo and the start of the steady slide into poverty. Today, millions of ordinary Zimbabweans live in abject poverty, they cannot even afford one decent meal a day.

ESAP failed to deliver the economic recovery largely because the ruling elite never tightened their belts, they continued to live in luxury. Indeed the ruling elite continue to cream off the nation’s wealth resulting in the absurdity of CEO of public institutions like PSMAS or Harare Town Clerk being paid $500 000 and $40 000 a month whilst their respective institutions are failing to provide basic services the members and rate payers pay for. Meanwhile the politicians are fleecing the nation of $15 billion from Marange diamonds whilst the nation is getting nothing!

It is an insult to the suffering masses therefore that Mutasa should consider his seven years out of the cabinet a “dear price” although as a member of parliament he continues to get the generous salary and allowances plus all the other benefits political influence bought.  

The tragic consequences of the failure of ESAP and many other Zanu PF policies are so severe that any Zanu PF minister with a sense of public duty would have demanded that the regime take the necessary corrective measure. Failure to do so would have left the minister with no option but to resign in protest.

Mutasa never resigned in protest over ESAP, he was not appointed minister for seven years and wants us to believe he was being punished for “criticizing” Mugabe over ESAP. We do not know whether his criticism would have made any difference; he wants us to assume it would have made all the difference! But most important of all Mutasa wants the nation to feel sorry for him for all the suffering he endured for the seven years he was not in cabinet!

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely but what I never realized until now is that power desensitizes the beholder from the suffering of others and absolute power dehumanizes them completely.

The booting out of Mutasa from Zanu PF has not change him in any way he is still the same Didymus Mutasa of the Zanu PF days who terrorized the people and boasted openly about it. Today he is expecting the nation to feel sorry for the seven years he suffered out of cabinet, he lost out on $1000 paid for attending each cabinet meeting, the ministerial Benz, etc.; that is more important than the millions unemployed and living in abject poverty because ESAP and Zanu PF misrule.

There are those who want Mutasa and ZPF back into power after the next elections. These people are naïve if they expect any political change from the present; these ZPF leaders will just take off with the corruption and misrule from where they left off when they were kick out of Zanu PF.