Musewe focuse on "failed leadership" - focused on rats not fleas to eradicate black-death. By Wilbert Mukori

Congratulations to my brother Vince Musewe, the penny has finally dropped, he now accepts that nothing of any substance can ever be accomplish in Zimbabwe until we deal with the cancer of failed leadership that is killing the nation.

Zimbabwe’s problem is “our failure as a country to address Mugabe's failed leadership as an issue of national security and stability,” wrote Musewe in his latest article Our problem is not about money Bulawayo 24.

“Without a change in leadership and serious structural socio economic reforms and patience, Zimbabwe is really going nowhere fast. The IMF needs to be bold and tell it like it is.”

Yes, Zimbabwe’s problem is one of failed leadership; we have been stuck with the same corrupt, incompetent and murderous tyrant for 36 years. 36 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption have taken a heavy toll on the nation’s once vibrant and robust economy. Today our national economy is in total meltdown, unemployment has soared to 90%, basic services like health and education have all but collapsed and millions of people now live in abject poverty. We have seen all these things coming but we helpless to stop the situation getting to this.

The people of Zimbabwe were slow in realizing that Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies were corrupt and incompetent tyrants seeking absolute power and the unfettered access to the nation wealth and resource. It was not until the mid-1990s with the national economy already in the gutter, that the people finally realized that Zanu PF would never deliver mass prosperity, “gutsa ruzhinji”, as Mugabe never tire of telling the nation but would delivery mass poverty instead.

By the late 1990s the people had also come to the conclusion that it was a waste of time calling for an end to corruption, mismanagement, the scrapping of an ill-conceived economic policy, etc. as Mugabe never listened. As long as Mugabe remained in office the corruption, mismanagement, etc. continued and got worse and worse.

Mugabe was no more than the rats carrying the black-death fleas. The only effective way to stop the spread of the black-death was not to hunt down the fleas but the flea-bearing rats. Similarly you do not end corruption and mismanagement by trying to address each individual act of corruption, mismanagement, etc. but dismiss the corrupt and incompetent leaders who have allowed these problems to arise!

The people realized that the only way they would bring about regime change in Zimbabwe was by making sure there were meaningful democratic change to ensure the country’s elections were free, fair and credible and the result a true reflection of their democratic will. Hence the political rallying call in the late 1990s was the demand for democratic change.

The country’s opposition parties have failed to deliver democratic change although they had wonderful opportunities to do so, especially during the GNU when all MDC had to do then was to implement the 2008 GPA democratic reforms. In five years of the GNU, Tsvangirai and his MDC friends failed to get even one reform implemented. Not one!

Having failed to implement any meaningful democratic reforms, our corrupt and incompetent opposition politicians have switched back to corruption, economic policies, etc. Vince Musewe for PDP, Welshman Ncube for MDC (N) and Eddie Cross for MDC-T have all bombarded the nation with details of their parties’ economic blueprints (HOPE for PDP) and/or a running commentaries of how badly the economy is performing. Of course this is a waste of time; we want the flea-infested rats killed and not another lecture of the black-death or the fleas!

It is therefore with great relief that one greets the first sign that the penny has finally dropped in brother Musewe’s head; he has now finally, finally realized that nothing can ever be accomplished with PDP’s economic blueprints until we rid ourselves of this corrupt, incompetent and murderous Mugabe regime first. One hopes the penny will too finally drop in all the empty heads in Harvest House, etc.

Mugabe has managed to stay in power for all these last 36 years because he rigged the elections and thus rigged the people’s democratic wish that he should go. He has systematically undermined the country’s multi-party democratic constitution and state institutions and denied the people their basic freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful vote and even the right to life to impose a de facto one-party dictatorship. Mugabe has conducted elections in such a way that they deliver no regime change at the end of the day and has shameless advocated and promoted this ethos.

Police Commission Augustine Chihuri has admitted in his doctorate thesis on Policing in Independent Zimbabwe that the Zimbabwe Republic Police has, as an institution, gone out of its way to disrupt the political activities of the opposition parties to “stop the regime change agenda”! Similarly brainwashed war vets have harassed, beaten, raped and even killed innocent and defenceless civilians for sole purpose of denying the people a meaningful free vote and deliver Mugabe’s no-regime-change selfish objective.

Even Mugabe cannot have his cake and eat it too; he cannot rig the electoral process to deliver a predetermined no-regime-change result and yet still claim the election is free, fair and credible. The two are mutually exclusive it is an oxymoron to blatantly rig elections to ensure no-regime-change and still claim the elections were free, fair and credible.

To end the corruption and mismanagement that is killing the Zimbabwe economy we must end the political system that has allowed corrupt and incompetent leaders to stay in power regardless of their pathetic failures. We must end the nonsense of free, fair and credible elections with in-built no-regime-change guarantees!

We must concentrate all our energy and time in demanding the full implement the democratic reforms designed to dismantle the no-regime-change nonsense as the first step to solving the nation’s economic and social problems. We welcome those who have, up to now been wasting the nation’s time by focusing on economic reforms and policies; they were putting the cart before the horse!

To end the economic problems we must resolve the problem of failed leadership just as to eradicate black-death people targeted the rats and not the fleas. To end corruption get rid of corrupt leaders, end of story!