Musewe, Mahiya and Mugabe alike can be wrongfully charged but not "wrongfully arrested" By Patrick Guramatunhu

The foolishness of people like Vince Musewe is as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow! He has argued the nation not just to forgive the corruption and incompetent MDC leaders who, by failing to implement even one democratic reform during the GNU, allowed Zanu PF to blatantly rig the July 2013 elections landing us in this hell-hole. But more significantly he wants the nation to forget the MDC leaders ever sold-out and embrace them as the leaders who will get us out of this hell-hole. It is a foolish argument because if MDC leaders failed to get us out of this hell during the GNU when the winds of change were blowing in their favour, how will they do so now when Zanu PF hold the tramp cards!

When President Mugabe booted out the corrupt and incompetent Mai Muju and her equally corrupt and incompetent followers; Musewe and others including Tendai Biti and Morgan Tsvangirai welcomed her and her Zim PF friends with open arms of the father welcoming the prodigal son. We were told the later were now democrats who had their “Damascene moment”! Yeah right!

Mai Mujuru has had many opportunities to repent and confess her corrupt and criminal Zanu PF past and instead chose to pretend she was as innocent as a new born baby to sinful mother. She has even claimed that she was booted out of Zanu PF because she had condemned corruption. She was not corrupt herself. Never!

Now details are coming out that she and her late husband are responsible for looting “a chunk” of the $15 billion President Mugabe admitted was looted. Did she have her Damascene moment but forgot about the $15 billion or is it that she is the same corrupt and incompetent Joice Mujuru who is now fighting to get back on the gravy train. She never had the Damascene moment; it is a figment of the imagination of foolish!

The foolishness has not stop, we are now being asked to embrace as friends the rogue war veterans who, until recently, have betrayed the nation by propping up President Mugabe as the tyrant’s thugs ruthlessly enforcing the no-regime-change mantra.  

“You see, the enemy wants us to be like them and in that way it vilifies their nature. However we the progressive citizens of Zimbabwe who want to create a better society must reject the predictable tendency of wanting those who have caused us suffering to suffer too regardless of circumstances or the rule of law,” argue Musewe.

“Incidentally, this would mean that if President Mugabe were to be wrongfully arrested, we would also have to apply this same principle. I however do not want to imagine that at this juncture.”

If you did not always force yourself to have this myopic tunnel vision you would not make such foolish decision time after time, my brother!

President Mugabe is going after the rogue war veterans who dared demand that he should go and they will be charged with attempting to remove him from office “unlawfully”. But given that he rigged the last elections, the rogue war veterans know this because them helped him rig the vote, he clearly has no lawful right to be president.

However for their role in rigging elections, any rogue war veteran who is thrown in jail today may be wrongfully charged but not “wrongfully arrested”!

By the same token President Mugabe may be wrongfully charged but not “wrongfully arrested” because he has rigged elections, looted the nation’s resources, murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans; and it would be very foolish to release him therefore on such flimsy technicalities!

“Zimbabwe has certainly changed for the better and we must now carry the burden together for challenging and changing our circumstances. I am glad that we are now together as citizens and we must take things a notch up,” said Musewe in his conclusion.

We must ask ourselves; if Mahiya and rogue war veteran friends had their wish, Mugabe stepped down and VP Mnangagwa took-over will they accept Mnangagwa being defeated in a free, fair and credible elections? Or will they be campaigning for no-regime-change as ruthlessly as before!

Of course rogue war veterans like Mahiya still firmly believe that they are “the stockholders of Zanu PF and Zimbabwe” and therefore are entitled to a veto on who should rule the country who should not. Just because these rogue war veterans have crossed sword with President Mugabe, fools like Musewe once again see the “Damascene transformative moment” where none exist.

“My message to the war vets is therefore that if anything, this is the time to pull together and support that which is right. It is time we deliver one message and one massage only- enough is enough and we want our freedom from ZANU (PF) and Mugabe back right now. We must demand it and stop negotiating for it. It is ours by right and not some favour being done for us,” continued Musewe.

He is arguing us to “stop negotiating” our freedoms and basic rights and yet he is the one arguing we forget what these rogue war veterans have been doing before they have even admitted their past wrong doings, ask for forgiveness and, most important of all, give up their erroneous claim to having a veto instead of the vote like everyone else.

We have missed many opportunities to deliver meaningful democratic change in the past including 1980 and 2008 because fools like Musewe would not see leaders like Mugabe and Tsvangirai for the fallible mortals they are but saw instead super humans who would do no wrong. So instead of taking our time building strong democratic institutions we did nothing and the super heroes took full advantage of this to create the tyrannical regime we are now suffering under.

Today we have a real chance to build a free, progressive and democratic Zimbabwe we must not waste it by listening to the foolishness of people like Musewe who have us believe that the same corrupt, incompetent tyrants of yesterday will build a democratic Zimbabwe for us!