The 2016 Rio Olympic
Games are upon us; we should all watch the games and enjoy the sporting
spectacle but, most important of all, be inspired by the Olympic spirit!
When we see great
athletes like Usain Bolt of Jamaica run 100m in less than 10 seconds or our own
Zimbabwean flag carrier, Kirsty Coventry swim 200m backstroke in 2 minutes 5.24
seconds; we should rightly cheer and jump for joy at their great achievements.
Whilst it is true that
a great athlete like Bolt has some inherent physical characteristic like being
tall with long strides still there millions of other humans with comparable
features who will never run 100m in anywhere near 10 seconds. As far as I know
Kirsty does not have webbed feet like a duck to my plain chicken feet! So given
the same opportunities there are many people out there who would have given
Usain Bolt a run for his Olympic Gold if they had the one thing he, Kirsty and
many other champions have – the Olympic spirit!
The four essences of
the Olympic spirit are:
- Self believe in one’s own ability to rise above the daily challenges of life.
- Meticulous attention to detail
- Practice makes perfect
- Acceptance of the give and take of true competition; by competing with not just the best but with the crème de la crème one is pushed into giving their very best and the price is that one’s very best is not always the best of the competition and so one must accept defeat gracefully.
The Rio Olympic games
are taking place at a time when Zimbabweans’ self-confidence in doing anything
right is at an all-time low. The nation attain her independence 36 years ago
and ever since the nation has followed a path of economic and political ruin.
Zimbabwe used to grow enough food for the nation’s needs with plenty left over
for export. We were the breadbasket of the region. Not anymore!
Ever since the chaotic
and violent farm invasion and seizures of 2000 Zimbabwe has failed to produce
enough for its own people let alone for export. We are starving in the Garden
of Eden.
Zimbabwe has broken
the world record in having the highest inflation rate at 500 billion per cent;
the highest unemployment rate of 80% plus for over ten years (still counting);
State President admits $15 billion, which more than the country’s $14 billion
GDP, was looted and no one is arrested; etc.
It is little wonder
that the nation is right now wallowing in abject poverty and self-doubt. God
knows we need some inspiration, some Olympic spirit inspiration. The two things
we need above all else are:
- Self-belief
As a nation we have never really believed that
we could govern ourselves; not with any real conviction founded on reason as
contrast to one founded on fingers crossed hope.
“If you plant a mango tree, you have good reason
to hope to one day enjoy mangoes,” my late father often said. “If you do not
plant a tree you have no good reason to hope to enjoy mangoes!”
We never trusted Mugabe to deliver freedom,
justice, peace and economic prosperity; we hoped that he would, which was
another matter.
Similarly, we have never really trusted
Tsvangirai to deliver democratic change and so when the July 2013 elections
were rigged we were not shock because deep down we expected this to happen.
- Meticulous attention to detail
A healthy and functional democracy demands an
electorate that is diligent what is the point of being given electoral choice if
one is incapable of drawing the distinction between the good, the bad and the
ugly.
Tyrants like Mugabe have taken full advantage
of naïve and gullible electorate blaming sanctions, for example, for his economic
failures. If the people had been paying attention then they would have question
why the sanctions should be a problem now and yet he know of their existence
back in 2013 when he promised the 2.2 million new jobs.
- Practise makes perfect
It is for the people to hold those in power to
account and this is a full time occupation. We have never held our leaders to
account for all the billions they have looted, the over 30 000 this regime has
murdered in cold blood, etc.; we should start doing that right now.
- We need to embrace the competitive spirit
We live in a country in which the competitive
spirit has been killed under the pretext that it promotes disunity or worse.
Mugabe used Gukurahundi to justify crashing PF Zapu and thus impose the de
facto one-party state we have lived under ever since.
The Mugabe regime has failed to deliver
freedom, peace, justice and economic prosperity but has managed to stay in
power regardless because the people could not elect anyone else. The greatest
threat to peace and stability was not democratic competition but Mugabe and
Zanu PF who deployed the party thugs and state security personal to harass,
beat, rape and even murder innocent people to stifle debate and competition.
Embracing democratic competition who have
forced many political parties to emerge and by competing against each other
they would have force each to excel and the nation at large would have
benefited. We certainly would not be starving in the Garden of Eden.
It is up to us, the people, to make sure all
the democratic reforms are implemented and Zimbabwe’s position as a functional
and healthy democracy is fully restored and jealously guarded to all time. It
is our duty to restore democratic competition and not for those continued reign
is totally dependent on ensuring elections to high office remains a strictly
one horse race.
Life is a race, just
as the race in Olympic Games, with winners and losers; for the last 36 years
Zimbabwe has been running a losing race and has paid dearly for it in lost
treasure, human suffering and even human lives. We are not fighting for Olympic
gold and the fame and fortune that go with it; we are fighting for something
even more precious than that, the lives of hundreds of thousands if not
millions of Zimbabweans and the very stability of the nation! That is surely a
price worth fighting for, worth being inspired for it.
So do not just watch
the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, be inspired to excel and save Zimbabwe from the ruinous
Zanu PF tyranny and dictatorship.
Threatening Minister Chimene is one thing but threatening the people of Zimbabwe is another matter. Chiwenga is not fooling anyone, we all know that Chiwenga and other to brass security chefs have played their part in denying the ordinary people their freedoms and basic rights including the right to free elections and even the right to life to keep this Mugabe dictatorship in power.
ReplyDeleteThis Zanu PF dictatorship has failed to deliver freedom and economic prosperity and it must go to save the people and nation. Chiwenga is trying to keep this dictatorship in power regardless of the consequences to the nation; this will not be tolerated!
"Let us show Mugabe that we have now lost respect for him. Vanhu ava vanenge vava kupenga nhasi vagara politburo vadzinga munhu mangwana vodzosa (these people seem to have gone mad, they expel a person today and bring him back tomorrow) while the country is burning,” said Joice Mujuru.
ReplyDelete"We are worried because some people are now being rewarded for attacking war vets.
"Ukashanda nababa vakaita seivavo ijere pacharo (If you work with that man it is like you are in prison)," she told hundreds of her supporters.
This is nonsense; when Mujuru was booted out of Zanu PF, she was kicking and screaming to remain in the party. She and her husband took the lion’s share of the spoils of power and wealth and she is fighting to get back into power so she can pick up where she left off when she was kicked out of power.
Senior government officials speaking on condition of anonymity said preliminary investigations had linked some military officers to the communiqué and Mugabe was briefed about the findings.
ReplyDelete"The paper trail leading to the communiqué suggested that somehow certain war veterans within the military were directly involved," the source said.
"War veterans in the military will tell you that they are stockholders in Zanu-PF, a statement you will hear from war veterans.
"[ZNLWVA chairperson] Mutsvangwa will tell you that war veterans are a reserve force of the military, and they get direct command from those bosses. So it is the same with the communiqué."
The fate of the war veterans and the security chefs cannot be separated; Mugabe is going for the war veterans’ jugular vein and he will be going after the security chefs next!
President Mugabe arrest a few rogue war veterans and Mujuru jumps in to their defence and yet when the tyrant murdered over 30 000 innocent civilians for the selfish purpose of imposing the one-party dictatorship Mujuru never said a word.
ReplyDeleteMujuru and her ZimPF people have already proven that they are corrupt and incompetent and her support of war veteran thugs proves that she has not changed. Like it or not Zim PF is Zanu PF in all but name!
A TOTAL of 55 000 workers lost their jobs in the past three years due to various reasons that include lack of financial resources to keep the companies afloat, Parliament has heard.
ReplyDeleteZimbabwe’s economic meltdown is socially and politically unsustainable and the more this regime resist change the deeper the nation is going to sink into the abyss!
This is not helpful in anyway because it is pushing unity at the expense of truth. The war veterans fall into two groups; those who have remained faithful to their principles and the nation and those who have betrayed the people by siding with a corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship for selfish gain.
ReplyDeleteThe country is in this political and economic mess because the majority of our people were denied their freedom and basic rights for decades and we must address this problem if we are to get out of this mess. Sweeping the problem under the carpet is not going to get us out of the mess!
Building a free, just and prosperous nation in comparable to winning Olympic gold it demands hard work and meticulous attention to detail; something Zimbabweans have shied away from. The price of failing to create a healthy and functional democracy is allowing the dictatorship to thrive and with it the corruption and tyranny.
ReplyDeleteAfter 36 years of doing nothing to stop this Mugabe tyrannical rule the task of removing his and rebuilding the nation was become that much harder. It is encouraging to see that many more people have finally woken up to the reality that the present political and economic situation is unsustainable and therefore we need change. The simplistic solution offered by the social media brigade is worrying. When you are in a hole, we are in a hell-hole, which ever path one chooses if it is way out it must be an uphill climb. The downhill solutions offered by the social media brigade will only take us deeper and deeper into this hell!
What detail can one get from a 140 character twitter dialogue? If these people are serious about changing Zimbabwe then they must necessarily accept that they will never achieve the status of meticulous attention to detail from social media dialogue. Twitter and WhatsApp have their limits and they were never meant to be a substitute to hard work and meticulous attention to detail.
An electorate whose understanding of the burning national issues is limited to what they can glean from social media is comparable to someone expecting to win Olympic gold after a week's training before the games! A complete waste of time!
I agree with you there my brother; we have never believed that we were capable of self-government. And the self-doubt was coming from everyone right across the board. The liberation war heroes have never allowed the ordinary people to have any meaningful political say right from the word go. The all-night vigils, "Pungwe", were never meant to be anything other than a chance for freedom fighters to preach to the ordinary people. The people were expected to do as they are told.
ReplyDeleteSo when the likes of Mahiya and Matemadanda say "we (war veterans) are the stockholders of Zanu PF and Zimbabwe" they are saying something that was acknowledged as a fact although few cared to admit it publicly. Of course war veterans had the veto because they never trusted the ordinary people could be trusted with the vote.
The ordinary people for their part did not trust the freedom fighters would keep their word and grant them the free and democratic vote. The 1980 elections was a vote to end the civil war in that the people did not trust the two liberation war parties Zanu PF and PF Zapu would not restart the war if they should lose the vote.
The people expected whichever party that won the 1980 elections to consolidate its power by un-dermining the democratic institutions to establish a de facto one-party dictatorship. So when Mugabe started doing these things, they were not surprised.
I think if the people had expected a competent government, they would have done a lot more to ensure they elected competent leaders. They expected corrupt and incompetent leaders and so did not bother search for quality from the word go.
How ironic that President Mugabe keeps condemning violence and yet he is the one who keeps instigating the violence. What President Mugabe cannot accept is that his rule has failed and that it must end now and stop the tragic human misery he has brought on the nation.
ReplyDeleteThis hardened man of corruption and violence is dragging this nation deeper and deeper into the abyss by his stubborn refusal to accept he has failed.
The nation must leave no stone unturned to establish beyond all doubt that Mugabe rigged the July 2013 elections and then he and his cronies must be held to account for all the tragic events that have happened since the rigged elections.