'I will go, let me retire properly,' says Mugabe - after 36 years of blunder and murder; no, go now! By W Mukori

The factional war in Zanu PF is now reaching its climax with the Mnangagwa faction backed by the disbanded war veterans led by Chris Mutsvangwa and those war veterans still in security services and other arms of government flexing its muscle. The G40 faction backing Grace Mugabe to succeed her husband and backed by Mugabe himself has lost considerable ground. Mugabe has told a select group of the Mnangagwa faction members that he will retire.

"If I am making blunders you should tell me... I will go. If I have to retire, let me retire properly," Mugabe told a handful of former liberation fighters on Saturday.

This is a catch 22, how come he has lasted 36 years as president if he had been blundering all along! Mugabe knows this only too well and never tire of playing the same trick on his political critics and opponents!

The accepted way for Zanu PF members to tell their leader they are sick and tired of him/her and should go is through free, fair and credible elections. Here is the man who, ever since his seizure of the Zanu PF party leadership from the late Ndabaningi Sithole in 1975 has never been re-elected into that position in a free, fair and credible elections.

Every time Zanu PF was scheduled to have an elective congress, Mugabe has manipulated the whole process to ensure every province had only his name in the hat so that instead of the congress electing a new leader it ended up being a crowning ceremony.

Mugabe’s contemptuous disregard for the democratic process and the right of the members to have any meaningful say in who led the party did not stop with his own undemocratic appointment alone, he ended up usurping the members’ right to elect the top three party positions of two VPs and party chairperson (he, unilaterally, abolished the post in 2014).

In 2004 Emmerson Mnangagwa was certain to win the election to fill the post of VP following the death of the late Simon Muzenda. President Mugabe, unilaterally, amended the party’s constitution stipulating that one of the top four party must be filled by a woman. Opening the door for Joice Mujuru to be appointed VP and of course she was beholden to Mugabe’s machination.

Ten years later, 2014, Joice Mujuru was the one set to win the VP post in her own right; something Mugabe would not tolerate. Mujuru was accused of “factionalism” and, to really spice it up, plotting to assassinate Mugabe. She was booted out of the party and, guess what, not even one of assassination plotters was ever arrested.

Mugabe then went on to appoint Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko as his two VPs. No one ever voted for the two gentlemen and as appointee he could replace them at will. The 2004 constitutional clause demanding that a woman must occupy one of the three top posts in the party was conveniently brushed aside and forgotten but not for long.

Grace has been manoeuvring to have herself appointed VP in place of Mnangagwa by evoking the gender equity clause.   

Having rigged his own Zanu PF party elections to secure his own top-dog position Mugabe has been ruthless in ensuring the nation elected him and Zanu PF in national elections. Zimbabwe is a multi-party democracy on paper only, in practice the country is a de facto one-party dictatorship. Mugabe has systematically corrupted the country’s democratic institutions such as the Police, CIO, Judiciary, ZEC, Public Media, etc. to secure his one party state.

To hide his one-party state agenda, Mugabe has pedalled the falsehood that Zimbabwe was under attack from the British and other Western countries seeking to replace his regime with a puppet regime and “reverse all the political and economic gains the country has made since independence”. Labelling all his political opponents and critics “regime change agents” or worse still plotting to assassinate him gave his cronies in the security services and party thugs some justification for the barbarism they used against the opponents.

However, after the elections, regardless of how dirty the process had been, Mugabe has always claimed the elections were free, fair and credible. The 2008 elections were the bloodiest elections the nation’s history and both SADC and AU refused to accept the result much to Mugabe’s annoyance as he still insisted the elections were free, fair and credible. He says this to seek political legitimacy.

How ironic that Mugabe should be asking his Zanu PF cronies that he be allowed to “retire properly”, meaning to serve his full term, when he has never been elected “properly”!

After 36 years of corrupt and tyrannical rule, Mugabe must go now!

President Mugabe has been very fortunate to have had some of the most corrupt and incompetent political challengers both at party and national level. He broke every law, cheated, bamboozled and ever murdered his opponents; rigged elections time and time again; he has brought this nation to economic ruin because of his decades of misrule; etc. and yet not even one of his opponents has ever taken him to task on anything. This must now change!  

The nation must carry out a thorough and detailed investigation into the conduct of the 2013 national elections, for example, to establish once and once for all whether or not the elections were indeed free, fair and credible. His close political associates like VP Mnangagwa must be questioned to ascertain they role in the dictatorship. Rigging elections threatens the stability of the nation and therefore is high treason; no stone must be left unturned to hunt down and punish all those guilty of rigging past elections!

The sorry state of Zimbabwe’s economy speaks volumes of Mugabe’s blundering incompetence he does not see it because chooses to be blind, deaf and dumb! His 36 years as president is not proof of his genius much less his popularity with the electorate; he was just lucky to have been surrounded by buffoons who did not have the intellect to expose all his blunders and his demonic practice of denying the people a meaningful say by rigging the vote must be exposed and punished.

After 36 years of corrupt and tyrannical only a soulless thug would ask to stay another day longer. No go now Mugabe for every day you remain in office this nation loses billions of through looting and lost opportunity, many human lives are lost because the health service collapse years ago, etc. Mugabe, you are a curse to the people of Zimbabwe and the harm you have caused is immeasurable; go now and stop tormenting us!