“Mwana wabata moto
unodzidza juti unopisa, benzi ibenzi rinozvibvura!” So goes the Shona adage.
(The child who touches fire soon learns that it burns, the fool never learns
and so will roast himself!)
After 34 years at the very
heart of the Zanu PF dictatorship plus two years cooling-off period one would
have thought Mai Mujuru and her ZPF followers have finally learned something.
Sadly, they are the same blunder idiots they were in 1980, remained so throughout
the 34 years in Zanu PF and are set to continue blundering into the future!
“We want to apologise to
the masses of Zimbabwe because we dumped them soon after independence. We are
saying we are coming back to you. We want to listen and we want the problems
that people are facing resolved,” said Elliot Kasu, the interim chairperson of
the ZPF Freedom Fighters Council (FFC).
“After the liberation
struggle we were dumped and we continue to be dumped. So, we are saying let us
go back to the 1980s.”
In one breath, he
acknowledges that war veterans betrayed the people but has clearly not thought
through as how that happened, specifically the role Joice Mujuru and other ZPF
leaders played and war veterans like him played. In the next breath he is back
to his and Mai Mujuru’s favourite theme blaming Mugabe and those still in Zanu
PF for “dumping” them!
Frank Badza, who is Secretary
General of FFC said the same thing in different words.
“The revolution was
derailed following the liberation struggle and it continues to go off the rails
up to this day. So, we have been figuring out where we went wrong,” said Frank
Badza.
“We entirely accept the
blame for the fall of this country and the abandonment of the values of the
liberation struggle. We did not realise our objectives because some of the
forefathers were not there at the end and it was hijacked by some who wanted to
build their names, yet their contribution was far less.
“As freedom fighters, we
realised that if we follow People First, we will remove people from this
dictatorship. We were used to put Mugabe in power and we were used to prop up
his rule and maintain it until 2014 when we were hounded from the party.
Again the same thing, a
quick acknowledgement that the Zimbabwe is in a serious economic mess and the
most sorrowful and sonorous words of regret they were “hounded from the party”.
Joice Mujuru, who attended
the press conference above, has given a number of press interviews herself
since December 2014 has to apologized to the people of Zimbabwe for the mess
the country is in. She has been a cabinet member for 34 years, the last ten of
which she was President Mugabe’s number two and yet she accepts no
responsibility for anything. She saw nothing, she maintains, because “puppies
do not open their eyes the day they born”.
Well Kasu, Badza, Mujuru
and the rest of these ZPF people have not been listening or they are all stone
deaf because if they have been listening they would know by now that;
a) they have all been at the very heart of this
Zanu PF dictatorship and, after 34 years, they cannot walk away and pretend
they saw nothing, heard nothing and they as dumb as the moon. They are all as
guilty of landing the nation in this mess as President Mugabe, Mnangagwa,
Jabulani Sibanda and all the others.
b) There is a lot more to this corrupt and
tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship than the one or two individuals that has
allowed it to take firm root in Zimbabwe; it is the ethos that shared by most
freedom fighters that by being a freedom fighter they know best and therefore
everyone else must listen to them and do as they say. Well, history has shown
that war veterans do not have the monopoly of knowledge, the nation would not
be in this economic and political mess if they did.
c) And, more significantly, if we are serious
about ending the mess then it is not enough to just remove Mugabe and one or
two others from power and change the name of the party from Zanu PF to ZPF. We
must dismantle the whole dictatorship edifice including the erroneous belief
that war veterans know best on which the dictatorship is grounded.
What Zanu PF has done since
independence in April 1980 is systematically corrupt the nation’s democratic
institutions so they served the party’s selfish interest of remaining in power
at all cost. Security Chefs were brainwashed into announcing that they would
not salute anyone “with no liberation war credentials”.
The war veterans were
brainwashed into believing all opposition parties were sponsored by the West to
bring about regime change. So, the regime granted them carte blanche powers to
abuse the people denying them their freedoms and rights including the right to
free and fair elections in the name of stopping regime change.
The sheer stupidity of both
the security chefs and the war veterans was exposed by their failure to see
that this no regime change mantra was incompatible with the regime’s claim that
elections were free, fair and credible. If they had any common sense at all
they should have also realised that the country’s failure to have a
democratically accountable government was the root cause of the country’s
economic decline!
“We know as war veterans
that if we win elections it will be difficult for them to deny us power as they
did with Tsvangirai,” said Badza.
In other words, he and his
FFC friends still believe in they know best.
Chris Mutsvangwa who is
leading the other group of war veterans who have remain in Zanu PF are right
now in the middle of a serious power struggle in which Mutsvangwa and company
still maintains the view that as war veterans “they are the stockholders of
Zimbabwe” and thus wield the veto when it comes to deciding who rules the
country.
Kasu, Badza, Mutsvangwa,
Sibanda and all the other war veterans be you members of Mujuru’s FFC or Mugabe’s
WNLWVA, it real does matter; President Mugabe, VP Mnangagwa, former VP Mujuru
and all the other Zanu PF buffoons brainwashed you lot into believing that they,
by virtue of having been the leaders in the liberation struggle, knew best. Well
the truth is they are just as fallible as everyone else and the country would not
be in such a mess if they were infallible.
This Zanu PF dictatorship is corrupt and tyrannical and for the last 36 years this nation has suffered under this mafia regime. Mugabe, Mnangagwa, Mujuru, Dabengwa, Makoni, Mutsvangwa, etc.; they have all played their part in the establishment and long term survival of the regime. They all had their share the spoils of the dictatorship; the absolute power and all the influence, celebrate status and the wealth.
ReplyDeleteBut now that the regime has crippled the national economy through all this criminal waste of the nation's human and material resources the former partners in crime are turning on each other. Now they are accusing each other of being corrupt and incompetent and swearing they had absolutely nothing to do with all the misrule and waste of the past. The later is important in that it is the justification for why they should rule next.
It is easy to see why Zim PF supporters have willingly accept Joice Mujuru's "puppy does not open its eyes the day it is born" excuse for having done nothing to stop the corruption and tyranny during her 34 years in power. Of course, they know puppies open their eyes after 34 days at the most; 34 years is nonsense. Still they accept the feeble excuse because they know they too played their part in the rot; they too had their puppy eyes shut for 34 years. Most important of all, they accept her feeble excuse and would have her as the next president if possible because, like her, they are hoping to take off with the corruption and tyranny were they left off when they were booted out of Zanu PF.
Joice Mujuru and her Aim PF are nothing but Mugabe and Zanu PF by another name and different party regalia!
What this nation needs is to wipe the slate clean by implementing all the democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 GPA designed to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship and restore all the individual freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country. We must have free, fair and credible elections and refuse to settle for anything else!