"It Zimbabweans business to tell Mugabe to go," says Mbeki - like it or not he is spot on. W Mukori

When former SA President Thabo Mbeki said: “I would fight with any South African who stands up to say: ‘I, as a South African, say Robert Mugabe must go… I say it’s none of your business. It is the business of the people of Zimbabwe.”

He must have known he was setting off a whole truck load of fireworks because the issue of how to remove Mugabe from office and the role SADC has played in the past still remains a very raw nerve amongst the Zimbabweans.

“Not so long ago South Africa was rallying for world support to oust the apartheid regime. If he can apply his mind clearly without any bias of skin colour does he see any differences between the apartheid regime led by Botha et al and the ZANU PF led by Mugabe?” commented gynaecologist in New Zimbabwe.

“The reality is that the Mugabe regime is far worse than any oppressive colonial regime ever to rule in any parts of Africa. Zimbabweans need world support to oust Mugabe more than South Africa needed to dislodge the apartheid regime. Mugabe is a despot who can kill the people he is meant to lead without any conscience. Anyone who protects him is complicit in his deeds.”

There is nothing to be gained by comparing Mugabe’s corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship to SA’s apartheid regimes; this is not a beauty contest. What matters here is no human being should have had to suffer the racist torment under apartheid nor suffer the consequences of Mugabe’s corrupt and murderous tyrannical rule.

Gynaecologist’s main bone of contention is that Zimbabwe needs help to remove Mugabe and SADC, more specifically President Mbeki, failed to give us that help.

“The people of Zimbabwe said Mugabe should go in 2008 but you moron said he you should stay!” said Mukuru.

“In 2008, at the height of Zimbabwe's economic and political challenges, Mbeki was the Sadc-appointed mediator tasked with resolving the country's problems. Zimbabwe stood on a precipice with an inconclusive electoral outcome spawning a tense standoff and necessitating a presidential poll run-off which President Mugabe won convincingly after defeating his main challenger MDC-T president Mr Morgan Tsvangirai,” wrote the Zimpaper Editor.

Both Mukuru and Zimpaper Editor are both wrong in their interpretation of the events following the 2008 elections. SADC did not get involved in Zimbabwe’s political crisis because the elections were “inconclusive”, as the Zanu PF apologist would have us believe. SADC refused to accept Mugabe’s electoral victory because of the wanton violence used to overturn his 73% defeat in the March vote, by Mugabe’s own inadvertent admission, into a 84% victory.

Tsvangirai has himself admitted that MDC had offered to include some Zanu PF members in his cabinet when it was clear MDC would set to win the March 2008 vote. Mukuru is wrong to suggest that SADC who wanted the GNU.

Many Zimbabwean have been unhappy with Mugabe retaining the post of State President in the GNU with the two VP position occupied by Zanu PF and Tsvangirai reduced to the post of Prime Minister with no meaningful political power – an office messenger with a fancy job title. What some people fail to realise is that it was within MDC’s right to reject the role they were given in the GNU. They accepted!

Probably the single most important issue that many Zimbabweans have failed to accept is that it was not SADC’s fault that the GNU failed to deliver on its key promise of implementing the raft of democratic reforms designed to stop Zanu PF rigging elections. SADC leaders did their best to remind Tsvangirai and company to implement the reforms but were ignored.

In June 2013, just a month before the Zimbabwe elections, SADC leaders warned MDC leader not to contest the elections with no reforms in place but, once again, they were ignored. The elections went ahead and Zanu PF blatantly rigged the vote, as expected!

 Since the rigged July 2013 elections, Tsvangirai and his MDC friends promised they would not contest any more elections unless the reforms are implemented first. They have since changed their minds; they are going to contest next year’s elections although not even one reform has been implemented.

Tsvangirai’s claim that the new Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) system to be use next year will stop Zanu PF “manipulating the vote” is just a feeble excuse to justify contesting the flawed elections. The BVR system is only as good as those who operate it; the unreformed and corrupt ZEC will operate the system.

It is a historic fact that the people of Zimbabwe have had many chances to end the Zanu PF dictatorship, with the golden opportunity coming during the GNU. We have wasted them all! SADC leaders have told Zimbabweans exactly what we needed to do to end the Mugabe dictatorship – implement the raft of democratic reforms. We had five years of the GNU but failed to get even one reform implemented. No one.

Indeed, instead of owning up to our own serious shortcomings we ever have the chutzpah to blame SADC, President Mbeki, President Zuma, and everyone else except ourselves for our political problems!   

It is not just Robert Mugabe who has developed the art of blaming everyone else for the country’s problem even when it is self-evident he is to blame. A year ago, he admitted that $15 billions of diamond revenue were “swindled”. To date no one has been arrested and not a single dollar recovered.

A few months ago, Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, told parliament government was only receive revenue from the declared one million carats diamonds out of the expected six million carats. In other words, the wholesale looting behind the $15 billions is still going on. And yet Robert Mugabe continues to blame the targeted sanctions imposed by the West for all the country’s economic problems.

What nation on earth can sustain much less prosper whilst haemorrhaging billions of dollars a month particularly one with a mere $10 billion GDP like Zimbabwe!

"The colonial system was exactly about taking away the possibility for us to determine our own (destiny)," continued former President Mbeki.

"Now, I sit here as a South African and me, I’m going to say to the Zimbabweans: ‘You shut up. I’m going to decide for you who your leader is' ... It is wrong.”

Of course, he is right!

Even today, Zimbabweans still have the power to tell Mugabe to go and to determine our own destiny; we must demand the implementation of the democratic reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections and refuse to participate in any more flawed elections.

Tsvangirai & co. should have implemented the reforms when they had the golden opportunity to do so, they are the ones dragging us into these flawed elections on false promises for their own selfish purpose of winning the few gravy train seats Zanu PF gives away. Deny Zanu PF the smoke screen of the opposition contesting the flawed elections and the regime will be forced to accept the need for democratic change!

It is for Zimbabweans to tell Mugabe to go, we have the power to do so and it is no one else’s fault that we have failed to realise this and to use it. Zimbabweans are today the poorest in Africa; it is clear our economic poverty is in fact a by-product of our deep rooted intellectual poverty!  

We want a democratic and prosperous Zimbabwe but lack the common sense to implement the democratic reforms to end the corrupt and tyrannical de facto one-party dictatorship. After 37 years, we still contest the elections knowing Zanu PF will rig the vote but hoping against hope the regime will lose the election. How insane!