Mutsvangwa and Mugabe kiss and make up - a rogue is a rogue count on him to betray. P Guramatunhu

A rogue is a rogue and when push comes to shove the rogue will betray the cause, you, me and everyone quicker than the blink of an eye!

When trouble started brewing up between the war veteran leaders like Jabulani Sibanda and President Mugabe in 2014 leading to the former boldly denouncing Grace Mugabe’s meteoric political rise from a nobody in the party to president of the party’s women’s league and shameless bid for Vice Presidency all in the space of a few weeks. Grace’s vitriolic “baby dumping” attack of the VP Joice Mujuru, who was certain to win the vote to be VP in the party’s forthcoming December 2014 elective congress and therefore posed a serious threat to Grace’s ambitions, was ruthless. Grace was going for the jugular vein!

“There has been a bedroom coup!” came the jibe from Jabulani Sibanda. “I will not allow political power to be sexually transmitted from Mugabe to his wife!”

Sibanda was booted out of Zanu PF and by extension out of his powerful war veteran chairman position, to be replace by Chris Mutsvangwa. And for good measure Sibanda was slapped with an “Insulting the President” charge, and to this day the charge hangs over his head!

The peace between President Mugabe and the war veterans under the leadership of Chris Mutsvangwa did not last for long over the same issue, Grace Mugabe’s vaulting presidential ambitions. Whilst the Mutsvangwa war veteran executive had supported Grace’s baby dumping antics to stop Joice Mujuru’s VP ascendancy as contrast to Sibanda & co. who supported Mujuru; Mutsvangwa & co. panic when Mujuru was booted out of the party and Grace’s attack turned full blast on their candidate, VP Emerson Mnangagwa.

The rogues amongst the country’s liberation war veterans first showed their true colours when the late Chenjarai (Hitler) Hunzvi was chairman of the war veterans. He was instrumental in demanding the $50 000 gratuity, a pension and other goodies for war veterans in the late 1990s. There was no denying, even back then, that President Mugabe agreed to these demands but only as a bribe for the war veterans’ blind loyalty of his one-party dictatorship.

The rogue elements among the war veterans agreed and for years to come war veterans under the leadership of such people as Jabulani Sibanda have done Zanu PF’s dirty bidding of denying the people’s freedoms and human rights to impose the dictatorship. This was contrary to the values and principles of free, justice, one-man-one-vote, human dignity, everything the nation had fought for.

Although the rogue war veterans had done the dirty work to keep President Mugabe and his thugs in power the later had not honoured his promise of paying them the pension much less making them rich. Many of the war veterans have languished in abject poverty. What made the Mutsvangwa group of rogue war veterans panic was the growing possibility of Grace Mugabe taking over the presidency from her husband. It was an open secret that she was not going to honour any promises Mugabe had made to the war veterans.

The war veterans knew they had to fight to stop Grace Mugabe’s ascendancy. They accused President Mugabe of “dictatorial tendencies” and demanded that he must resign and pass on the baton to VP Mnangagwa. Whilst some people, notably the political opportunist MDC-T leaders, saw this as a transformative Damascene moment turning rogue war veterans doing Zanu PF’s dirty bidding into democrats. This was both premature and naïve particularly when the rogues still claimed to have a veto on who was to rule the country.  

Media reports that the war veterans have since kissed and made up with President Mugabe will only serve to confirm the transformative Damascene moment was indeed a fake.

"As chairman, I want to assure the public and the national body politic that there are no contentious issues between ZNLWA and the patron President Robert Mugabe," said Mutsvangwa.

"By the same token, war veterans are delighted with the ever-warming relations with the First Family as a whole. We also take this opportunity to reassure all and sundry that we have excellent relations with the entire defence and security establishment. General (Constantino) Chiwenga enjoys our utmost trust and confidence.

"We are of shared military progeny as young men sacrificing only life for freedom and independence in the 1970s. The bonds of blood are too strong to be torn asunder by mahumbwe (child's play) type trickery of G40."

Those who had placed so much hope in the fallout between President Mugabe and the rogue war veterans as the positive sign the country will have free and fair elections have just had their hopes dashed!

So Mutsvangwa does not want to break the bonds with those in the state security services whose blind loyalty to Mugabe’s no regime change mantra is one of the main reason the Zanu PF dictatorship has survived all these last 37 years. Both rogue war veterans and those in the security services had no qualms cutting the bonds that had teared the freedom fighters to the Zimbabwe populous, povo. In their quest for a share of the spoils of absolute dictatorial power and the influence and material wealth it promised; they have readily betrayed povo and the liberation war values and principles for which many, both war veterans and povo, lost their very lives.

What Chiwenga, Mutsvangwa and their respective followers have failed to understand, even now with the benefit of hindsight, is that the Zanu PF dictatorship was doomed to fail and has done just that. The corrupt and tyrannical political system is unjust and wasteful of human and material resources; the country’s economic meltdown is proof of its failure.

Whilst President Mugabe will make another generous gratuitous payment to all war veterans, as a token of his renewed promise to make them rich in return for them to do his dirty bidding once again. Soon after the elections the war veterans will once again be forgotten and poverty will return to their doors once again.

Zimbabwe’s sustained economic recovery is not possible until we end the criminal waste of resources through mismanagement and corruption and for that we need political transformation born out of free, fair and credible elections. once we it will take months not years for poverty to return to their doors.

The Zanu PF dictatorship is the root cause of the country’s economic meltdown and human suffering. Mutsvangwa and his war veterans and Chiwenga and his fellow security chefs had no right to impose the dictatorship on the nation these last 37 years much less to do so for one more day!

The people of Zimbabwe will demand the implementation of all the democratic reforms design to end the Zanu PF dictatorship; to restore their basic freedoms and human rights and to end the corruption and tyranny of the last 37 years. If people like Mutsvangwa think they can cut deals with Mugabe to frustrate the people and stop the democratic changes afoot, he could not be more wrong. Democratic change is coming whether Mutsvangwa and his rogue war veterans will the change or not!

"The inescapable reality is that the G40 is facing its waterloo. It has already been a torrid season with the (Jacob) Mudenda inquiry, the vote of no confidence by 10 party provinces and the thorough drubbing of the G40 pretender (Mutero Masanganise) by chairman (Ezra) Chadzamira in Masvingo party provincial elections. The end is nigh for the G40 cabal and its diabolic power grab pretences," predicted Mutsvangwa.

The only waterloo that the nation is interested in is the one to end the Zanu PF corrupt and tyrannical rule!