People working to reconcile ED and Mugabe - what business is it of the goat to stop hyenas fighting. W Mukori

“Hupenzi, inyama yegakava!” (There is nothing worse than a stubborn fool!) So, goes a Shina adage!

“The country's sulking former leader, Robert Mugabe - together with his restless wife, Grace - is said to be stepping up his efforts to get back at his successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, despite last week's reports that a number of people and organisations are working hard behind the scenes to try and reconcile the two men,” reported the Dailynews.

These people want Mugabe and Mnangagwa reconciled? To what end and purpose?

Of course, these individuals are the stubborn fools who have no idea what is in their own best interest. Mugabe and Mnangagwa are like two hyenas fighting each other to the death, it is in the goat’s best interest that neither of the two get out of this alive!

After Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends sold-out during the GNU and failed to implement even one democratic reform in five years the nation lost its best chance since independence to end the Zanu PF dictatorship.

The dog-eat-dog infighting in Zanu PF which started soon after the rigged July 2013 elections has created another opportunity for the nation to finally get the democratic reforms implemented.

Whenever the devil closes the door to imprison God’s people, the Lord always opens a window for them to escape. Robert Mugabe, as the Devil’s imp, did not have to work hard on the breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent Tsvangirai and his MDC friends to make them forget about the reforms. The door to reforms was slammed shut in our faces!

The infighting in Zanu PF has opened a window for us to force through the reforms. When Mugabe booted out Joice Mujuru and her supporters in 2014 he pressed the self-distract button to start a process that has destroyed Zanu PF. The party is imploding, the core is rotten and the whole edifice is curving in.

“You must understand that the military coup left Zanu-PF in tatters," The leader of the new political party, National Patriotic Front and former Zanu PF minister, Ambrose Mutinhiri, told Everson Mashava in a recent interview.

Of course, the Zanu PF in tatters is far easier to get to implement the democratic reforms. The mistake the fools now calling to reconcile Mnangagwa and Mugabe are making is they want the infighting in Zanu PF to now stop because the coup has brought about the democratic changes the nation has been dying for. President Mnangagwa and his Junta have mounted an all-out offensive to convince the naïve and gullible that the coup has delivered a “new dispensation” guaranteed to deliver free, fair and credible elections and economic prosperity.

Mnangagwa’s clarion cry of “Zimbabwe is open for business!” has had no foreign investor takers because they are a shrewd lot. They know talk is cheap, they want to see concrete evidence that Zimbabwe is indeed open for business. Investors have shied away from Zimbabwe all these last decades because Zimbabwe, under Mugabe’s corrupt and tyrannical rule, had become a pariah state ruled by thugs.

The November coup saw the same thugs whom Mugabe had used all these years to impose his tyrannical rule boot him out of office and share out the spoils of seized power amongst themselves. Only the politically naïve and gullible were ever fooled into believing the removal of one dictator and replacing him with another constitute any significant change.

Zimbabwe is still a pariah state ruled by the same ruthless thugs and hence the reason investors have not heeded Mnangagwa’s call.

With no foreign investors coming, President Mnangagwa’s promised economic recovery is just a mirage in the desert!

President Mnangagwa has already failed the acid test on his sincerity to hold free, fair and credible elections. Ever since the 2008 to 2013 GNU everyone has accepted that Zimbabwe must first implement the raft of democratic reforms as the pre-requisite for free and fair elections. Mnangagwa has not only refused to implement the reforms but, worse still, has been denouncing those calling for reforms as barking dogs!

Indeed, ever since taking over power from Mugabe, the military Junta in Harare has carried on implementing the vote rigging schemes Zanu PF had planned for this year’s elections as if the November coup has not happened. President Mnangagwa has gone on to buy the Chiefs new trucks as Mugabe had promised. The trucks are a bribe to the Chiefs who will, in return, frog march the rural voters to vote for Zanu PF.

President Mnangagwa and his Junta’s refusal to implement the democratic reforms and hold free and fair elections is the conclusive evidence that the regime is not giving up its carte blanche powers to rig elections and stay in power regardless of the people’s democratic wish for meaningful political change.

Robert Mugabe and his deposed G40 friends have a score to settle with Mnangagwa and his Lacoste faction. It just so happened that the former know exactly how the latter is rigging this year’s elections, after all Mugabe and company have helped design, fund and operated the vote rigging juggernaut all these years.

Unless we can get someone who can reveal how Mnangagwa rigged the coming elections, the regime may will get away with yet another rigged election. If the regime get away with the rigged elections this year, it will have the next five fives to regroup and consolidate its strangle hold on power. If Mnangagwa is not going to implement any reforms this year, he is not going to do so in the next five years either! Mugabe and his G40 friends will see to that if the Junta rigs this year’s elections, it does not get away with it.

Getting Mugabe and Mnangagwa to reconcile will only give the latter a chance to bribe his former Zanu PF colleagues to turn a blind eye to the Junta’s vote rigging. The big losers will be the ordinary Zimbabweans who will be stuck with the same corrupt, vote rigging and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship or be it under new management!

Zanu PF is imploding, there is still a lot of fight still left in both G40 and Lacoste, in that either faction, given a chance will waste no time in imposing the reconstituted Zanu PF dictatorship. We must not be concerned about stopping the two factions fighting until we have the democratic reforms safely implemented and the right to free, fair and credible elections guaranteed.

A dictatorship, even one under the new dictator Mnangagwa, will never allow a healthy and functional democracy to co-exist along side it. So, all this all this talk of giving Mnangagwa and his Junta “a chance to prove themselves” is all nonsense. We have a chance to dismantle the dictatorship, we must make the most of this and not waste it as happened during the GNU.

It is not for the goat to stop two hyenas fighting; especially when the fight is over which one of them should have the goat for dinner. The goat must make good his escape!