British have cut ED adrift, will he have Smith's common sense to admit "the game is up" N Garikai

South Africa’s then president F W de Klerk and the man who would succeed him, Nelson Mandela, were co-recipients of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

Nelson Mandela’s citation for the prize was easily and straight forward; he was the man successive white South Africa Apartheid regimes had haunted, harassed, abused and imprisoned for 27 long years. He was very lucky to be still alive as hundreds of thousands of his fellow blacks have been brutally murdered by the white regime for no other reason than that they were black.

Mandela was a worthy recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize because he had walked out of prison ready and willing to forgive and forget his white tormentors for the sake of rebuilding a new South Africa. He was not at all a bitter man itching to drive the white oppressors into the sea!

F W de Klerk got the Noble Peace Prize for the more subtle reason: he was the white supremacist leader who realised that apartheid was unsustainable and, instead of soldiering on, he sort to end the system.

Zimbabwe has had the great misfortune of having leaders with very little or no common sense much less with qualities worthy of Nobel Prize! The story goes that it was US Secretary of State, Dr Henry Kissinger, who pressure South Africa to stop supporting Ian Smith and his Rhodesia Front. It was only when Smith was told in no uncertain terms that SA will not be supporting Rhodesia in its sanction busting activities and, more significantly, in the country’s civil war, that Smith agreed to hold the negotiations leading to Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980.

When UK’s outgoing Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Ms Catriona Laing, told the Zanu PF regime that “the playing field for the recent elections were not level” both sides knew the full import of that statement. The British were the last nation to hold out on condemning the elections giving the Zanu PF regime hope it will get away with yet another rigged elections. The British had even started negotiation with IMF, WB, Paris Club and all the other major financial institution to enable Zimbabwe to access the much need funding to kick start Zimbabwe’s economic recovery. By acknowledging that Zanu PF had rigged the elections the British was telling the regime they would not be helping the regime with the cover up and, worse still, access the much needed financial assistance.

What the British have just done on Mnangagwa is no different from what the South Africans did on Ian Smith in 1979. Zimbabwe’s economic situation is bad enough already with unemployment already 90% and most basic services such as clean running water and health all but collapse it will only get worse without the much needed financial assistance. This is economically, socially, politically and morally unsustainable!

Tomorrow, 2^nd October 2018, President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa will chair his government’s first cabinet meeting post the British pulling out the plug on the regime. Will Mnangagwa have the common sense to admit the game is up as Ian Smith did when he faced a similar situation? Or will Mnangagwa ignore the political and economic reality and damn the consequences and dig in, as other tyrants and dictators like Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, etc. have done?

My guess is Mnangagwa; being the ruthless, corrupt, vote rigging and murderous tyrant he is with very little, if any at all, common sense; will ignore the British bombshell and sail on to the bitter end, “until death do us part!”

Mnangagwa and many of his fellow Zanu PF thugs’ position is very simple: it is either they are allowed to rule Zimbabwe or the country will go to the dogs!”Shaisano!” (It is me or nothing!) as the Shona would call it.

Zanu PF has ruled the country for the last 38 years already and the country is in a serious political and economic mess. The idea that the party must still be allowed to drag the whole nation even deeper into this hell-on-earth is an outrage. But unless the people of Zimbabwe demand an end to this political outrage then Zanu PF will turn this country into another Germany or Iraq as Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein respectively did.

Zanu PF rigged the July 2018 elections thus confirming Zimbabwe is still a pariah state ruled by corrupt vote rigging thugs. The country will not have the desperately needed economic recovery because investors and lenders alike do not like to do business with thugs.

Zanu PF rigged the elections and is, per se, illegitimate. The regime must step down now and allow the appointment of an interim administration to organise the nation’s transition back to legitimacy.

Mnangagwa’s gangster mentality will be to hold on to power to the bitter end; it is incumbent on every Zimbabwean to make sure he is not allowed to do this! Mnangagwa will never win Nobel Prize for anything, still it is not too much to ask him to have the common sense to finally admit Zanu PF’s reign of terror is over.