“You are at the top, you want to glorify yourself,” said Mugabe speaking
of his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa, according to Jealousy Mawarire, National
Patriotic Front (NPF) spokesperson.
“You are not God. Today you are at the top, tomorrow you will be at the
bottom, know that. God has His own way of punishing rogues and cruel people.
“I am telling you in your face. I don’t care what will happen to me.
People should love their army, they should not fear the army.”
Mugabe reportedly said this at his 95th birthday party. Mugabe’s
birthdays used to be a grand occasions, costing millions of dollars. No expense
was spared even basic services such as supply of clean water, health care and
education had all but collapse, starved of funds. Ever since November 2017 when
he was booted out of power following the military coup, his birthday parties
have been a family and friends affair and not a national one.
Still, this year’s birthday party must have been a very happy occasion
happening just a few day after some of the worst street protest and violence
that the country had seen in the last decades. The protests were triggered by
the shortage of foreign currency, fuel, cash, bread, etc. The final straw that
broke the camel’s back was the nearly 200% increase in the price of fuel!
Mugabe stayed in power for 37 years by rigging his own Zanu PF party
elections and then let none other than Mnangagwa rig the national elections to
keep him and the party in power. He has insisted that he has never handed power
to someone else because there was no one competent to lead.
So reports of Zanu PF being accused of rigging the July 2018 elections
(Mugabe had avoided such embarrassment by making sure no observers from the
democratic nations were accredited) made good reading for Mugabe. But better
still, the news of the Zimbabwe economy sinking even deeper into the abyss.
If Mnangagwa’s “Zimbabwe is open for business!” had been a resounding
success and Zimbabwe’s economy was on a firm footing and well on its way to
economic recovery; Mugabe would be died spiritually, at the least. It was bad
enough for him to be booted out of office but to have Mnangagwa validated as
more competent than himself would have been more than he could bear!
Nothing would have brought Mugabe more pleasure than to see the Zimbabwe
economic meltdown get even worse than when his was in power and Zimbabweans
rioting and demanding the removal of Mnangagwa. Absolutely Nothing!
“You are not God! God has His own way of punishing rogues and cruel
people!” If Mugabe said this once he must have said it a thousand times. No
doubt Mugabe will never consider himself a rogue let alone that the military
coup was God’s punishment.
Many people have accused Robert Mugabe of being a control freak megalomania; after 37 years in power with nothing but economic ruins and murderous oppression to show for it, the label was more than justified. Mugabe has always justified his continued stay in power on the grounds that there was no one competent to takeover from him. Therefore to see the country's economy sink into even greater depths of economic despair and Mnangagwa resorting to some sadistic barbarism to retain his iron grip on power twice already in less than six months gave Mugabe great satisfaction.
ReplyDeleteMugabe had seen the millions of Zimbabweans who had marched in support of the military coup that booted him out of office. The people had hugged and kissed the soldiers to thank them. The same soldiers were now the ones tear gassing, beating, raping, arresting and even shooting dead the same people who had hugged and kissed them.
Of course, Mugabe had used the same sadistic barbarism to establish and retain the de facto one party dictatorship, indeed used the same thugs led by Mnangagwa. But, being the sanctimonious brute that he is will want to give the impression that he would have never sunk to the depths of depravity Mnangagwa has sunk! Never!
So the 95th birthday celebration was, above all, a victory celebration. For all his corrupt, incompetent and murderous rule Mugabe can now thank Mnangagwa for proving there was someone worse than him. There are some Zimbabweans out there, not many but still some, who are already regretting Mugabe’s ouster. It is the most flattering compliment a corrupt, incompetent and murderous tyrant would ever hear!
@ John Fund
ReplyDeleteGeorge Ayittey, an economics professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and the author of the book Defeating Dictators, isn't optimistic that the generals behind Maduro in Venezuela or behind Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe can be displaced easily. "Bad governments metastasize into criminal enterprises so anyone chosen from the ruling elites to succeed a failed president would himself be a crook," he told me. In Zimbabwe, for example, the anti-corruption czar, Ngonidzashe Gumbo, was himself jailed for ten years on fraud charges.
Still, Ayittey admits, there are exceptions. Street protests were able to force genuine change in South Africa in 1994, in Ghana in 2000,, and in Tunisia in 2011. "I myself was one of the architects of change in my native Ghana in 2000," he told me. He also notes the progress that Ethiopia's new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has made in reforming that nation's rancid Marxist past.
"We should always have hope," Ayittey told me. "But dictators have far more staying power than we like to admit. There are few happy endings.”
George Ayittey was spot-on there; in the case of Zimbabwe metastasised corrupt and incompetent elements are not only in the ruling party but the opposition too. The people of Zimbabwe have risked life and limb, over 500 were murdered by Zanu PF in the orgy of 2008 alone, to elect MDC officials into power on the promise they would bring about the democratic reforms the nation was dying for. MDC has failed to bring about even one meaningful democratic change even during the GNU when they had the golden opportunity to do so.
As soon as the MDC leaders received the keys to their ministerial limo, got the generous salary and allowance, a $4 million mansion for Tsvangirai, etc., etc.; they forgot about the suffering masses and the democratic changes.
Right now instead of focusing on getting the vote rigging Zanu PF regime to step down because it is illegitimate and has no mandate to govern; the MDC Alliance is more interested in allowing Zanu PF to remain in power as long as Chamisa and a few others get seats on the gravy train.
38 years of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule has taken a heavy toll in Zimbabwe. 3/4 of the population now live on US$30 per month in a country where the poverty datum line is US$650 per month. When one is this poor one decent meal a month, clean drinking water, medicine, things one would say are life and death necessities all become luxuries. People are dying of poverty and when they dare complain, the regime’s response is to beat, rape, arrest and even shoot to kill! There is certainly NOT going to be a peaceful end to the Zimbabwe dictatorship. The stakes are just too high for Mnangagwa and his cronies to consider giving up power peaceful, they are going to fight for power, for looted wealth and to keep their dirty past a secret to the bitter end! Like the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, Mnangagwa will go under the glaze of gun fire! But before that happens there will be a hell lot more graves victims of poverty or his “shoot to kill” policy!
James Manzou, Zimbabwe’s secretary for foreign affairs, said President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi are expected to sign the loan agreements in Harare on Thursday.
ReplyDeleteThe loan will consist of $500 million dollars for Zimbabwe’s diamond industry and a further $100 million to help private companies, whose operations have been hamstrung by the dollar shortage, the state-owned Herald newspaper said.
Zimbabwe’s teething economic problems are a product of the country’s criminal waste of resources through mismanagement and corruption. The country’s ruling party Zanu PF has failed to address these problems allowing them to grow and spread to the deadly cancers they are today. Zanu PF has never tried to end the mismanagement and corruption because they are themselves to product of the party’s patronage and vote rigging system which has kept the party in power.
Zimbabwe’s economic recovery is totally dependent on the country the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule, it is therefore disappointing that any country at all should be so foolish as to believe throwing good money after bad governance will solve anything!
I hear Finance Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube and a number of other from his ministry and the RBZ are planning to go on a tour of all the big cities in the world “to explain Zanu PF’s reform programmes” to lure investors. He like to travel in luxury, the loan from Botswana will help pay for the hired jet, five star hotel accommodation, etc.
Zimbabwe pays its gold miners in cash, but has been failing to do so of late as the usual suppliers, South African banks, have been cutting ties amid fears of being fined by the United States’ Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
ReplyDeleteZimbabwe is under United States sanctions and unless otherwise authorised or exempt, transactions involving the greenback are penalised if they involve an entity or individual listed on the Specially Designated Nationals List (a list of individuals and entities under US sanctions).
The nature of the regulations, however, makes it difficult for foreign banks to know whether they are dealing with Specially Designated Nationals or not, hence the decision by most South African banks to de-risk from dealing with Zimbabwean institutions.
Well, well! This is getting very interesting indeed!
No doubt the miners will have to be paid in Chinese Yuan or Russian Ruble; all part of the Zanu PF “look East” policy! If that does not work then Minister of Finance, Professor Mthuli Ncube, will come up with with something. He is not one to miss his Upper Middle Income nation by 2030 target over a trivial matter like this!
Whilst Mugabe inherited the Biblical seven fat cows and fat ears of corn and lots and lots of other riches beside but only to waste all that wealth and potential. Under his leadership Zimbabwe was not move from one blunder to the next, one disaster to the next, one world record of hyper inflation to the next of unemployment rate, one rigged election to another, one act of demonic barbarism to the next. It is little wonder millions of Zimbabweans and the world at large were overjoyed just to see the incompetent, corrupt and murderous tyrant go.
ReplyDeleteThe world did not want a military coup but no one lifted a finger to condemn Zimbabwe's November 2017 coup; every one was so pleased just to see the back of Mugabe they turned a blind to the coup!
If Mugabe has stayed on there would have been no meaningful economic recovery given Zimbabwe would still be the same corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship. Mugabe would have rigged the July 2018 elections just as Mnangagwa did and would have reacted with the same barbarism to retain power.
From Mugabe, Mnangagwa inherit not even one skinny cow, all the grain silos were empty, nothing of any value. He got a mount of debt and an impoverished nation on the verge of starvation and instability. But to hear Mugabe blubbering one would be mistaken to think he inherited nothing from Smith and left the seven fat cows, etc. for Mnangagwa and the later in his foolishness is the one who has wasted the nation's riches!
Both Mugabe and Mnangagwa are incompetent, corrupt and murderous thugs, two sides of the same coin; as much as Mugabe would want to see himself as more cunning, etc. As far as I am concerned the two will both go straight to hell, let the Devil decide each deserves!