Wilbert Mukori | “For instance, they told you, I was safe, but how can I be in this environment? My wife is crying daily. They are persecuting her; that is obviously directed at me. What am I without my wife and family. We are not safe. We have constitutional benefits, for example, but these are being denied.” Zimbabwe’s former tyrant, Robert Gabriel Mugabe reportedly mourned to the visiting African Union Commission, Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat in Harare.
The corrupt and murderous tyrant’s arrogance and callous indifference to suffering and deaths of millions of ordinary and innocent Zimbabweans, the victims of his 37 years reign of terror, is insufferable!
When Mugabe took over power in 1980, he inherited a country with a strong and vibrant economy, able to feed its own people and the bread basket of the region. A country, with sound management, could have easily become the South Korea of Africa in terms of economic prosperity. Sadly, that was not to be!
By the time Mugabe was forced to resign by thugs in his own party, Zanu PF, the Zimbabwe economy was in total ruinous. 37 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption have taken a heavy toll on the economy. Commerce and industry collapsed, overburdened by tax and wastefulness of the muddling autocratic regime. The country was starved of new investment, investors shied away from a nation ruled by lawless thugs.
Mugabe seized the white owned farms in an orgy of gratuitous violence born of greed and political intrigue. The farms were given to Zanu PF loyalists whose greed for wealth was insatiable because whatever they got they wasted it and are soon back demanding for more. The seized farms suffered the same fate; they were left to lay idle resulting in the total collapse of the country’s agricultural sector.
The country, once proud to be the breadbasket of the region could not feed its own people. In the day and age when human ingenuity has turned deserts into blooming orchards; we are starving in a land which for all intend and purpose in the Garden of Eden. A damning testimonial to Mugabe’s blundering incompetence!
The total collapse of the country’s agriculture sector in the period 2000 to 2005 plus the voodoo monitory policy of printing Z$ resulting in a 500 billion inflation rate by 2008 were a hammer blow to the country’s economy from which it has never recovered. By mid 2000s, unemployment had soared to 80% and it is 90% today.
Zimbabweans are today the poorest nation in Africa. 72.3% of our people live on US$1.00 or less a day. Grace Mugabe has always lived a life of unparalleled leisure and luxury; she has bought more designer shoes and cloths than she will ever use and has properties and fat bank accounts. The nation and the whole world are rightly shocked to hear that she cries every day!
Grace is crying that she will no longer be able to go on the shopping spree and spend as extravagantly as she used to. She does not appreciate that her and her fellow filthy rich ruling elite’s wasteful extravagance was the root cause of the nation’s economic collapse. Her Gucci designer shoes was paid for by those who now live on $1.00 or less a day!
“It’s not like I am crying for those benefits I joined the struggle to fight to free my people. not to personally benefit anything, but why deny me benefits that I am constitutionally entitled to?” continued Mugabe.
No, Mugabe, you joined the struggle to end colonial white oppression for one reason and one reason only – so you can come the new lord and master. From the first day you took power you have toiled to undermine the rule of law, the state institutions, your own party Zanu PF and the individual freedoms and rights to create a de facto one-party cum one-man dictatorship to secure for your selfish gratification absolute political power and the spoils of influence and wealth that flow from it.
The violence that accompanied the farm invasions, for example, was just a smoke screen to hide the wanton violence you, Mugabe, unleashed on the nation in your single-minded resolve to return political power at all cost.
“What was won by the bullet cannot be undone by the ballot!” you instructed the war veterans, party thugs, the Police, Army and CIO personal in the wanton violence of the 2008 elections.
Not even SADC and AU would accept the 2008 elections as free and fair. In all your 37 years in power, you have failed to hold free, fair and credible elections. SADC forced you, Mugabe, to sign the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) instructing the GNU to implement a raft of democratic reforms design to take away Zanu PF’s autocratic and undemocratic powers and restore the state institutions democratic powers and independence and the individual freedoms and rights.
You, Mr Mugabe, bribed Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends with the trappings of high office plus a former white-owned farm for Welshman Ncube and a $4 million mansion for Tsvangirai. In return, MDC leaders saw to it that not even one reform saw the light of day.
The November 2017 coup help remove the dictator, Mugabe, but only for him to be replace by another dictator, Emmerson Mnangagwa. The corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship itself was left untouched.
Since taking over after the coup, President Mnangagwa has promised the nation economic recovery and a new political dispensation, complete with free, fair and credible elections. He has not implemented even one democratic reform and has even dismissed all those calling for reforms as barking dogs.
“You need to assist us to bring this country to normalcy and democracy There is need for people’s rights to be restored and normal life to continue. Now there is no freedom of expression. If you disagree with them, then you must die,” pleaded Mugabe.
Yes, Zimbabwe needs the AU, SADC and the international community’s help to end the strangle hold this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs fostered on the nation. The coming elections are NOT going to be free and fair, that is clear; the AU and SADC must stand firm and declare the process null and void and force Zimbabwe to revisit and finally implement the 2008 GPA reforms.
“It’s not like I am crying for those benefits I joined the struggle to fight to free my people,” said Mugabe. AU Commissioner Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat’s eye brows must have gone up involuntarily; only a heartless murderous tyrant and megalomania would be crying for his lost glory oblivious of all the death and destruction he brought!
If there is ever going to be justice in Zimbabwe, then the wealth that Mugabe, his wife and cronies looted from the impoverished povo must be recovered and used to rebuild this nation from the ruins decades of Zanu PF misrule brought. If Grace Mugabe is forced to live on US$1.00 or less a day, a fate 72.3% of our people have been condemned to feed her insatiable greed, then she will have a better cause to cry everyday about than missing her extravagant shopping spree!
errence Mawawa Caps United fans are unhappy with the inclusion of nomadic and controversial striker Rodrick Mutuma and several players regarded as tired horses in the Green Machine squad for the 2018 season.