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NewsDay

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Newsday comment: More honour in being fired by Mugabe

Opinion & Analysis
THAT President Robert Mugabe has fired seven more ministers allegedly aligned to sacked Vice-President Joice Mujuru was not really surprising given his vindictive nature.

THAT President Robert Mugabe has fired seven more ministers allegedly aligned to sacked Vice-President Joice Mujuru was not really surprising given his vindictive nature.

NewsDay comment

A team is as good or as bad as its coach. You can’t separate the two. Mugabe cannot distance himself from the purported technical incompetence of the fired ministers, some of whom he continually re-appointed for over two decades. So, Mugabe is taking it from the wrong end of the stick.

What is at play here is naked political recrimination, not performance issues.

The desire to be revengeful seems to be overwhelming. The disposition to seek revenge, marked by or resulting from a desire to hurt and even be spiteful is patent and glaring. Mugabe could not resist the urge to exact revenge from the Far East, where he is supposed to be on holiday.

This also shows that Acting President Emmerson Mnangagwa is merely a place holder for Mugabe.

The message is clear: Mugabe will exercise power from whatever distance. It is this vengefulness that has kept politics in this country at boiling point for most times since independence 34 years way back.

The late Ndabaningi Sithole and the late Joshua Nkomo faced this political wrath after falling out with Mugabe.

With such ruthless practices, Zimbabwe can never find inner political peace as long as Mugabe is in charge. It is this self-centred political style which led Mugabe to petulantly pull Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth and which led to the slapping of targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe by the European Union, the United States and other Western countries.

The fired ministers — together with eight others sacked last week — should also shoulder blame for their predicament because they had been hanging in there for far too long against their conscience and better sense.

They shouldn’t have given the regime the pleasure and delight to humiliate them. They shouldn’t have waited to be fired. They should have made the first bold move to resign. Operating under such a regime cannot be enjoyable or satisfying.

But, they should be commended for their resistance and rebellion — however timid or token it was — from within against oppressive one-person leadership.

People must not be perpetual prisoners of fear because Zimbabwe will not move forward with cringing cowards. So, if anything, these dismissals should serve to embolden the affected persons to be their own men and women. People should not be made to bleat like sheep.

In such circumstances, there is more honour in being fired.