It was interesting to hear long-time Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos saying he would not be the party’s presidential candidate in 2019.
BY PARDON MAGUTA,OUR READER
Considering that he is younger than President Robert Mugabe, who wants to contest for the Presidency in 2018 at 94, one wonders the incentive behind Mugabe’s motive. He has single-handedly destroyed the once called “Jewel of Africa” through his unscientific populist economic, political and land policies.
It is not only Mugabe’s age which makes his quest for another term questionable.
Mugabe has proved he is barefoot of ideas to turn around the economic fortunes of this country. He has also managed to reduce Zimbabwe to a pariah State through his bad international image.
Dos Santos steered his country out of acute poverty through the power of oil and diamonds. But with Mugabe, it’s the opposite – the diamond curse.
Unemployment and underemployment are on the rise. It seems Mugabe does not know how to deal with these issues. There is also Mugabe’s celebrated unproductive communist-like land seizures which benefited mostly party supporters, sabotaging the economy.
With his wooden logic of a mind bent on winning elections, he could not see that simply redistributing farms to people who do not have knowledge or skills was not going to improve their lives.
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Mugabe got cheap votes by doing so at the cost of the country’s food security. People are starving in spite of Mugabe’s much-touted “land is the economy and economy is the land” sloganeering.
All these are strong reasons why Mugabe should not be anywhere near the coming polls or step down forthwith.
Apart from all the national problems rocking the country, Mugabe has of late shown signs of failing to handle and solve problems threatening to shred his party into pieces throwing the country into instability.
First, it was Weevils versus Gamatox. Now it’s Team Lacoste versus G40. Such developments makes people doubt Mugabe’s suitability to remain at the helm of both his party and the nation.
If he can no longer run his party, how can he run the country? It is time for him to pass the baton of leadership to others in a fair, transparent and legal manner.
What is needed at the moment are new, visionary brains in the Office of the President. Without that, the country will never achieve anything.
In Angola, Dos Santos will step down leaving behind a country with a sound economy as per African standards. What about Mugabe? Is there much to boast about?