The hallmark of a dictatorship is the obsessive desire to die in power and, beyond that, perhaps to rule from the grave. And if the remarks made by First Lady Grace Mugabe at the so-called “million-man march” in Harare on Wednesday are anything to go by, then Zimbabwe now has a fully-fledged dictatorship.
NewsDay Comment
Typical of delusions of grandeur, it appears President Robert Mugabe or his wife Grace love the sound of their voices.
As if to put “the icing on the cake” Mugabe crowed that he was not going anywhere until the “Zimbabwean people” requested him to leave.
What this implies is that Mugabe has set rational thinking aside, and even if Zimbabwe burns down to ashes under his watch, the President will still continue his stranglehold on power until citizens themselves go.
What has happened to his level-headedness, wisdom and astuteness? What happened to sanity? Is it not true that any self-respecting and people-oriented leader will pave way for a new leadership in the interests of the country even if the “people” still want them? What of when leaders preside over an unprecedented collapse of the economy and governance as has been witnessed in Zimbabwe over the last decade?
Hence, Grace’s incredulous suggestion that Mugabe should rule posthumously from his grave confirms that the 92-year-old President’s wife has ever since coming onto the political arena done little, if anything, to enhance her stature in the minds of Zimbabweans.
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The kind of thinking Grace continuously expresses demonstrates that just a little education, a few lessons in grooming and etiquette, could go a long way in helping enhance her image as an able and respectable First Lady.
Grace’s penchant for abusing the Bible to justify Mugabe’s continued repression over an increasingly impoverished population and comatose economy is shocking. No amount of non-contextual, head-knowledge Bible-quoting is going to revive Zimbabwe’s tattered economy and restore dignity in its politics.
No matter how much of it, self-serving propaganda posturing of Mugabe as Zimbabwe’s saviour will not change the socio-economic and political fortunes of the country. Grace must be reminded that the same Bible she quoted states at Ecclesiastes 9:5 that: “The dead have no part in the affairs of the living, the living can’t even talk to dead.”
So that wish of hers is never going to happen. Grace’s thinking that Mugabe will rule beyond the grave typifies how Zimbabwe’s political leadership is so ignorant of the agony, pain and suffering that they have brought upon this once promising nation. Grace must be reminded that only avenging spirits “rule” from the grave.
Either Mugabe is under siege from Grace and her faction or the President is abusing himself for the love of absolute power; otherwise any self-respecting leader would long have stepped down in shame over his administration that has run down this country.
It is no surprise that Zimbabweans are wondering how Grace will seek to perpetuate Mugabe’s monopoly on power beyond his natural lifespan.
That grown men and women could ululate and whistle over utterances that Mugabe will rule from the national shrine suggests that surely, when the blind lead the blind, they are only headed for the cesspool.
To all those who made the march a “resounding” success, their 15 minutes of fame is up. Back to reality… no jobs, no money and no food on the table.
But, Zimbabweans can take comfort in the knowledge that no mortal being lives forever, and no man-made system, no matter how powerful and brutal, will survive forever.
No doubt, Zimbabwe will rise from the ashes again.
