The million man-march to support Mugabe was carried out against the backdrop of significant economic collapse due to destructive, shortsighted economic policies and rampant, unabated corruption. By Shumba,Our Reader
Many of the youths present, therefore, are unemployed and have poor education and this should not augur well with them. This could also be deciphered from Zanu PF youth leader Kudzai Chipanga’s background speech, a large part of which concentrated on real concerns he and his organising team gathered when they were persuading the youths to come and worship. The youths are feeling the hard times and they made it clear to the organisers and the message was conveyed, but as can be expected, not as voetstoots, but it was clear as crystal.
The youths complained about the lavish lifestyles of Cabinet ministers whilst they have to scrounge hard. Certainly they were pointing to a very corrupt system, but I was surprised to hear Chipanga dissociating Mugabe from the corrupt ministers, pampering him saying we know you hate corruption.
For the record, Mugabe’s government has never charged or impeached anyone of corruption since 1980.
Mugabe only talks about hating corruption, but he does not act against it, words are easy to say. Zimbabwe ranks high on the corruption table of the world.
It is also Mugabe who appoints ministers and keeps recycling them. So Chipanga is highly misled to absolve Mugabe of ruining the country through his failure and unwillingness to curb corruption.
The President turns a blind eye on corruption to preserve his rule and so corruption by his cohorts is reward to them for turning a blind eye on his continued stranglehold on power. If Mugabe gets corruptly elected, his ministers will not be ashamed to act corruptly while disbursing their duties.
It is absurd to see a sane person praising such a poor performing leader. State television covered details of the preparations for the event and the march itself. But when the MDC-T held a protest march against the disappearance of the $15 billion diamond revenue, the event was not covered by the national broadcaster.
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Both State radio and television are, therefore, national only in name and when it comes to coverage, only the interests of Zanu PF are given space.
The Zanu PF youths may continue to back and pamper Mugabe to their own peril. The concerns they raised are real and will not go away as long as he is President.
The majority of the youths, however, were forced to attend given this as the strategy of Zanu PF. Mugabe also needs to be schooled that true heroes are those that bring prosperity to their fellow countrymen, not those that ruin them as he himself has done using policies whose main priority is to preserve his own rule.
