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Political metanoia, the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe

Opinion & Analysis
I GREW up in the village as an ordinary village boy, raised in the village by ordinary people, but clearly in an extraordinary way. If this weren’t so, you wouldn’t be reading this today. It’s not that I was taught to write, far from it. I happen to be an introvert (but you should read […]

I GREW up in the village as an ordinary village boy, raised in the village by ordinary people, but clearly in an extraordinary way. If this weren’t so, you wouldn’t be reading this today. It’s not that I was taught to write, far from it. I happen to be an introvert (but you should read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a world That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain). I prefer being indoors and the only other thing I do and do so well is to spend time reading.

Opinion Mutsa Murenje

Writing is a skill that I developed over the years and it’s so addictive that I can’t seem to escape from it. I love literature in general, but political literature is more appealing than any other kind.

However, I don’t know if President Robert Mugabe gets to read this. We have been made to believe he is an avid reader and that his string of degrees is a clear indication of this.

I have an important message for the President, because he is the first citizen, and Zimbabweans at large. I will be 33 years in the next few weeks. I was born when Mugabe had already been in power for three years. He has been in power for 36 years! It worries me though that my village is as undeveloped (underdeveloped) as I found it when I was born.

I know so well that this is the general picture of the entire country. I have seen Harare losing its “Sunshine City” status. I don’t think Bulawayo is still the same “City of Kings” that we knew it to be. And yet, President Mugabe is determined to die in power on the pretext that he wants to stop regime change from happening and that people still want him. Please stop playing with our feelings and emotions.

I differ with the President in the strongest terms. He is clinging onto power against our will as citizens and this he knows. A legitimate leader can’t afford to sleep at night, given the untold suffering we are going through as citizens. The intention to rule eternally and from the grave is an act of dictatorship and this is the truth that we need to face.

Your Excellency, I have two university degrees: one from the University of Zimbabwe and another from the University of Ibadan. I am currently working on my third so that I can be useful to my country and my people. Your degrees, President, have brought us more suffering than we can bear. Your wife, the First Lady, holds a doctorate, believes it is your natural right from God to have this dominance over us. We aren’t your creatures.

There is an incumbent need for self-examination and deep searching of the heart. We need political metanoia and this is only possible if you, Mr President, have repented from your political sins. We can’t go on like this.

Let me be as clear as I possibly can be. You lack legitimacy, Your Excellency. I don’t know if you have any advisors and I don’t know what you get to talk about. I am surprised that Lovemore Madhuku has risen to your defence, defending the indefensible.

To say that elections have never been rigged in Zimbabwe is to endorse dictatorship and to corrupt our struggle for democracy. Madhuku parades himself as a democracy activist. Which democracy is he fighting for if not electoral democracy? It isn’t a secret that elections have never been free and fair in our country from the 1990s. It was during an electoral contest in the 90s that Patrick Kombayi was shot by his political opponents.

It was in the year 2000 that we lost people like Talent Mabika and Tichaona Chiminya. It is during the same period that Patrick Nabanyama disappeared. Nobody knows where he is up to this very day. I knew Trymore Midzi personally and he was brutally murdered by Zanu PF activists. Many lives were lost unnecessarily in 2008.

Itai Dzamara has been missing since March 9, 2015. We don’t know where he is. His crime was to challenge your legitimacy like I am doing now. Do you get to see how hazardous our country has become? You are feared, not loved, Your Excellency. We still have to wear Hazmat (abbreviation for hazardous material) suits because we aren’t safe and free in our own country. But why, Mr. President? Is this how you prevent regime change from happening? Is this the way you gauge your popularity? I don’t write fiction, but facts.

I have renounced partisan politics with immediate effect. I want to be as objective as much as I can be. I want to be free and this I can only do from a position of non-alignment.

And now to the crux, Eldred Masunungure has written about Zimbabwe’s militarised, electoral authoritarianism. He wrote thus: “Authoritarianism in Zimbabwe survives because a coalition of political and military elites stands ready and willing to employ violence to execute the Machiavellian vision of Mugabe and perpetuate his control of the State.

“Several variables reinforce the durability of this regime-chief among them the mass out-migration and the large inflow of remittances that has decimated the middle class and dampened the political voice of those who remain in the country. Beginning in 2000, Zimbabwe’s authoritarianism became militarised, with the overt intrusion of the security sector into the political arena, a process that reached its peak before the June 2008 presidential runoff election.

“The electoral dimension of its authoritarianism stems from the fact that the regime unfailingly holds elections in search of popular legitimacy but then manipulates them for its own ends.”

In conclusion, I hope I have been able to demonstrate how complex this struggle for democracy is. It’s going to be a long and arduous struggle, but we need to find some common ground. Let’s do it for our country. Let’s do it for our children. Let’s do it for ourselves.

We need to find each other and so, I challenge Evan Mawarire’s irresponsible remarks that protests by the MDC are useless. He risks being arrogant, forgetting that there is no unitary strategy to fight this war. We need to come together and not promise a quick fix to our problems. The civil rights struggle in America was characterised by protests such as ours and it also took long.

Martin Luther King Jr was typically immersed in it for 13 years and he died before African-Americans could realise their freedom, equality and dignity. We remain mutually tied up in a single garment of destiny and we ought to fight from the same page. The struggle continues unabated!

●Mutsa Murenje is a social and political writer based in South Africa