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NewsDay

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It’s not our job not to disappoint Mugabe

Opinion & Analysis
There was really something amiss, something discordant, something out of place among Zanu PF demonstrators this week in support of their beleaguered leader, President Robert Mugabe.

There was really something amiss, something discordant, something out of place among Zanu PF demonstrators this week in support of their beleaguered leader, President Robert Mugabe.

CONWAY TUTANI ECHOES

Among the marchers was this young woman with worn-out shoes in a tattered dress with a baby strapped on her back. Had she been press-ganged to participate as routinely happens when Zanu PF is on the march? No one – literally no one, suckling babies included – is safe from their clutches.

It was a depressing and disgusting sight in this day and age. What kind of system exposes the young, weak and vulnerable to such potential danger and harm?

They indiscriminately force people to do things they don’t want to do just to boost their political egos.

On the other hand, perhaps the woman was there voluntarily and just jumped on the bandwagon to be seen to be associated with power. Well, it goes against maternal instinct.

But some people begin to feel big and go berserk to the extent of believing nothing – even danger – will touch them as long as they side with Zanu PF.

Only a few weeks ago, a commuter omnibus driver was acquitted of culpable homicide following the death of a Zanu PF supporter. The driver had been hired to take Zanu PF supporters, including the now-deceased, to Harare International Airport to welcome back Mugabe.

This was on the clear understanding that he would pick up all of them at one designated point and drop them all at that point – not door-to-door – on returning from the airport.

But this man, somehow intoxicated by Mugabe’s speech at the airport to the effect that no one and nothing stands in Zanu PF’s way, threatened to beat up the driver if he did not leave him right at his doorstep.

Knowing the volatility of such Zanu PF crowds – who doesn’t know that they easily get incensed especially after being primed up? – the driver sped off, but with the now-deceased clinging to the side mirror, insanely trying to stop him. The mirror could not take his weight and so it broke, resulting in him sustaining injuries that led to his unnecessary, but painful death.

That’s how pumped-up these Zanu PF crowds can be. They close out everything else – including common sense – as they go on their robotic or trance-like rampages.

It was sad and tragic, but most stupid and senseless in that the Zanu PF supporter brought this upon himself.

Please, excuse the epithets, not expletives. No one is using offensive language, but describing in precise terms what happened. Let’s not be neat and scholarly about this.

Compatriots, let’s be raw and emotional about it when such things happen in society out of a misguided sense of patriotism and invincibility imbued in people by a manipulative leadership.

That said, what grievances really would a person in those dire circumstances such as the woman enthusiastically marching and exposing her baby to this year’s unusually cold winter have against Pastor Evan Mawarire, the main target of that march, for justifiably calling on Mugabe to stop the political and socio-economic rot that has thrown her into squalid poverty?

If anything, she ought to be protesting on the opposite side.

Breaking ranks with ruling African National Congress, its tripartite partner, and coming out in solidarity with the anti-Mugabe protesters, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) hit the nail on the head, saying the Zimbabwean government had committed “serious socio-economic atrocities” against its people for years, with the latest being the cutting-off of people’s livelihoods following the ban on imports of basic commodities.

Said Cosatu: “Houses were demolished, people were displaced and thousands were rendered jobless as a result of company closures instigated by poor investment policies and a generalised crisis of poor economic management.”

Yes, this government specialises in pulling the cart before the horse. They do things in the wrong order.

There went on an operation to destroy houses without first ensuring those affected would be immediately given shelter through an accompanying and sustainable building undertaking, making a bad situation much, much worse.

Now we have the imports ban without first having in place gradualist measures that will ensure minimum effects on people’s livelihoods, not this abrupt and severe disruption. Well, this regime can’t own up to its mistakes. It digs in, it doubles down, it doesn’t apologise.

Instead, it only speaks to its supporters, not to the rest of the country. That’s why Zanu PF youth leader Kudzanai Chipanga this week brazenly said that only Zanu PF-registered voters would benefit from the current piratical urban land allocation.

One thing: It looks like another gargantuan chimera, a mirage like the 2005 Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle – which was supposed to build 1 000 houses a day to accommodate those made homeless – where only the early birds will get stands while the rest will get nothing. It also has echoes of the 2,2 million jobs promised by Zanu PF in 2013 which are nowhere to be seen.

But too many Zimbabweans have become useful idiots.

Useful idiots are those people who are misinformed, naive and ignorant of facts due to being indoctrinated with false propaganda that Mawarire has called for the violent ouster of Mugabe when he has uttered no such threat.

And the fact that Cosatu sees things in the same way does not make the protesters here puppets of foreigners.

Even Julius Malema, the firebrand leader of South African opposition party, Economic Freedom Fighters, has turned on his erstwhile Zanu PF comrades after seeing through this absurdity.

Again, there is this notion – wrong one – that democracy is merely about winning elections, full stop. It’s also about what happens after winning. If you don’t deliver on your promises and everything around you is crumbling, people have every right to call for you to step down, not to just spectate.

So, it’s not our job not to disappoint Mugabe by not protesting against him because he works for us, making him accountable to us as stockholders of Zimbabwe; and to foreigners as stakeholders in this country with economic and other interests – not this business of threatening people not to question and challenge him.