You cannot have your cake and eat it too, so they say. This is just plain common sense, but tyrants like President Robert Mugabe and their henchmen think otherwise.
By Wilbert Mukori,Our Reader
When it comes to holding free, fair and credible elections, Mugabe has been deaf, blind and dumb because he repeatedly ignored all calls for meaningful reform to ensure elections are open and credible. He has blatantly rigged the elections to secure stolen victories. And yet after the elections he has been quick to claim legitimacy and protection given to the winner of free, fair elections.
“I was elected by the people. As long as the people and party says continue, I continue … If I still have the energy, I still have the life, the blessings of God, I will continue,” Mugabe said defiant in response to the recent stinging communique by war veterans denouncing him as a failed dictator and demanding his resignation.
Mugabe’s henchmen and cronies who have never cared about rule of law, justice, human rights or free and fair elections, have joined him in proclaiming his political legitimacy and their willingness to defend his continued misrule.
“The Zimbabwe Defence Forces will never accept any unconstitutional change of government and will stand firm and unequivocal by President Mugabe who was duly and democratically elected by the people of Zimbabwe,” Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) commander General Constantino Chiwenga told the state media report this week.
“It follows that the ZDF, while remaining apolitical, would not tolerate or support any unconstitutional change of government in the country, whether internally or externally-induced.”
Does Chiwenga know what being apolitical means or he is just parroting what he has heard others say? His flip-flops, which reflect his confusion, are now embarrassing. Chiwenga is on record, saying he would not “salute anyone with no liberation war record”. Everybody knows that in the last 16 years, the army played a major role in the intimidation, perpetration of violence and even the killing of civilians to help Mugabe and Zanu PF stay in power. And Chiwenga himself is a member of the Joint Operations Command, the shadowy “parallel government”, as Tendai Biti called it, complete with its own illegal sources of funds — and yet today Chiwenga wants to cut a figure of an outstanding public servant and a great defender of the constitution and the people; he cannot fool anyone with that.
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No amount of pretense and propaganda can change the fact that Zimbabwe is a dictatorship in which there are grave human rights abuses and elections are routinely rigged. The country is in a real economic mess because of 36 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption. Other than the few ruling elite, including Mugabe and Chiwenga, who have grown filthy rich, the overwhelming majority of the people have suffered as unemployment has soared to dizzying heights of 90% and as much as 76% of our people now live in abject poverty.
“Where contradictions exist, we must be able to dialogue, bearing in mind that we are one people. We should learn to synchronise our approaches and have a common vision where the nation thinks with one mind, hears with one ear, speaks with one voice and collectively pulls in one direction,” Chiwenga said.
There lies the heart of our political problem; one which people like Chiwenga and tyrants like Mugabe, blinded by greed, have failed to comprehend. Why should a nation of 15 million people be forced into a straitjacket to speak with one voice and think with one mind unless the idea is to create a dictatorship with a submissive population — a sure road to a destination of collective doom.
“It is the ZDF’s hope, therefore, that the internal component of this asymmetric threat to the country will take heed and desist from these divisive activities for the betterment of the whole nation,” he said.
Chiwenga must understand the following:
- Mugabe rigged the last elections and previous ones, so stop all this talk of Mugabe being “duly and democratically elected by the people of Zimbabwe”. We all know he rigged the elections and stubbornly refused to release the voters’ roll in 2013 because it is the smoking gun (incontrovertible incriminating evidence);
- Mugabe has publicly admitted using the army to carry out some dirty election activities. As a senior officer in the army you would know the details. It is therefore not true or it’s simply false for you, of all the people, to claim that “the ZDF is apolitical”;
- The present de facto Zanu PF dictatorship has failed to deliver freedom, justice, human rights, social services and economic prosperity. The economic hardships brought on by Mugabe’s decades of criminal waste of human and material resources are socially and politically unsustainable;
- The social unrest that we have seen in the country of late is from the people demanding an end to misrule and suffering. People will never stop protesting until the country has meaningful political change leading to free, fair and credible elections, the pre-requisite for economic recovery;
- You can join Mugabe in denying that the Zanu PF dictatorship has failed the nation and must end: the fact of the matter here is that it has failed dismally and regime change is coming. When ZDF fight the people demanding change, the army will not be fighting to preserve the country’s independence, but rather to perpetuate corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship; and
- A thorough investigation into human rights abuses, corruption and theft, and killing of people must be conducted and culprits must be held to account.
After 36 years of propping up a corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship with disastrous consequences to the nation and its people, it is high time that people like you, Chiwenga, open their eyes and accepted this system has failed and must therefore be changed. The choice here is not of whether or not to accept change, but rather to be part of it or be swept away by it. Change is the only constant in life.
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