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NewsDay

AMH is an independent media house free from political ties or outside influence. We have four newspapers: The Zimbabwe Independent, a business weekly published every Friday, The Standard, a weekly published every Sunday, and Southern and NewsDay, our daily newspapers. Each has an online edition.

AMHVoices: One cannot run a nation on threats

AMH Voices
Our president failed to appreciate that we need no outsiders to tell us that corruption by his lieutenants has contributed much to our current state of affairs.

It was yet another wasted opportunity for President Robert Mugabe, who blamed everybody but himself for our misery during his address to the Zanu PF central committee in Harare recently.

By Mamuse Maunganidze,Our Reader

According to the statement he read, a grouping of opposition parties, under the banner of the national electoral reform agenda (Nera), is advocating and calling for more sanctions to be imposed on Zimbabwe. As expected, he took aim at the opposition parties for the recent events which rocked Harare where demonstrations turned violent. As if to confirm the long-held view that we are under dictatorship, Mugabe promised to punish those who resist his misgovernance.

To suggest that opposition parties are funded by some external forces to organise people to rise against the government is to insult the suffering masses in a big way. Do we need outsiders to tell us that our government has failed to account for $15 billion and that no one has been made to account for such an incredible figure? Do we need any outsider to tell us that things are terribly bad and that the majority has resorted to adopting a hand to mouth survival strategy? Our president failed to appreciate that we need no outsiders to tell us that corruption by his lieutenants has contributed much to our current state of affairs. Instead of addressing the grievances by the opposition parties under the banner of Nera, and giving a listening ear, the president, seems to think that threats can serve him and his party. He failed to appreciate why Nera exists because he does not want to hear anything to do with the electoral reforms or the realignment of the electoral laws to the constitution. Mugabe does not want to level the electoral playing field for fear of losing the coming elections.

Our social, political and economic problems can never be solved by threats on the suffering populace. It has never worked and it will not work. As long as Mugabe’s administration continues to fail to provide food on the table and trample on people’s rights, that is enough grounds for social unrest. As long as the national institutions like the police, army, CIO, Zimbabwe Prison Service, among others, remain politicised, people will continue to view them as extensions of the Zanu PF party and that again is also enough to trigger unrest in any modern society. To deny people electoral reforms is to delay the inevitable.

As Nelson Mandela once said, “I have learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” It could be folly for Mugabe to think that he can use the fear factor and expect this to last, no. As it is, the whole world has known Mugabe’s intention, which is to deal ruthlessly with the opposition parties, especially the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

The truth is Mugabe is not comfortable with the coming together of the opposition parties as recently shown, especially that of Tsvangirai and Joice Mujuru. The threats by Mugabe are meant to keep the suffering Zimbabweans under check so that even if things continue to deteriorate, we keep silent, like sheep herded for the slaughter house.

To ignore the demands of the opposition parties for electoral reform and only focusing on issuing threats is to be toying with the people’s lives. Therefore, it is Mugabe and his party who should be warned against burying their heads in the sand and pretending things will normalise on their own. It does not need anyone from the west, east or Tsvangirai to tell the masses that they are suffering. The recent demonstrations which degenerated into violence jolted the authorities, hence the recent temporary ban by one Officer Commanding Harare — Newbert Saunyama. To ban the demonstration is not to provide answers, but to shelve the problems.

Mugabe is afraid of the coming together of the opposition against his party. For that reason, it is not farfetched to suggest that Zanu Pf will work overtime to make sure that the coalition of opposition parties does not happen. In view of this, the opposition parties are strongly urged to cement their working relationship. A free Zimbabwe is possible only if we all take part in a positive way. For Zimbabwe to be what it should be, all of us must make positive contributions as individuals, as groups, as institutions and as a united Zimbabwe.

Yes, Mugabe is spoiling for a fight with the people of Zimbabwe — even at that advanced age — but what is certain is that this nation will surely enjoy her fair share of freedom. The wheels will surely come off and the dictator will be vanquished. Zimbabwe will once again rise to claim her position as the breadbasket of Africa.