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Cde President, a lot will be achieved after you

Opinion & Analysis
ONE does not have to be a contrarian — someone who automatically takes the opposite point of view or shoots down anything to do with, for instance, Zanu PF, out of a sort of knee-jerk reflex — to see that President Robert Mugabe, who turned 93 this week, is well past his peak both mentally and physically, to put it mildly.

ONE does not have to be a contrarian — someone who automatically takes the opposite point of view or shoots down anything to do with, for instance, Zanu PF, out of a sort of knee-jerk reflex — to see that President Robert Mugabe, who turned 93 this week, is well past his peak both mentally and physically, to put it mildly.

echoes: CONWAY TUTANI

President Robert Mugabe
President Robert Mugabe

This was glaringly evident when Mugabe’s now annual pre-recorded interview with Tazzen Mandizvidza ahead of the President’s birthday on February 21 was televised by the Zanu PF-controlled monopoly Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. If it was meant to enhance him, it did not.

There was the sad spectacle of an old man struggling to answer questions and many times barely audible. He was trying his best to project himself as “still having it”, but he failed dismally. It was a piteous sight. One could not help, but feel sympathy for the man. Can’t someone in Zanu PF put his head on the block and call for a petition for Mugabe to step down? No, they have all been cowed into silence. But are some of them busy taking advantage of this incapacitation to loot for the final time?

Mugabe’s belaboured responses said it all. If it were in hospital, the doctor would have given specific instructions for visitors not to talk to the patient. But nothing like that happened because Mugabe is both his own patient and own doctor. The show must go on — even for appearances.

We know that Mugabe’s legacy has been ruined, but should he further subject himself to such indignities for the whole world to see? What we saw on TV was more pitiful than laughable. It was sad and depressing to behold. You cannot build the future of a whole nation on a 93-year-old.

Matters were not helped by the fact that the interviewer, Mandizvidza, is now embedded with interviewee, Mugabe, and, naturally, would not ask politically incorrect questions — including raising strongly the issue of the shocking neglect of roads which has left them in a horrifying state.

Or holding Mugabe to his word — instead of allowing him to get away with peremptorily saying that creation of 2,3 million jobs was a gradual process whereas his party, Zanu PF, in its election manifesto in 2013, specifically said this would be achieved in five years. The very least Mandizvidza should have done was to then ask Mugabe if he had revised the target downwards.

Above all, Mandizvidza should have pointed out to Mugabe: “Cde President, the buck stops with you. As Head of State, you cannot pass the buck; you are ultimately responsible and answerable for the all the things — including bad ones — happening in Zimbabwe.”

But, as has become the custom, many questions were not asked; and there were hardly any follow-ups to those few questions asked.

Of course, there will always be those people who swallow the narrative about Mugabe being their one and only saviour ordained to rule for life despite what he has turned out to be.

We will always have such blinded diehards. Research has shown that even after evidence “for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs”.

Nothing illustrates this betrayal of values more than when you juxtapose the $1,5 million diamond ring saga involving the First Lady with the long queues at banks as the liquidity crunch bites ordinary people. But some people — we are not talking about handsomely paid lackeys like Zanu PF youth leader Kudzai Chipanga — still go on to dance like mad at her rallies when there is such a social-economic gulf between them, making this nothing to celebrate about.

There were also embarrassing disconnects throughout the interview and these were, expectedly, not followed up.

There was no admission of contradiction with the interviewee firmly in charge of the interviewer, putting an end to or precluding further debate on an issue. The most glaring of these disconnects was when Mugabe, despite his fast-deteriorating health, vowed that he would not groom a successor.

Asked — tamely and timidly, as seen in Mandzvidza’s body language and belabouring of the question — if he was grooming a successor, Mugabe replied: “The majority of the people feel that there is no replacement; (a) successor who is acceptable to them, as acceptable as I am.”

First, it was the opposition being totally inept, useless puppets of the West. Now, it’s his own party he is labelling as such. This reflects more on the disparager than the disparaged. It cannot be more self-centred than that.

And this cannot go unchallenged. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s self-serving, nothing more, nothing less. We have had enough of these pretensions that Mugabe is uniquely qualified and eternally bound to be Head of State.

Zimbabwe is replete with suitable replacements for Mugabe or anyone else. In fact, there is a surfeit of such potential leaders ready to step in at a moment’s notice. It’s just that Mugabe has been shutting out everyone else.

Why can’t Mugabe emulate his Chinese counterparts who, while far from being democrats, at least change leadership after every eight or so years, not the current situation of his making in Zimbabwe where this is dependent on his authoritarian caprice?

While Zimbabwe has been stuck with Mugabe for 37 years and still counting, China is now into its fifth generation of leaders since the Communist Party came into power in 1949. How? Because the Communist Party insists on strict age limits for its leaders — there is no such creature as “a young old man” (like a certain leader of a certain country in Southern Africa described himself some years ago); or suggestion that the corpse of founding leader Mao Ze Dong, who died in 1976, should take over.

No true democrat can celebrate the repressive Chinese political system, but concerning leadership change they put Mugabe to shame. The party, Zanu PF, and, by extension, the nation dance to the tune of one man — Mugabe. You begin to wonder: Does Mugabe hate to be opposed more than he cares about Zanu PF as he seems to believe in nothing except his own brand? Remember some years back when he said — also quite shockingly and most immodestly — that he does things “the Robert Mugabe way”, not the party way, not the Zimbabwe way?

Information minister Chris Mushohwe this week made this revealing remark about Mugabe: “He is a man who does not shift positions because of circumstances.”

Mushohwe, that is not a virtue or compliment, but a failing and an indictment. It’s not to be celebrated, but condemned.

It seems this narcissism underlies Mugabe’s entire approach to other people and the world around him. No wonder he is very good at making enemies in the party, outside the party and outside the country. It’s most disturbing.

This reminds one of this saying by America author H Jackson Brown Jnr: “Be modest. A lot was accomplished before you were born.”

This should be rephrased and expanded specifically for Mugabe to say: “Be modest, Cde President. A lot will be accomplished after you. It doesn’t begin and end with you.”

Conway Nkumbuzo Tutani is a Harare-based columnist. Email: [email protected]