PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe finally threw in the towel yesterday after an incredible 37 years on the trot.
Despite failing health, mounting economic challenges, pressure from home and the international world and targeted sanctions imposed by the West, Mugabe, at 93, had vowed to continue clinging onto power with his Zanu PF party having already nominated him as its presidential candidate for next year’s elections before it unceremoniously withdrew his candidature at the weekend following a nasty fallout.
It just took one straw to break his back and force him out of both the party and government — the military’s intervention last week.
The veteran former Zanu PF leader had failed to read the message on the wall and the general mood of the majority of Zimbabweans who clearly were fed up with his misrule, endemic corruption and failure to rein in his motor-mouth wife, Grace, and resuscitate the economy.
Mugabe was hoisted by his own petard after taking Zimbabweans for fools. This should be a lesson for any leader that would seek to replace him. We are aware that newly-elected Zanu PF leader Emmerson Mnangagwa is set to replace him today.
There is no doubt that despite their differences with Mugabe, the incoming President may draw useful lessons from the 93-year-old tyrant’s dramatic fall from grace. Mnangagwa ought to be warned that if he wants to win the hearts of Zimbabweans and the international community, he should dump Mugabe’s political template and immediately embark on a democratic route.
When news of Mugabe’s resignation filtered in late yesterday, Zimbabweans from all walks of life went into a frenzy celebrating his demise in a manner reminiscent of a country that has just won its independence. The message was clear. They were celebrating a change they had long yearned for after 37 years of tyrannical rule characterised by arbitrary arrests, abductions, torture and suppression.
Zimbabweans had to watch from their cocoons as Mugabe wantonly trampled on their rights and deferred their aspirations with impunity. And with the iron fist ruler gone, it is time for Zimbabweans to pick up the pieces and to reconfigure their lives again. Mugabe lived in the past, and he did not accept to move with the times. He thought he was some kind of god.
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The foremost thing for Zimbabweans today is change, change, and change! Zimbabwe must start working again. Economic stagnation can no longer be accepted as the populace now literally looks forward to the new leader to take them to the ‘Promised land of milk and honey”.
Mnangagwa must be warned not to take people for granted, but stick to constitutionalism. He should be wise enough to discern the mood on the ground and know when to say goodbye! Mugabe’s political star stopped shining as way back as the early 1980s when he sanctioned the massacre of thousands of civilians in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces hiding under the guise of pursuing perceived PF-Zapu dissidents.
He could have easily atoned for his sins had he quickly publicly apologised and compensated the victims, but Mugabe defiantly went on with life as if nothing big had happened. He entrenched his rule with the signing of the 1987 Unity Accord where he assumed the post of Executive President.
That way, he turned himself into a demi-god and in the process crossed swords with the citizenry, particularly people in Matabeleland who still expected him to own up to the Gukurahundi massacres.
This explains why his party, Zanu PF, has failed to make significant inroads in the Matabeleland region in particular since the birth of the opposition MDC in 1999. His failure to nip corruption in the bud, particularly among his lieutenants, his push for a one-party State and adoption of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme in the early 1990s, further alienated him from the masses.
Because of his intolerance of divergent views and carefree attitude, Mugabe crushed everyone who stood in his way as he trudged along disregarding wise counsel from members of his inner circle and the growing resentment to his style of leadership. In the late 1990s, Mugabe committed another grave error by unilaterally despatching the country’s security forces to the Democratic Republic of Congo to rescue his colleague, Laurent Kabila, at the taxpayers’ expense. Citizens and legislators protested the move, but Mugabe typically looked aside.
In 1998, former Zanu PF legislator Dzikamai Mavhaire was the first to fire warning shots to Mugabe urging him to go. For this, Mavhaire paid heavily as he was immediately booted out of the party and lost his parliamentary seat. After that, anyone who dared cross his path or question his decisions was crushed ruthlessly. Even the opposition leaders were not spared Mugabe’s sledge hammer.
Fast forward to 2014, Mugabe scaled his intolerance campaign, firing his then deputy Joice Mujuru on frivolous charges of witchcraft and plotting to topple him. Mujuru fell away with several Zanu PF stalwarts at the stroke of Mugabe’s pen as the veteran politician encircled himself with reactionaries and launched a vicious campaign to create a new revolutionary party, minus the revolutionary founders.
In the process, he for the first time openly clashed with his erstwhile foot soldiers, the war veterans, culminating in the mass expulsion of war veterans leader Christopher Mutsvangwa and his entire executive. Mugabe, buoyed by Grace who was now eyeing a post in the presidium, then pointed his dagger at Mnangagwa, pushing him out through the window. The military then immediately stepped in last week, placing Mugabe and his family under house arrest as various actors, including Zanu PF legislators, citizens and regional leaders, piled pressure on the ageing politician to gracefully leave the political scene with some measure of dignity.
Mugabe would have none of that until late yesterday when he finally tendered his resignation, while the impeachment process had already begun.
