EDITORIAL COMMENT
IT is very sad that Zimbabwe is in a rut simply because of a leadership which chooses to be so headstrong that it, at every turn, plugs its ears to dissenting voices calling them regime change agents while invariably leading the country astray, only to realise its tomfoolery when it is way too late. After months of President Emmerson Mnangagwa flirting with an outfit calling itself the Political Actors’ Dialogue (Polad), it has finally dawned on the grouping that they have been barking up the wrong tree and whatever they have been engaged in was a sheer waste of time and an exercise in utter futility.
Polad has been going around meeting all sorts of people trying to stitch up their own political settlement, but all they have discovered and been told in the face is the obvious truth dissenting voices have been telling them all along that “the on-going dialogue process should rather be broad-based, with key stakeholders that include the MDC Alliance, civic society, religious groups, farmers and business”. This was so obvious from the word go, but Mngangagwa chose to throw caution to the wind and created Polad as well as engage foreign public relations teams to spruce up his battered image.
Zimbabwe is in the current crisis simply because of the tiff between Mnangagwa and opposition MDC leader Nelson Chamisa. It was never between Mnangagwa and all the other players in Polad. It also follows that for the sanctions on Zimbabwe to be removed, Mnangagwa’s regime simply needs to respect human rights and allow people to freely exercise their constitutional rights.
Now that everyone is telling Polad and Mnangagwa that their dialogue should include Chamisa and everyone else they had deemed to be immaterial to solving the country’s socio-economic and political crisis, what now? Albeit a little late to save the country from the damage already done, is it not high time Mnangagwa and his Polad swallowed their pride and each humble by sitting around a round table with all those they have been calling regime change agents?
The late hardliner and former Rhodesian leader Ian Douglas Smith once declared that blacks would never rule the country in a thousand years, but had to come down to mother earth at Lancaster where he realised the inevitable truth that blacks would rule their motherland in his lifetime. So this is the same clarion call all sober and well-meaning Zimbabweans make to Mnangagwa and Polad: The earlier they sit together with Chamisa and all those they had excluded from their talks the better it will be for the country.
