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A free Mugabe or a Mugabe-free Zimbabwe?
By
Courage
Shumba
I HAVE been following the debate around the church-inspired The
Zimbabwe We Want: Towards a National Vision for Zimbabwe debate
with a mixture of hope and a suppressed anxiety.
Before Robert Mugabe "witchcraft" accusations against his senior lieutenants, I had been marvelling at what I thought was a politics of good service to party and country when British Premier Tony Blair, realising he no longer had the entire and undivided trust of his people, announced that it was time he passed on the button. He praised the people he had worked with, including Gordon Brown, his Chancellor.
In less than a month of such an admirable spirit of service, Mugabe, 82, referred to a discussion about the future of Zanu PF after him, or rather whilst he is still alive, as act comparable to witchcraft.
This is the man people still take a whole document of good causes to and expect a shift in the way government sees the people who are said to have freely voted for it. Am I missing something here? Why is there such a blind, an almost fanatical insistence, that there is still something humanly plausible in this vegetative president and his party?
Why is there so much belief that this president will not ignore this attempt by the church to do exactly what civic society and opposition parties have been trying to achieve for Zimbabweans for the past decade?
If this document is about fair elections, a new constitution, good governance, democracy and human rights, and also about a vision of a Zimbabwe where failed presidents hand power over voluntarily, where people are free to express themselves without fear, and government is answerable to the people, then are we wrong to welcome the church to the opposition frontline?
Not that the church is now MDC or Zapu, but they have come to where we have always been. The Zimbabwe We Want document is a good statement of opposition. The Zimbabwe We Want document would not have been authored in a country that already has a constitution and supportive institutional pillars designed to adequately protect and guarantee the citizens right to good government.
But Mugabe has always
insisted that the constitution is not a priority, snubbing obviously
the possibility of a sovereign nation state in which people have power
over their elected representatives. The major and more important question
today will not be decided by arranging meetings and lunches with a barbaric
dictator whose sole interest in the politics of Zimbabwe is solely the
guarantee of his personal safety. Mugabe now is nothing but a dictator
who has come face to face with a people he has for years robbed of freedom
and development and the only thing standing between these people and
him is political power or more specifically, his grip on the armed forces.
Mugabe seems to have managed successfully to carve out of us the model
and structure of an opposition acceptable to him. The danger being that
if we are the opposition Mugabe would rather have, then we are within
arms length of his methods of control and manupilation. These avalanches
of meetings and carefully and politely presented documents, to a man
who should not be in State House in the first place, draw us back another
five years. This is not a new or fresh idea. This is a waste of precious
time. We are dealing with a dishonest man who has ruthlessly messed
up our economy, has protected and continues to protect corrupt people
in his party, and has no regard for the welfare of any of the suffering
poor people in our country as we all witnessed with Operation
Murambatsvina just recently.
Mugabe deserves neither respect nor admiring attention, least of all
from people charged with the duty to respect and encourage the telling
of truths. If the church is about fairness, love, humility, treating
the next person as you would like to be treated, honesty and kindness,
then this is not the man any such document must be have been given to.
Mugabe must be told of the millions of people who have deserted their
own country because of him and his party’s leadership.
He must be informed
of the female and male citizens now turned prostitutes and escorts in
foreign lands, and thousands of young qualified and talented men and
women now turned crooks in the same lands. He must be told of thousands
that sleep in immigration detention jails in many countries afar .He
must be made aware that by contrast, the families and relatives of his
ministers and army generals have done so exceedingly well in raising
their own standards against this conspicuous background of suffering.
He must be informed unambiguosly that the only humanly decent thing
he can do today is to resign. There is no honest expectation that calling
on this man in robes will change his perception of the great danger
and humiliation that awaits him at the dawn of his exit from power,
yet that is exactly what he must do.
The question we need to concern ourselves with rather is, can we not
talk to Mugabe on the sole subject of his security after retirement,
if his stay anchors merely on his fears over personal security?
How many years can we afford to wait while this elderly man hops from one excuse to another to remain in power? People must not fail to see what the main issue has become in this savage party and its leader. Of course between a free Mugabe and a Mugabe-free Zimbabwe, I would choose the latter with the price of the first. It's a genuine alternative to explore. Between handing Mugabe a document on a national vision which he may never be part of, and one he is deeply reluctant to see for fear of the wide rights and powers it will throw on the people, I would give the benefit of legislation to protect him from prosecution if the reward was a Mugabe-free Zimbabwe obtained without one life lost or one bullet fired.
This wont mean that
his policies are irreversible. It won't mean that his mistakes won't
be revisited for the good of correcting them in public interest. No.
What this does is it assures Mugabe that we won't seek revenge against
him although the temptation is there. It means we are prepared for a
new vision in which The Zimbabwe We Want document meets no
resistance. We let him go freely and our country forges ahead into a
new era of politics and prospects.
The prospect of a Zimbabwe coming to us through war in the streets is
difficult to imagine. There is need for people to seek realistic breakthoughs
into this cloudy political atmosphere. We must continue to build inroads
into communities and present a better view of life under different principles
of leadership in a new post colonial but agrressively competitive global
age. We must approach Mugabe from the view of a realistic alternatives
done in national interest.
That we may pretend on our part, or let Mugabe pretend on his part that
he is still relevant at this stage in the resolution of many of the
outstanding national questions is basic naivety. He knows his time is
up. This is a sad man who has run out of people who can stand by his
dirty past and make a commitment to stand by him. That we allow him
to continue in this fear and continue to cost the nation its right to
normal life is too much an astronomical bill we can't endure forever!
Courage Shumba
is a regular New Zimbabwe.com opinion writer
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