Mugabe should look at own legitimacy

Mugabe should look at own legitimacy

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By Courage Shumba

ROBERT Mugabe's impending Cabinet reshuffle presents a periodic melancholy for the abused and dispirited people of Zimbabwe.

Together with the ceremony and fanfare that accompany this pointless and expensive celebration of power the new appointments create a sense of anguish and anger among oppressed Zimbabweans worldwide.

Mugabe has never absorbed it in the frame of his skull: there is no cure to the country's economic and political crisis in new names.

The question in Zimbabwe today is about the legitimacy of the head of state himself.

Anything Mugabe does except, arranging an orderly early exit, lacks the support, confidence and ownership by the people of Zimbabwe. The fact here is no one sees the point of even worrying about who gets appointed where, or what skills that appointee has unless there is a climate in which those skills and experience can be used without the careless interruption and discord from a cosa nostra political establishment that has just its selected few at heart.

Mugabe has demonstrated beyond any doubt that he is simply unfit and improper for the functions of a post-war leader. Zimbabwe might have needed him and his views during the war but his leadership in post-war Zimbabwe has been a nightmare for everyone except perhaps himself. Mugabe has become a post-colonial irritation that discolours the meaning of political freedom.

His appointment of a new cabinet will not benefit anyone or change the policies of this strange, barbaric movement. This dictator is accustomed to praise and deceptive ceremonies accorded deceptively to his living hero status.

This government has no policies or programmes for the alleviation of hardship from our midst. Why should it matter to us who gets recognized if we know as we do all recognition is based on absolute loyalty to Mugabe outside any consideration of merit?

Mugabe's appointment of more dead wood to Cabinet is of no significance. Zimbabweans want a fresh gorvenment that will not fail to understand that in an agro-based economy, if you destroy the farming sector your schools, hospitals, social services, industry and commerce will also be destroyed.

The economy is suffering because we failed to plan land distribution strategically and lawfully over a period of time.

The task that should occupy our attention is that of getting deeper to the people of Zimbabwe and to gather intelligence on how best to liberate them from the propaganda of the ruling regime and to strategise on how we can gradually conscript them into the struggle.

Our challenge is to find treatment for the disease and its scars so that our people are able to understand the need for collective action to remove the government of Zanu PF.

People like Mutumwa Mawere do not make this task any easier. They would like to turn us into academics, to be locked in an endless debate bordering on semantics and triviality. We are not academics. We are fighters for democracy. We are here to look for answers not questions.

Mawere is a beneficiary of the dishonesty and corrupt practices within Zanu PF. He lives somewhere plush in South Africa and probably drives an expensive car. We don’t have all those luxuries. It's not that we don’t want them. Those street kids and street fathers in Harare do no want to be in the street if they had options.

Mutumwa will probably have wine after his meal and will write his next article, from his laptop, from the comfort of his home. That is what explains his crooked, wayward, simplistic, opportunistic and stale arguments for people like Mugabe against the background of the grueling suffering their incompetence, intolerance, ignorance and indifference causes.

Our challenge today is not about what Jonathan Moyo thinks or did but about what we must do.

This blame game is also apparent within the main opposition movement. A lot of time is being lost with people who want to score small points against one another. Like Mawere, you can see through their arguments that behind the words, there are people seething with anger and looking for revenge.

The main challenge in Zimbabwe lies in building a proper functional opposition that has the numbers and operational means to unseat Mugabe. We need to begin to build strong alliances regionally with political parties, unions, and civic society. We need to begin to develop alliances with the Far East and mainland Asia. We need to speak with one voice.

Our job is to put the matters of Zimbabwe first. If we do not do this soon enough, people will lose confidence in the opposition and will gradually lose confidence in politics.

We don’t want that.

Courage Shumba is a political activist

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