Mugabe and the fear of tomorrow

Mugabe and the fear of tomorrow

29/01/04
(READ ALL PREVIOUS ARTICLES BY MTHULISI MATHUTHU)
A READER living in the United Kingdom this week sent me a story about Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano’s retirement. The story said Chissano would receive a massive mansion from the state and a number of attractive benefits.

Underneath, the reader wrote to say how shocking and embarrassing it was to have our own President Robert Mugabe clinging to power when everybody else including all those who came after him was moving out.

The essence of the instalment was that President Mugabe was a power monger who found power so sweet that he would rather always have it than hand it over.

No. I thought to myself.

President Mugabe loves power yes but rather than love power so as to allow himself to be a polecat of the world, he is scared of the future which inevitably call upon him to account for this tragedy he is stirring.

Those who do evil are also fully aware of the consequences. Those who abuse power know fully well how dangerous it is when it is transferred elsewhere. Frederick Chiluba was perhaps the odd one out who hadn’t heard of the boomerang effect.

President Robert Mugabe is in charge of a government that soon after independence stirred genocide in some parts of the country. A government which people associate with their impoverishment, the disappearance of campaign managers, murder of tourists in Nyamandlovu in the early 1980’s, decimation of the country’s resources, burning of people’s buttocks and the militia amongst many other evil things.

He knows therefore that in this era leaders known to have sanctioned murder and genocide are humiliated, dragged before the courts of law and at times killed. For that reason he would rather stay on.

This guy is a victim of his politics.

He is a paranoid and vindictive leader who so much feared an insurrection just after his election in 1980 that he created a period of unrest to justify a crackdown on those whom he knows were powerful than him. This was meant to instil a sense of fear amongst them and their supporters. Not out of choice, President Mugabe then soon found himself becoming a genocidalist.

"Mugabe's opportunistic former comrades like Geoff Nyarota would today want to jump on to the bandwagon and claim glory by publishing the story they denied at the time"

MTHULISI MATHUTHU

Those who have been close to Mugabe are fully aware of this. That was why his opportunistic former comrades like Geoff Nyarota would today want to jump on to the bandwagon and claim glory by publishing the story they denied at the time it was unfolding. That is scary to President Mugabe. Even within his Zanu PF party President Robert Mugabe had people whose proximity he found to be unsafe. As a person who naturally resents words like “share” and “listen” he always harboured suspicion that one day some men would rise against him. Such people were worth getting rid of and he did exactly that.

Those were eccentric men like Edgar Tekere, Enos Nkala and Maurice Nyagumbo. Those were the people who not only knew Mugabe but were not afraid of him. So he had better remain with Emmerson Mnangagwa who is made of “soft wool”, Nathan Shamuyarira and many others who were all grateful to him.

It is not far fetched to believe that in as much as the Nkalas and Nyagumbos erred in the so-called Willowgate car scandal, the whole saga just doesn’t deserve the space it occupies today in the contemporary history of Zimbabwe.

The greatest crimes are in the financial sector, DRC war and the 1980’s killings but Mugabe will not get rid of anybody now because his boys are the engineers of the scam. President Mugabe is fully aware of the vulnerability of his party once he is gone.

As a crude authoritarian he surrounded himself with imbeciles and fools who are not powerful on their own and wouldn’t allow anyone of them to lead once their dear leader is gone. Zanu PF would simply collapse. To Mugabe it would rather collapse beyond his grave because its collapse will announce his suffering. Just because he over relied upon authoritarian tactics such as divide and rule and black mail President Mugabe today has failed to find anybody to replace and protect him.

It will be difficult to imagine Emmerson Mnangagwa leading considering what his cupboard is full of and considering everything which people have associated him with. Needless to talk about his erstwhile history which saw him lose an election in a place he considers to be home. If people are not heroes in their village they cannot be heroes elsewhere.

As a close associate of President Mugabe, Mnangagwa obviously shares cupboards with his mentor and would have been the best to protect the old man. But it’s not the case now. There is another reason why President Mugabe would rather stay on. Who ever said President Mugabe is concerned about himself, his party and his people was dead right.

He has a young wife with whom he has young children. First the whole arrangement is not only adulterous but also queer. Stories are being told of how it came about. Generally the story of President Mugabe rests entirely on deceit and sheer lies.

Once he is out of that office more stories would come out and cheapen the old man who is known to be the proudest of us all. Moreover those who wish the first family ill will find it easy to justify a crackdown.

No sane man will want to see his gullible young beautiful wife and children suddenly waking up to a table without eggs while he is in the courts facing charges of murder. President Mugabe is a sane man - thuthuma@yahoo.com
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