The remarks by presidential aspirant Dr. Joyce Teurai Ropa Mujuru while trying to sell her candidature for the country’s top job exposes her weaknesses. She indeed tells the nation that all she is interested in is becoming the next President of Zimbabwe.Among the arguments she advances for her suitability as President are that she has a good relationship with the same instruments of mass suppression in the uniformed service who are loyal to Mugabe and Zanu PF and will thwart the transfer of power to a legitimately elected government. She misses the point there, because the decision to deny people of the electoral choice is made within Zanu PF. Once the decision is made within the rank and file of Zanu PF, the army, police and CIO will only act on the instruction of Zanu PF.
I see Dr. Mujuru is trying to employ the same terror tactics used against the opposition by Zanu PF, where the electorate are threatened with all sorts of things if they voted for the opposition, and that is an unwanted culture in a democracy. In a way, Dr. Mujuru is using language that will encourage army Chiefs to refuse to accept a legitimately elected President other than herself or Mugabe or any other Zanu PF who participated in the war of liberation. Instead, she should be appealing to the army commanders to respect the people’s choice in the 2018 elections.
The other “strength” that Dr. Mujuru believes she has over other candidates is that the new farmers will be assured that they will not lose their land in a post Mugabe era. Again, most political parties, including Zanu PF and the MDC-T, have noted with concern that there is some land acquired under the fast track programme that is being underutilised, and that a land audit has to be carried out. Unfortunately for Zimbabweans, the ruling Zanu PF are busy fighting each other and have dragged in all government departments into their internal party battles, hence a land audit under Zanu PF is something unexpected. Does Dr. Mujuru want to allow the multiple farm owners who grabbed land ahead of the ordinary citizens to continue to hold on to their loot? Is she really for a productive agricultural system, or she simply wants to hoodwink those who got farms that they are not using productively so that they support her presidential bid?
It kills the spirit of unity for Dr. Mujuru to start talking about what she perceives as the shortcomings of other potential candidates that way.
My personal analysis is that the MDC-T has the biggest following among the opposition parties, and should be allowed to provide the Presidential candidate for the Coalition. I have argued before that there are certain voters who will not vote for Coalition leader who is not their preferred candidate, across all opposition parties, hence the greatest loss for the coalition if it finally comes to life will be experienced if the coalition does not choose a candidate identified by the party with the biggest support base.
Dr. Mujuru should be reminded that the most important thing that should happen first is for the Coalition to win more votes against Mugabe, and the chances of that happening are higher when the opposition parties field a candidate from the party with the biggest following. If she really loves a Zimbabwe and is free from the dictatorial rule of Zanu PF, she should still be in a position to talk sense into the rougue elements in the uniformed service to accept a legitimately elected government, and with the knowledge she has from the many years that she has been in Zanu PF, join forces with other opposition parties and pro-democracy groups in Zimbabwe to pile pressure on SADC, the African Union and the United Nations to consider sending a peace keeping mission to the country before, during and after the elections.
Kennedy Kaitano is absolutely right. Mugabe will never be ousted until an opposition can stand united against him.
Mugabe and Zanu-PF should have been removed years ago but, unfortunately, Africans seem unable to work together on either a national or pan-African stage to carry out effective, concerted action to oppose oppression. The battle against Apartheid almost failed because of that. Arab Spring did fail because of it. That is the ONLY reason why repressive leaders are still in power all over Africa.
The reason is they insist on putting their petty differences ahead of the national interest. By “petty” I mean when compared to the huge mission of leading their citizens to freedom.