Letter from America – Time ripe for revolution

BY STANFORD MUKASA

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WASHINGTON – The simultaneous protests last week by university students and Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) was an encouraging beginning to the mass protests many people have advocated for several years now.


The international community has been puzzled by the lack of real protest among Zimbabweans as Mugabe systematically drove the country to a Stone Age existence.


Zimbabweans are among the most enlightened people in Africa. They are well aware, not only of the rape of their country by Mugabe, but also how people in other countries have proteseted against oppressive regimes.


Yet Zimbabweans have stood by like spectators in a football match and done absolutely nothing of any significance by way of protests. Apologists for the do-nothing politics of Zimbabweans have argued that Mugabe has created conditions that are too militarily oppressive to stage any meaningful protest.


When Chinese Premier Chou Enlai made a tour of 10 African states between December 1963 and February 1964 he declared that Africa was ripe for a revolution.


This was during the same time Africa was gaining her independence from colonialism. In essence, what Cho Enlai was asserting here was a repudiation of the nationalist flag independence that Africa was being granted.


The term “revolution” as described, but not necessarily practiced, by people like Samora Machel, Amilcar Cabral and Augustino Neto was aimed at overthrowing a system of both colonialism and neo-colonialism to replace it with one that served the interests of the masses and the workers.


Nowhere in Africa can this be truer than in Zimbabwe today.


The Mugabe regime has always perpetuated this neocolonial type of independence in Zimbabwe. Neocolonialism means taking over the reigns of political power in order to enrich yourself and your cronies with the state resources.


The level of corruption in Zanu (PF) has reached alarming proportions. Mugabe’s cronies are using the State to enrich themselves. The entire state system has now been privatized by the ruling party. A medieval system of fiefdom has emerged where all the land and assets are said to belong to the state when, in fact, they belong to individual Zanu (PF) sycophants and cronies.


Zimbabweans are witnessing this daylight theft of their country’s assets and apparently doing nothing about it. But, 40 years after the statement by the Chinese premier, Mugabe has created the conditions for a revolution. The students and women have taken the lead. It is now up to the rest of the civil society leadership to play their leadership role in mobilizing the masses into a concerted protest against the Mugabe regime.


MDC officials recently articulated this view of a protest when they said their party was now focusing on a strategic shift in opposition politics in Zimbabwe. By forming an alliance with other opposition groups, MDC would now appear to be mobilizing all the resources of the opposition movement in a mass demonstration against Mugabe.


If the leadership in the opposition movement can put their heads together, and not waste time and resources fighting among themselves, they should be able to take their positions at the helm of the new onslaught against Mugabe.

Post published in: Opinions

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