BY JOHN MAKUMBE
Great stuff! Thabo Mbeki’s ill-fated visit to Harare resulted in what can only be called a foregone conclusion. Mugabe, the local tyrant refused to see sense with regard to the deadlock that has now been reached in the mediation process. It is not that the tyrant has ever seen any sense before; if he had he would have long left State House and allowed this nation to live again.
After failing to make the two sides, MDC and Zanu (PF), reach a compromise in South Africa, Mbeki decided to take the process one level higher by meeting the presidents of the two MDC formations and Mugabe in Harare. The result was that Mbeki was forced to depart for home empty-handed.
It never rains but pours on Thabo Mbeki these days. He seems unable to do anything right these days. Anything and everything he touches seems to suddenly become frozen cold and biting. So much for quiet diplomacy, hey Thabo.
The MDC must be congratulated for finally coming to its senses in this deceitful process. Robert Mugabe thought that, just like he had done with the now defunct PF-Zapu in 1987, he had gotten the MDC where he wanted them to be – in a logjam where they will have no choice but to legitimise him as the legitimate and democratically elected president of this country.
Thank God, the MDC refused to do this, and to this moment, Mugabe remains a self-imposed dictator whose illegitimacy has driven this once promising nation to its knees. To save face, Mbeki argued that he had only come to Harare to brief the presidents of the three political formations on the progress that had so far been achieved in the mediation process.
Well, we are not all kids, Mr President. It does not take four hours to brief Mugabe on the mediation talks, even if he will be dozing on and off so often during the process. It is not true that the mediation process is, “work in progress”. The truth is that the mediation process has all but ground to a halt.
Meanwhile the tyrant is having a difficult time understanding what is really going on in his ruining party, Zanu (PF). Stories about one Simba Makoni working in cahoots with the retired Major Mbudzi and other secretive elements of a military orientation are very upsetting to the geriatric first secretary of a departing political party. Media reports indicate that following Mugabe’s rigging of the nomination process at the Zanu (PF) special congress last December, elements opposed to the old man’s endless stranglehold on power are working day and night to find ways and means of ejecting him form political office, or undermining his electoral efforts come March 2008.
The selection of Simba Makoni as the potential leader of a possible splinter group within Zanu (PF) is, however, baffling, to say the least. Makoni does not really command a respectable grassroots support base within the dying Zanu (PF) party. He also does not really have an impressive track record as either a politician or executive officer.
Perhaps the only possible attribute that Makoni could be argued to have is that he might be a trifle more tolerant of dissent and of opposition political parties. To me, however, he is still a Zanu (PF) member and therefore just as brain damaged as the rest of them. But perhaps he is the only one who could pass for a good demon.
But to make matters worse for our favourite tyrant, Gideon Gono seems to have completely lost the plot at the glassy RBZ. The poetic governor may have reached the end of his brainpower and is no longer able to turn the economy around.
For him, failure has now become the only option even though he will never admit to that. How can the nation run out of its won money just a few weeks before the crucial Mugabe elections in March? Is Gono being sponsored to clandestinely sabotage Mugabe in his bid for the last five years as president of this country? Food for thought.
Post published in: Opinions