I feel sorry for the Old Man. He has no choice but to depend so heavily on bad advice from his red-eyed hard core which, besides being so desperate to preserve itself, seems to have no idea how things have changed in Zimbabwe and southern Africa.
Mugabe’s self-interested proclamation of July 31 as the election date, under the guise of following the skewed May 31 Constitutional Court ruling, was to me a predictable outcome of the politburo meeting the day before his announcement.
I always knew that the hard line in Zanu (PF) was going to carry the day. That side of the party still lives in the past and thinks politics is about demonstrating how rich you are, rather than how wise and pragmatic you are. I knew that they would use the Constitutional Court deadline to claim, falsely, that it respected the rule of law. I knew, also, that the hardliners represented by Patrick Chinamasa had tagged the Old Man’s hand to pass the Electoral Act.
There wouldn’t be a prize for knowing this. Mugabe has lost all clue on how Zimbabwe now operates and the forces that shape it.
He is anxious to keep a grip on power and would listen to the slightest hint that indicates his political preservation. And the readiest source of that advice is the hard core that has obviously convinced him the earlier the general election is held, the safer for him.
But this is the kind of advice that keeps eroding his political relevance and makes his chances of redeeming himself dimmer by the day, to the extent that his credibility as a freedom fighter and notable statesman is all but dead. The loudest signal coming from the SADC summit in Maputo is that Mugabe no longer calls the shots. The fact that the summit ordered the reversal of his invocation of the Presidential (Temporary) Powers Act to pass the Electoral Act is indeed telling. The directive clearly shows that Mugabe can no longer subvert national processes to serve partisan interests.
As Alex Magaisa argued recently, the President is not a law maker and legislation should be left to the appropriate estate, which is Parliament. The SADC resolutions shoved Mugabe back into his proper position, that of being the head, alongside Morgan Tsvangirai, according to the GPA and Constitutional Amendment 19, of the Executive.
I know that Mugabe used to take SADC for granted, and it’s a pity that he thought, via the poor advice from the hard core in Zanu (PF), that he could do the same this time around. It is unfortunate that he seems to still think of it as a club of young boys who are wet behind the ears, as he publicly said in 2008 after the sham presidential runoff.
Surely, he must have learnt a lesson from the fact that it is the very same SADC that dismissed the result of that “poll” and forced him to share the table with Tsvangirai.
I have seen Mugabe’s emasculation coming in steady strides. Remember that, since late 2010, he has been calling for the holding of polls – yet nothing of that sort has happened. That was a sure sign that Mugabe was losing his grip.
Now, thanks to SADC and the unrelenting pressure from his peers in the GPA, he cannot even conclusively decree an election date. He used to have that power, controversially though, but things have changed dramatically.
I wrote several months ago that Mugabe should use this year’s election as the last post on which he can reclaim lost pride, legitimacy and respect. But the poor Old Man listens to the bad judgement coming from his advisors.
He should therefore not blame anyone because his last claim to power is gone and I will be the last person to shed a tear when I see him tottering in the vleis of Kutama in the post-Mugabe era. – For feedback, please write to majonitt@gmail.com
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis