Invincible Mugabe on the verge of falling

Constantino Guveya Dominic Nyikadzino Chiwenga

I was wrong about Chiwenga

I didn’t believe Commander General Constantino Chiwenga could pull it off and, up until he upped the ante, after the stupid and provocative statements by Simon Khaya Moyo and that overzealous political condom Kudzanai Chipanga, I feared a split in the security sector that could bring matters to an explosive clash. So as promised, I will now shave off my sideburns in concession to Chiwenga’s victory!

Mixed feelings

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this outcome. On the one hand it is deeply satisfying to know that power-mongering Mugabe has been reduced to an effigy of the nationalist state he founded, that his garrulous wife will no longer defile our ears with her bile, and that those arrogant and thoroughly corrupt G-40 pricks and their opportunistic hangers-on are getting the shafting they deserve. But on the other, I’m unsettled by the presence of the military on the foreground of politics and the precedent this has set for our country. Praetorian politics are never a harbinger of democracy or development, rather repression and plunder.

Transitional government post Mugabe

But it can all go very differently, and to Zimbabwe’s advantage. I salute the military’s reluctance to institute the classic coup, and their deference to civilian government. This presents an opportunity for an inclusive government to be set up in the National Interest, to bring the nation together, purge the country of its current toxic politics and suspend the useless ritual of elections coming up next year in favour of a transitional programme based on a reform agenda that takes on board the input of all stakeholders. This cannot be a Zanu-PF affair, because that is how we got here in the first place. The so-called stockholders – as the liberation war military cadres call themselves – have got to put their national liberation movement hats on and re-imagine the national agenda in the context of national aspiration in its holistic, comprehensive and non-partisan character.

Message to opposition parties

This could have all panned out differently had you endorsed the National Transitional Authority proposal and used that as the basis of advocacy and engagement with the Mugabe regime, dismissing elections in favour of a robust reform agenda under the NTA first. But, as usual, strategic foresight is not in the Opposition’s gift. And so now you have the MTA – the Military Transitional Authority!