The diagnosis would have shown that the problem lay with a dirty Zanu-PF hierarchy bent on plundering the country. It would have shown that the remedy lay elsewhere  in the energy that resides in business, trade unions and other civil society formations.
The fact that these were mostly aligned with the Movement for Democratic Change should have been neither here nor there.
I’m sure Mbeki and his government did diagnose the ailment correctly, but just couldn’t countenance the remedy.
So they went about delegitimising the opposition and empowering the former liberation movement in the hope that a cleaner Zanu-PF would one day emerge.
Had we the political will to halt Zimbabwe’s slide, we would not have gone out of our way to support Zanu-PF’s branding of its opponents as stooges of Western imperialism, and that rotten party as the legitimate representative of Zimbabweans. We would not have okayed successive stolen elections.
We would certainly not have looked away as journalists, clergy, judges, doctors and activists (this is in order of rank in the hierarchy of life) were hounded. We would not have stymied Commonwealth leaders, including Olusegun Obasanjo, who were appalled by the oppression of Zimbabweans.
We would not have nodded when Cosatu leaders were bundled into a van and driven to Beit Bridge like illegal immigrants on a deportation train.
If we had political will we would have played a leadership role in our region, where other presidents have long had it with Mugabe but did not have the clout to act. On the African continent we would have co-operated with the likes of Obasanjo, who long ago saw what our President refuses to see.
Internationally, we would have been part of a global coalition saying NO to injustice. Had we had the will, Mugabe would have been gone long ago.
But we did not have the political will. Mugabe lives and Zimbabwe is dying.
And it is so absolutely sickening!
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