Something else I can remember clearly is how these complaints have always been accompanied or responded to by people who could find blame in everybody else but the man leading Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe.
It has always been, “It’s the people around him”, “It is the ‘yes men’ around him who block anyone else from telling him the truth”.
People are often suspicious and are not always receptive of everything they are told, especially when surrounded by evidence of things going wrong.
With all this being so blatant, anyone who claims Mugabe does not know that he is unpopular is peddling lies. Anyone who claims Mugabe does not know that he lost the election of March 29 and is waiting to be told by some people, who are apparently trying to figure out how to tell him, is shamefully deceiving the world.
Continuing to think this way is blatantly admitting that Robert Mugabe, the man the world thought to be the President of Zimbabwe and the ‘strong man’ of pan-Africanism, has not been in charge and is a pawn of the whims of army generals, police commissioners and Jabulani Sibanda.
There was too much evidence for Mugabe to know he was gambling with this election. His candidature was not the most popular in his party and he had to hold two congresses to push himself through. Even after those efforts, the fact that he had to rely on Jabulani Sibanda, unconstitutionally bringing him back into the party from suspension (or was it expulsion?), to do his bidding should have told any normal discerning human being that he was gambling. Most importantly it shows that this is the work of someone who knew that he was in trouble.
There were a lot of media reports before the elections of subdued numbers at Mugabe rallies. He spoke to large numbers of non-voting school kids, who were brought in to beef up crowds, about voting for him and elections, which his audience could not help with.
Now if anyone tells me that Robert Mugabe, a veteran politician, who has been on the campaign trail as far back as I can remember in Zimbabwean politics, could not see this difference, then his 84 years of life have caught up with him and his optician needs to do some work now! I am worried about being led by such person.
The worst headline I have seen on this same deceptive line has been that Mugabe was willing to leave, but was blocked by the security chiefs. I have no problem with the basic line of argument here but I think what publishing this without question does is that it presents Mugabe as an unwilling player in continuing to disregard democracy and the will of the people in Zimbabwe.
Why has Mugabe not said ‘no’ to violence and has instead implicitly endorsed the beating, maiming, killing of Zimbabweans for exercising their democratic right? What did Mugabe mean by ‘Nothing absolutely nothing is going to change?’ on April 18 2008.
While I do not deny the influence of JOC and Zanu (PF) partisans, I think it is an injustice to the brutalised people of Zimbabwe to imply that Mugabe is an unwilling and unknowing player in all this. Publishing articles that put the blame on anybody else without making Mugabe also responsible is also an injustice.
Post published in: Opinions