Opposition blunders keeping Mugabe in power

It must embarrass all people who respect democracy in the world, especially the political opposition in Zimbabwe that despite the many mass graves of Gukurahundi, the ruins of Murambatswina, a collapsed education and health delivery system, an economy on life support and a starved population of hard working Zimbabweans, Mugabe remains at state house and answers to the title of his Excellency, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe.

There is no need for research. Mugabe’s secret of longevity at state house and in the presidency of Zimbabwe is after all not a secret at all but it is there for everyone to see.

The political opposition in Zimbabwe has worked overtime in creating political penalty kicks that have kept Mugabe scoring his way back to the leadership of the country.

I must insist at this juncture that I am writing in good faith as a Zimbabwean political activist and a student of politics and leadership in Africa. I have just finished reading Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor Gideon Gono’s revealing book, “Zimbabwe’s Casino Economy, Extraordinary Measures for Extraordinary Challenges”.

Well, dear readers, the man and his career’s beginnings are spectacularly humble. To ascend from cleaning toilet chambers to occupying the office that governs a country’s central bank is a real grass to grace story.

In the book, Gono professes “fierce loyalty” to Mugabe as his “principal”.

He expresses shock that under the creator’s sun there are people who dream or imagine that one day he might “betray” his principal and play good ball in helping to unseat Mugabe.

The principal and prefect relationship between Mugabe and Gono is presented by Gono in the grammar and idiom of “professionalism” and “ethics” of fidelity.

The Americans, the British and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party are named as those who have expected Gono to “become an instrument of regime hange”, an expectation that the governor has found “incredulous” at best and at worst “insulting”.

The book leaves one with no iota of doubt that Gono is a Mugabe loyalist beyond repair.

With clearly labelled diagrams, Gono exposes how the American government tried to get him to desert Mugabe by offering him a senior job as the vice president of the World Bank in Washington or at the African Development Bank in Tunisia.

Both offers he politely turned down because he says “I am not one to jump ship, no matter what . . . “

It is a well written book and I personally respect the honesty and clarity where Gono does not hide behind any finger but comes out and declares that it is a waste of time and energy for any one to try and get him to contribute anything in the struggle against Mugabe.

He also admits that “10 percent” of the survival of the regime is owed to him and his “team” at RBZ. It is the “economic gymnastics” that him and his team invoked which helped the regime survive the sanctions and defy all expectations and prophecies that the regime was about to collapse.

Gono announces that he learnt this fierce from his humble climbing from the office of a toilet cleaner, through being a student by correspondence at Rapid Results College, a messenger at National Breweries, promoted to an accounts clerk at the same company, and then promoted to a senior accounts clerk, until he ended up at the CBZ bank, the University of Zimbabwe Council and then Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe where he still is today.

Gono’s book makes painful reading. I will not smuggle myself into the already fierce debate of what Gono did and what he did not do or what should be done with him.

I will concentrate on the painful observation of how some of Zimbabwe’s best brains have always been found at the unfortunate service of the dictatorship in Harare and why we the democratic forces of Zimbabwe have always allowed it to be so.

The question is where do we fail to attract these personalities away from Mugabe and ZANU PF loyalism?

As I write there is more blame directed at Gono for rescuing Mugabe and ZANU PF from collapse than there is opposition and strategising against Mugabe’s rule.

My fear is that come the next elections, where I bet Mugabe will once again be the presidential candidate for ZANU PF, there will be two or more other presidential candidates from the opposition and Mugabe will romp into victory, sentencing Zimbabweans to more painful years of his punitive rule.

In my humble opinion, the whole hullabaloo about “Gono and Tomana must go” is necessary but I think it is a slight concentration on the opportunistic infections and not the disease itself.

It is OK when you have malaria to put on warm clothing to ease the shivering but warmth does not cure malaria. One needs doses of Norolon!

The rude question that is confronting us in Zimbabwe is why and how Mugabe is still able to appoint and disappoint people to and from important national offices in Zimbabwe?

The many tonnes of bricks of blame on Gono and Attorney General Johannes Tomana’s small shoulders are alright, but the challenge we must not try to escape is why Mugabe is still so powerful and what must be done?

The pain that I feel when I take stock and observe how Gono as RBZ Governor rescued the dictatorship is the pain that one will feel when he finds a green mamba on his lawn and strikes it several times on its body, and then Gono comes and applies betadine on it and carefully and clinically bandages it, resuscitating it from the intensive care unit and releases it back toyour garden!

Every time the dictatorship in Harare is threatened, there will come somebody or some bodies that we will later blame for rescuing it and we tend to resent these personalities more than we resent the dictatorship itself.

The gist of my argument is that to wage a war on Mugabe’s prefects and appointees might be a worthwhile exercise, but I think it is largely an exercise in futility because as long as Mugabe continues being allowed to return to state house as president of Zimbabwe, he will always remain able to choose some of Zimbabwe’s best brains to his service and to his rescue and the survival of the regime.

My suggestion is that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara must bare their bosoms to the swords of blame for Mugabe’s stay in the presidency of Zimbabwe.

I believe that the MDC more than Gono helped Mugabe stay and ZANU PF remain in the leadership of our country.

All the sins of Mugabe’s prefects and appointees collected together do not weigh half the weight of the blunder that the MDC did in ever imagining that they will unseat Mugabe by contesting him as two “different” political parties. The MDC literally rescued Mugabe by donating unexpected victory to him.

Without apologising for Gono, Tomana or any of Mugabe’s loyalists and appointees I would like to suggest that it is mostly the paralysis of strategic activity on the part of the opposition in Zimbabwe that continues to insulate Mugabe from due ouster.

I believe that Mugabe’s appointees are just the recipients of blows intended for the gods.

The strategists, schemers and the plotters in the MDC, I suggest that they adopt it as homework from now on to attract away from ZANU PF and Mugabe, some of Zimbabwe’s talents to the service of the new Zimbabwe that is long overdue.

It is also one of the chief blunders of the opposition in Zimbabwe to invest too much trust in institutions that are interested in their own interests in Zimbabwe and not the democratisation of our country and the respect for human life, human rights, law and order.

The United States (US) and Britain are global economic and political players we cannot wish away for our own survival. We have to find very strategic ways of working with them, bearing in mind that more than half of Mugabe’s work in destroying Zimbabwe was done with their protection if not under the comfort of their quiet diplomacy.

From Gukurahundi up to ESAP, it is no rumour but a fact that Mugabe was a man of special British and US moments. As long as he secured their economic interests in Zimbabwe, he could slaughter people like goats at Christmas and there was not going to be censure or sanctions against him, targeted or untargeted.

ZimOnline