Zimbabwe Information Center in North America
A project of the North American Coalition for a Free Zimbabwe (NACFREEZ)
MDC
By Stanford G. Mukasa
Letter from America
February 12, 2007
The “madman from Ngomahuru” is now desperately grasping at the straws.
As the howling winds of change reach within an earshot of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe and his regime are now desperately trying all kinds of mumbo jumbo and witches’ brew strategies to maintain their dictatorship.
Everything is falling apart. Zimbabwe is disintegrating like a crumbling cookie. A daily dossier of the situation on Zimbabwe gives a distressing narrative of how Zimbabwe is sinking deeper.
The so-called “Look East” policy, stubbornly and mindlessly enforced by Mugabe, has not brought any noticeable benefits to the masses.
Now the Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono says Zimbabwe must “Look West!” Even the Chinese appear to agree. The Chinese president was recently scheduled to visit a number of African countries including Zambia, but not Zimbabwe. This is the second time Zimbabwe has been skipped by her great friend and compatriot.
Several on- and -off monetary reforms have ended in disaster : the devaluation of the dollar, removal of three zeroes in the dollar transactions, the so-called home link plan, restrictions on foreign currency distribution, police strip searching, or more accurately, pick pocketing, Zimbabweans, commodity price controls one day and no price controls the next day, ad nauseam.
Mugabe’s Cabinet reshuffle was like a merry- go- round circus involving recycling the same deadwood ministers.
In one mindless act after the other, the creation of the senate has, as the MDC predicted, turned out to be unproductive and a sheer waste of resources.
Even the Mutambara MDC faction, which emotionally and sheepishly embraced participating in these elections to the extent of splitting the MDC, do not talk about the senate. They are too embarrassed to mention that they are members of this white elephant.
In the meantime the Zimbabweans are going through very tough times. They are the direct victims of Mugabe voodoo economic policies and raw terror.
Like a madman from Ngomahuru, as the late Edison Zvobgo once described him, Mugabe is now desperately reaching for the straws in what has become the politics of desperation to survive.
Mugabe has reached what Gramsci once called an organic crisis – that is when a state system or regime is surrounded by formidable adversarial forces. In that situation the political leadership will pull all stops in a desperate bid to survive. Attempts by Mugabe to extend his rule beyond 2008 are meeting with resistance from his own anachronistic politburo.
On and off invitations to white commercial farmers to come back to, or stay on, their farms have merely added fuel to the prevailing view that the Mugabe regime is now bereft of any progressive ideas to get the country out of the mess Mugabe so recklessly created.
Some insiders say Mugabe is now fully aware that his regime is coming to a shameful end. He knows that the comfortable lifestyles he and his top officials enjoy while the rest of the country suffers untold hardships are contributing to his downfall.
Neither money nor luxury cars nor goods they enjoy are bringing them any happiness at all.
And there is a real possibility that Mugabe may be daily updating and revising his exit plans which could include an unannounced, unceremonious, midnight and physical departure from Zimbabwe. People with inside information say Mugabe now spends more time holed in his multimillion- dollar and heavily fortified mansion. He comes to his office for one or two hours a day.
It must be one of the most baffling and mind boggling events that, after such wanton and reckless destruction of Zimbabwe, Mugabe is still clinging to power.
A musician once sang; What is it that makes people in power feel they must stay forever?
Back in the 1960s the former president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, said African leaders created neocolonialism once they had tasted the personal benefits that came from political power.
When they were struggling as nationalist leaders they lived very humble and ordinary lives. They were teachers, clerks, bookkeepers, some of them heavily indebted and others barely able to make ends meet.
Now these nationalist leaders were suddenly elevated at independence to positions of power where they were getting extraordinary benefits, like luxurious mansions, free flights around the world, hefty salaries and allowances.
A good number of them had no professional qualifications that would assure them good jobs capable of maintaining their lifestyles when they left their political offices.
It was not a coincidence that the late Enos Chikowore reportedly committed suicide soon after he had been left out of a cabinet reshuffle. Kumbirayi Kangai was known to threaten Mugabe that if he should ever lose a cabinet position he would reveal untold facts about Mugabe and ZANUPF.
There is a good reason to believe that the late Maurice Nyagumbo may have committed suicide in 1989 not so much because he had been exposed in a car scandal but that he had lost a golden opportunity to make a fortune. A diplomat once said everyone was surprised that Nyagumbo left very little money for his family, and the widow was living a desperate life.
The former president of Tanzania, the late Julius Nyerere, who voluntarily stepped down in 1985, castigated African leaders who wanted to hang on to their positions long after they had ceased to be useful, let alone relevant. Nyerere ruled Tanzania from 1964 to 1985. He called upon African leaders to set limits to their rule.
The past few years have witnessed attempts by a number of African leaders to extend their term limits: Nunjoma in Namibia, Chiluba in Zambia, Obasanjo in Nigeria, Moi in Kenya, Muluzi in Malawi and now Mugabe. In many of these cases the people said “No” to presidential term extensions – leading to the embarrassed leaders backing down.
While Mugabe is stubbornly and desperately hanging on to his position he is aware that popular pressure will force him out. His cronies in government and ZANUPF also know this.
This is why Mugabe has made some minor concessions by offering to reduce his position to that of a ceremonial president while creating a powerful post of a prime minister as head of government.
What is peculiar about it is that Zimbabwe once had a prime minister and a ceremonial president. The position of a ceremonial president was dissolved when Mugabe replaced President Banana in 1987.
Zimbabwe also once had the Parliament and a senate. The senate was dissolved because it was then considered a waste of money and time. Now it has been restored. It is still a waste of resources.
Both the offer for a return to a prime minister and a ceremonial president as well as the restoration of the senate are no more than irrational acts from people who are clueless about the dynamics of governance.
They are -- in the true spirit of the madman from Ngomahuru -- now muddling through day by day like blind men, acting on a whim and trying all tricks in the book to survive at a personal level.
In his moments of desperation and knowing that, as he celebrates his 83rd birthday, life is now downhill for him, Mugabe is hell bent on crash landing the country, a scorched earth policy that comes from a man who will sacrifice anything to avoid any personal liability for two decades of misrule.