OPINION
By Hon R M Simango
Mugabe has never been a legitimate leader ever since from the beginning when it was Zanu before it was Zanu-Pf. If you rewind to the early days of his tussle for his leadership of Zanu, you will see ample evidence already of the bloody internal feuding by which he seized the helm of the Zanu Party, and fought off challengers.
The guerrilla war itself, may have been a justified struggle for democracy, but as a teenaged conscript in Rhodesian Camp, I witnessed first-hand gruesome punishment of black civilians by Mugabe’s guerrillas, in order for him to win the “balance of fear”. Mugabe learned then that, the barrel of Kalashnikov underwrote success at the ballot box.
Mugabe made it clear again during the 1980 General Elections when he was in-breach of the Lancaster House Peace Agreement. He kept many of his guerrillas out in the battle field to warn the voters that, the war would continue if his Zanu Party didn’t win the 1980 General Elections although the scale of his victory was such that, he didn’t need to intimidate voters, he was not taking any chances.
Barely three years after Independence, Mugabe ordered his troops into the Southern Province of Matebeleland to launch Operation Gukurahundi, “The Rains that Clear Out the Chaff”. They killed around twenty thousand Ndebele civilians, most of them supporters of Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu Party. No one had ever been held accountable for this Political Genocide till today. It remains the single worst moral stain on Robert Matibili Mugabe’s record although at that time, international reaction was shamefully muted.
After all these massacres, Mugabe coerced a shattered Joshua Nkomo our Father Zimbabwe into a Unity Accord, which effectively created a one-party state. Without real Opposition Political Party in Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s administration grew increasingly authoritarian, inefficient and corrupt.
Mugabe appeared irked when, in 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison and soon swept to power in South Africa’s first democratic elections, eclipsing Mugabe’s role as the colossus on the African stage. Mandela joked that Mugabe had grown accustomed to being the star “and then, the sun came out”
By 2000, after thirteen years of political monopoly, Mugabe was shocked and enraged to find that, a New vibrant Opposition Political Party to his rule had emerged among the Younger Generation as Movement for Democratic Change under the Leadership of President Dr Morgan Richard Tsvangirai, and he set out to crush them, as was his default.
He also ordered his Zanu-Pf Party militia onto white-owned  farms to forcibly evict the owners and their workers. It was given a name “Jambanja Reminda”, a violent overthrow. Most of the farms were doled out as bribes to Mugabe’s elite and he kept six farms for himself – corruption. None of the new owners of these corrupted farms had any agricultural know-how, and commercial agriculture, that caused the economy’s foundation, quickly collapsed, bringing the rest down with it.
As we all know the African Leadership; a Father is a figurehead as it’s about masculinity. All radical fathers want to dominate their wives and kids, so in a Political Party, that domination is carried out too. Mugabe don’t want his Zanu-Pf hooligans to answer back but to be “yes” men.
This has been a problem in our Country, ordinary suffering Zimbabweans have to listen and obey, or else, anyone who criticises Mugabe is eliminated one by one.
We all witnessed Moscow’s dramatic collapse of Soviet power, it feels like that now here in Zimbabwe, this the ancient regime is over, just its phantom limb twitching. 2018 is the defining year for Mugabe’s illegitimate leadership never mind of what type of violence he will try to impose on the ordinary suffering Zimbabweans
Fellow Democrats, let’s keep on putting more immense political and socio-economic pressure to these misguided prematurely doomed Zanu-PF hooligans until victory is certain
United we Win
Divided we Fall