By Nomusa Garikai- “Before I begin my address, I kindly request the August House to observe a minute of silence in honour of the late Founding Father of our country and Former President His Excellency, Comrade R. G. Mugabe who passed on, on the 6th of September 2019,” said President Mnangagwa.

“As we remember him, let us stand emboldened by the fact that we cannot change the past, but the future is in our hands.”

Yes we cannot change the past but that is not to say we should not interrogate the past boldly and rigorously with the view of learning all the lessons from the past, good and bad. 

To declare the late Robert Mugabe a national hero is proof those making this declaration had not been thorough in their examination of the man. Mugabe was a corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous tyrant and history will judge him as such! 

We know why some people are keen to “Let bygones be bygones!”; they fear that a thorough expose of Mugabe’s tyrannical past will expose their own part in the corruption, vote rigging and murders. We must therefore dismiss the nonsense of airbrushing the past under the pretext we cannot change it.

Zimbabwe is in a real economic and political mess because of decades of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule; millions have suffered, over 30 000 have been murdered in cold blood for political gain and hundreds of thousands more lives have been lost as the result of the decades of bad governance. 

We can help end the suffering and stop more people becoming victims and save future lives being wasted by learning all we can from the thorough, no holds-barred study of this monster called the Zanu PF dictatorship and the principle dictator, Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

Yes, “the future is in our hands” but if it is to be a better future compared to the last four decades of hell-on-earth then we must make sure we do not repeat the mistakes that land us in this hell-hole. Calling a corrupt and murderous tyrant a hero is the first sign we have learnt nothing from the past.