By Wilbert Mukori- “We are confronted by wars which are sure to remake the global order as we have known it until now. Africa must jealously guard against her interests and position in the unfolding global drama.

We are no one’s underdog and we should not be drawn into foreign wars as proxies of any power or combatant,” said VP Constantino Chiwenga at the official opening of Connect Africa Symposium.

“Gone are the days when foreign powers come to our meetings and try to override our own agendas. No. The agenda must be written by Africans for Africans. We see repeated attempts of (forcing) Africa into answering to issues that are peripheral to its interests.

 “That must end. We also see attempts by bigger powers to fight over our resources which they want to control and to detect partnerships for us. We know our interests. We do not need to be lectured through hypocrisy.”

We know what Zanu PF’s agenda is, it has not change ever since the country gained her independence in 1980 – to establish a de facto one-party dictatorship and retain absolute power at all costs. 

President Mnangagwa has mounted a protracted campaign portraying his regime as the victim of the British and her fellow western allies’ white colonial empiricism ambitions. The accusation that the sanctions impose on the country was the root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown was gaining traction. Many African leaders had called for the lifting of the sanctions against Zimbabwe at UN General Assembly last September. SADC leaders had gone as far declaring 25 October as anti-sanctions day. 

In November last year South Africa’s ruling ANC made a party resolution “never to allow regime change in Zimbabwe”. As far as President Cyril Ramaphosa and his party were concerned the any regime change in Zimbabwe was being initiated by the sanctions and nothing else. 

The four part Zimbabwe: Gold Mafia documentary on Al Jazeera has reveal how Zimbabwe was losing US$ 1.6 billion or 80% of her US$2 billion gold per year to gold smuggling. This constitutes nearly 6% of the country’s US$28 billion GPD. Corruption is rampant in diamonds, lithium, platinum and in other areas such as procurement of fuel and medicine. 

Even the most optimistic guesstimate of the losses brought by sanctions have put the figure at a few million dollars per year nowhere near the US$1.6 billion per year in gold smuggling alone! Mnangagwa knows the Al Jazeera documentary has just shot down his sanctions balloon. 

President Cyril Ramaphosa may still try to endorse rigged 2023 elections and grant Zanu PF legitimacy, as before, but even he knows he will be helping to prop up a corrupt, tyrannical and vote rigging regime. No one will buy the sanctions hen’s teeth excuse. 

What is more, the people of South Africa will be forced to sit up and take note: if ANC is condoning vote rigging in Zimbabwe, what is there to stop the party rigging SA elections? 

President Mnangagwa is concerned about rigging the 2023 elections but being denied political legitimacy because the process is judged to be flawed and illegal. He is so concerned about that, he is seriously considering denying the EU, Commonwealth, Americans and all certain to condemn the flawed process, election observer status. 

All this anti-foreign powers interfering in Africa’s affair, we are  “no one’s underdog” rhetoric, etc. is preemptive strike to justify the decision to deny the western nation election observer status and reports condemn the election as a farce. 

Anyone who has been paying attentions to Zimbabwe these last 43 years will tell you they saw this coming! Zanu PF is a party of ruthless thugs who would rather burn down the house than give up power particularly now they are addicted to absolute power and all the influence and wealth it has brought. 

During India’s struggle for home rule, Mahatma Gandhi and his fellow Indian nationalist leaders resisted the temptation to wage an armed struggle. “What kind of leaders will an armed struggle throw up?” they asked. “Will those be men and women we would want to rule India?”

In Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies Zimbabwe’s armed struggle has provided the world with the answers to worse case scenario of what Gandhi and company feared! It is fair to say Zimbabwe end white colonial rule in 1980 only to replace the white oppressor with the black ones. 

Blacks did not have a meaningful vote before independence, now they are frogmarched to vote. Any whites who point out the meaningless change are dismissed as hypocrites.  And any blacks who demand free and fair elections are ruthless silenced under the pretext they are puppets promoting their white masters’ regime change agenda.

Zanu PF turned the guns used to defeat the white colonial government on the people they were supposed to liberate to impose themselves as the new rulers. They had the means, the guns, to make the country ungovernable if they did not get what they wanted and they have held the nation to ransom ever since. Of course, we are tuck!