By Charles Chidavaenzi | The tragic comedy playing out in the delayed burial of our erstwhile and founder president, Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe paints a picture of the callousness and cultural vacuousness existing in the current regime in its efforts to gain some relevant legitimacy. Yes, we must mourn the once iconic figure who one time steered this nation’s affairs with distinguished leadership. But then, he blundered later due to a some character defects and the exerted influence of the very same people who are abusing his body today to score cheap political points and enjoy undeserved relevance and eminence over his burial.
Indeed, many will agree with me that Mugabe once embodied true eminence, displaying extraordinary visionary qualities and executing his mission with remarkable effectiveness.
Those who can will remember the Mugabe of the eighties who had a clear vision of where he wanted to take his nation, making pronouncements of his short and long term administrative goals that culminated in the well recited Vision 2020 document. And we made astonishing strides in all spheres! The expanded education system, the improved health sector, the participative rural agriculture, non segregation in employment! We had it all in the first ten years of our independence; that is political, financial and social freedoms! One of his darkest spots at this stage, I must hasten to say, was his well documented intolerance to opposing views but we ignored this for,in him, we espied the complete leader! A lot of people forgave him even for the lunacy of Gukurahundi, that terrible scourging of the Ndebele supporters of ZAPU that the once great man even attested to!
But his lieutenants had other ideas! The same people abusing his dead body today sought a way of breaching his impregnable wall of principled leadership to achieve their looting objectives! What better plan than adopting the oldest trick in the Bible; use Delilah to destroy Samson. With the impeccable Sally, they didn’t stand a chance! She was politically too shrewd for them so they found Amazing Grace! Her beauty and youth didn’t fail the trick and the astute statesman fell for the oldest ruse ever. After Mugabe’s liaison with Grace, his slide towards villainy and infamy was speedily set in motion.
Profligacy set in and national objectives were left hanging unachieved! Corruption became the order of the day and public service was all but ignored! Political leaders competed for the biggest looting trophies like pigs fighting for the best apples with total impunity! Political leadership became the stepping stone to unlimited access to riches! Up to now, those that make it there are assured of sweatless accumulation of wealth!
In true Animal Farm prophecy, Zimbabwe became a basket case, a pariah state whose once meticulous leader, truly meritocratic, honest and pragmatic, became another ridiculous tinpot dictator reviled by a progressive world. But his handlers defended him to death as they laughed all the way to the foreign banks that stashed away their ill gotten loot. His position was worsened by a blindly ambitious wife who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted! And she wanted it all!
Fast forward, his once trusted lieutenants deposed the frail old man in a coup that wasn’t a coup. Now they claim they want to give him a deserved hero’s burial. If Mugabe was a hero, why take the reins of power by force? How do you depose of someone’s legitimate authority and then say he was a great man with a straight face? This level of hypocrisy is sickening, dishonesty at its worst? How do we land ourselves with such leaders whose duplicity is obvious to even a kindergarten pupil!
I strongly suspect this is a case of abuse of the icon’s body for political expediency! Our people are dying due to lack of medicine in hospitals yet we contract a Chinese company to put up a mausoleum for a man history dictates has robbed his people of any form of decency through mismanagement of national resources! A man who died in a foreign land seeking treatment because facilities in his own country are to dilapidated and backward to attend to his ailments!
A man who made a whole nation celebrate at his deposition while the world congratulated us! Suddenly, he is a hero worth millions of scarce state resources where doctors are on strike for a proper remuneration! What a charade! Zimbabwean politics is meant to serve the desires of the few well connected individuals but remains a maze of confused priorities for the rest of the people! I hope Mugabe’s soul finds some peace wherever he is headed to! I also hope his abusers get what they deserve soon, and very soon!