The worsening economic meltdown will test the metal of this nation it is not Mugabe, Mnangagwa Mujuru or Tsvangirai get us out! W Mukori

It is very tragic that this nation should now find itself in this tragic situation of serious economic meltdown resulting in collapse of all basic services and forcing millions of our people out of work and into a life of abject poverty, many cannot afford even one decent meal a day.

Before independence Zimbabwe was the Garden of Eden, producing enough food to feed the nation and the region plus millions of dollars’ worth of cash crops like tobacco. Zimbabwe was in the top four producers and export of quality tobacco in the whole world. Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector completely collapsed in 2000 following the seizure of the white owned farms in a racist move fired by Mugabe’s deep seated inferiority complex and to gratify his own insatiable greed for wealth and those of Zanu PF cronies.

In the day and age when others have made deserts bloom, we in Zimbabwe are starving in the Garden of Eden – the greatest testimonial of Mugabe and Zanu PF breath-taking incompetency.

The nation has found itself in this pathetic situation on economic collapse because of the nation’s intractable political paralysis. Even now with the nation tittering on the edge of the abyss both the ruling party, Zanu PF, and the opposition MDC are each tearing themselves apart in internal factional wars; forcing them divide and subdivide like an amoeba; and yet remain oblivious of the dangerous situation their failed leadership is dragging the nation into.

MDC had their best chance to save this nation from the tragedy of corrupt and tyrannical rule of Mugabe during GNU; they wasted it by failing to implement even one of the raft of democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA). I find it infuriating that MDC leaders like Eddie Cross have never owned up to their betrayal of the nation and instead even have the chutzpah to deny responsibility by falsifying the historic facts.

“At that time there was also some hope that the political situation would change after MDC won the 2008 elections and Mugabe was forced by regional leaders to go into a GNU with their hated opposition. Had South Africa stepped into the ring in 2008 and insisted on a real transfer of power to the MDC, I have no doubt at all that today we would be in the throes of a rapidly developing economy with rising incomes,” wrote Eddie Cross in one of his latest epistles.

“These are all reflections of failed national leadership and the inability of continental and regional leaders to pursue policies and strategies or even to take decisions on key issues is simply astounding. We can pass decent Constitutions that include many features that the US “Founding Fathers” would have been totally comfortable with.”

There is no doubt that the GPA and the GNU that followed could have been better formulated. The USA Ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, at the time compared the GPA to Swiss cheese “with holes so big one can drive a truck through”. There is no doubt that the Americans warned the MDC of their concerns but, in what would become the norm for MDC leaders, no one listened. So it is rich for any MDC leader of the shortcomings of the GNU, especially senior members like MP Cross who played their part in accepted the arrangement.

Even within the constraints of the GNU MDC could have implemented all the GPA reforms; no one would ever dispute that! SADC, especially SA’s Lindiwe Zulu, reminded MDC leaders to implement the reforms repeatedly and on the eleventh hour warned MDC not to take part in the July 2013 without the reforms but MDC paid no heed. Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, MP Cross’s fellow MDC leader before first post-elections MDC amoeba division, has since admitted MDC was warned and ignored the warns. MP Cross has yet to admit this although he has written many epistles since; he has either deliberately ignored the key historic facts during the GNU or falsified history to absolve himself and his fellow MDC leaders of any responsibility of what happened.

“We can pass decent Constitutions that include many features that the US “Founding Fathers” would have been totally comfortable with,” boosted the self-righteous Eddie Cross.

Yes Mr Cross, MDC could have given this nation a decent democratic constitution in March 2013 instead of the rubbish you lot produced.

One of the single idea America’s founding fathers bequeathed to the nation and the world at large is that presidents must serve a fixed maximum two terms. Zimbabwe’s March 2013 constitution, which Eddie Cross now pretends is a master piece, has been so loosely worded that Mugabe was able to disregard it with the greatest of ease. Mr Cross can hardly complain as his own MDC-T party leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has done the same to extend his stay in power beyond the maximum two terms.

Zimbabwe is in a political and economic hell-hole, how to get out is the challenge. It is utterly pointless to look to Mugabe, Mnangagwa, Mujuru or any of the other former Zanu PF thugs purged out of the party last year or in the past; they will never get us out. They are the ones who got us into this hole in the first place because they are corrupt, incompetent and oppressive tyrants.

Mugabe, Mnangagwa, Mujuru, etc. are fighting each other to the death not to end the looting, brutal political oppression and vote rigging but for ownership and control the dictatorship. If Mujuru was to win the next elections her top priority will be to remove Mugabe loyalists in all the State Institutions and appoint those who will serve her with the same blind loyalty as their predecessors had shown to Mugabe. She will never concede to the GPA reforms designed to dismantle the dictatorship.

Those who are exited at the prospect of Mujuru launching her People First party because they just want Mugabe defeated are missing a trick. We should not be seeking the demise of the one man Mugabe – good as that may be – but rather the demise of the whole one party dictatorship political ethos. The Zanu PF dictatorship is a lot more that Mugabe and the few in Joint Operation Command; they are nothing but the ears of the hippo above the muddy water.

We should not look to Mr Cross, Morgan Tsvangirai and the rest of the MDC leaders to get us out of the hell-hole either; they could have done so during the GNU but failed because they sold out. There is no reason to believe they would not do so again if they ever got back into power. Indeed they are tripping over each other to join forces with Joice Mujuru not because Mujuru has reformed but because she offers them the best chance of getting back into power.

It is events that test the true metal of an individual or nation’s character; the political paralysis and economic meltdown Zimbabwe is going through is going to test this nation. The majority of our people have accepted this subservient role who have suffered the consequences of misrule but are completely helpless to change anything. Our way out of this hell is for the people to snap out of this comatose mental state and assume their citizen role of taking full responsibility of the nation’s mess and finding the solution out.

When all is said and done Zimbabwe is in this political and economic hell because for the last 35 years our people have followed blindly like sheep first the corrupt and murderous Mugabe and then the corrupt and incompetent Tsvangirai. We need a nation with people who can think for themselves and if the economic hardships of the months ahead are not going to force Zimbabweans to put their thinking caps on then it will be because they never have the caps!