"To put the world to order, put the nation . . . self to order first," advised Confucius. Mugabe and Africa should listen and learn! By W Mukori

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall,” said Confucius, the Chinese sage who died in 479 BC. Many would argue that it was his teaching and many others like who have laid the foundations of good governance and thus peace and economic prosperity of China.

Confucius “If you make a mistake and do not correct it, this is called a mistake!”

 

Zimbabwe’s history since independence has been one of tragic mistake after another with no corrections. 36 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption has reduced the nation’s economy to a sorry state from what is was in 1980. Life expectancy, the qualitative and quantitative measure of a nation’s economic performance and people’s wellbeing, has plummeted from 68 years in 1980 to a misery 34 years in 2004 when the last reliable analysis was done.

 

On the political front all pretence of Zimbabwe being a democracy with the respect of rule of law, freedom and human rights of its people including the right to free, fair and credible elections and even the right to life itself were smashed to pieces every early on after independence with the massacre of over 20 000 innocent people in the Gukurahundi operations to pave the way for the creation of the de facto one-party dictatorship.

“What was achieved by the gun cannot be undone by the pen!” Mugabe ranted and raved in 2008. He barking orders to his Zanu PF thugs and rogue war vets backed and directed by the CIO, Police and Army to harass, beat, rape and murder civilians in operation “Mavhotera papi!” (Who did you vote for!) He was punishing the people for daring to vote for the opposition in the March 2008 election in defence of his no-regime-change mantra.

 

As a country we have fallen flat on our faces a good many times and, sadly, many people gave up the dream of a free, just and prosperous Zimbabwe a long, long time ago. The few who have had the guts to get up have not done themselves any favours because they landed back on their faces time and time again as the nation has latched from one crisis to the next. Why?

 

The answer is simple and straight forward enough; it is not enough to fall and get straight up again, one must endeavour to learn what they did wrong to avoid making the same mistake again.

 

“When Confucius offered his wisdom, he was referring to a fundamental law in the universe: that life is a constant battle forward, and we win this battle by getting up each time and strapping a new piece of armour on (lessons we have learned),” explained Jake Anderson.

 

Instead of having an open and honesty debate to ascertain where the nation was going wrong the Zanu PF dictatorship has stifled all debate and instead has operated a propaganda system designed to brainwash the people. So instead of seeing the mismanagement and corruption as the root causes of the country’s poor economic performance, for example, the regime insisted there was no mismanagement and corruption and blamed the drought or “the illegal sanctions imposed by the evil British imperialists and Western allies”.

 

The people of Zimbabwe should have been confronting the tyrant and demand any end to his no-regime-change nonsense because to address the nation’s economic problems the nation must address the country’s bad governance problem causing it. But because of the brainwashing the nation has spent the last 36 years fighting the British and the West.

 

“Zimbabwe will never, never, never be a British colony again,” Mugabe has often said to stir up the anti-British rhetoric. He has played on the people’s fear of the colonial oppression of pre-independence so much so that people are always looking back they are not looking where he is taking them.

 

Instead of strapping ourselves with a new piece of armour to deal with tyranny, mismanagement, etc. the real problems that have dragged the nation these last 36 years; we are still strapped up to fight against these imaginary whites hiding in every bush, at the UN, everywhere plotting to recolonize Zimbabwe.

 

What is shocking is that so many Zimbabweans still believe Mugabe’s rhetoric and hen’s teeth stories and continue to believe his lies of blaming the West for the country’s problems even now with the benefit of 36 years of hindsight. It is not just the ordinary Zimbabweans are still naïve and gullible enough to believe Mugabe’s nonsense even the intellectuals like Vince Musewe are taken in. 

 

“I am sure that by now most of us have listened to President Mugabe's recent AU speech,” wrote Musewe. “I received numerous tweets from the rest of Africa on the issue applauding President Mugabe for providing leadership to Africa and telling it like it is. I choose to reserve my judgement on these assertions.

“However, I think it was a relevant speech in that Africa must realise that its fate cannot continue to lie in the hands of others. For far too long we in Africa have been masterminded by the West whose agenda may not necessarily coincide with our national interests, there is no doubt about that. Africans must take their place in the community of nations and shape their future unhindered by international geopolitical interests which seek to keep the advantages of the past.”

 

Mugabe was very encouraged by his fellow African leaders’ standing ovation to his anti-West rhetoric and is even more pleased to see there are still many Zimbabweans who are still under his devilish spell, especially highly respected intellectuals like Vince Musewe –  Zimbabwe’s answer to China’s Confucius!

 

Of course, as long as tyrants like Mugabe continue to get such rapturous applause to their fabricated lies blaming the West for Zimbabwe and Africa’s problems, they will be very encouraged not to do anything about their incompetence, corruption and murderous tyranny, are the root causes of the country’s economic and political demise.

 

To define a way out of Zimbabwe’s economic and political mess one must look at not just the obvious things but also look beyond that, must think outside the box. It is not enough to fix the political chaos due to the incompetent leaders, the walls whose cracks we can see; and the economic collapse due to corruption, the leaking roof with the rusted corrugated sheets we can see too. We need to look at the foundation too because building will stand for long unless it built on solid foundation and so too with governments

 

Zimbabwe greatest weakness is the lack of sound intellectual thinking, the bedrock on which good, stable, just and prosperous government. For 36 years Mugabe has been able to bamboozle the nation and the continent at will with his bull and no African intellectual has ever stood up and exposed his anti-Western narrative for what it is – lies, lies and more lies! If anything the countries’ so called intellectual Professor Jonathan Moyo and of late Vince Musewe have all stripped over each other to praise the lies and propaganda.

 

“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order.” advised Confucius. “To put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life.”

 

The is no doubt that Zimbabwe is a nation is total disorder; the country has nauseating 90% unemployment rate, has 18 out 24 hours power cuts, most cities and towns have no clean running water, the regime is failing to pay its civil servants let alone buy essentials like medical drugs. These are all a result of 36 years of gross misrule, a man-made problem and that man is Mugabe himself not the West.

 

It all very well to stand up at a world stage and call Westerners “pink nose” as Mugabe did at the AU summit and got cheap applause the tough reality is that 1.5 million Zimbabweans are going to starve if country does not get food aid. It is from the West we can expect to get that help; is Mugabe going to apologize or condemn the people to death to feed his misplaced ego.