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Saying 'enough is enough' may not be enough
Bill Saidi, The Standard
June 18, 2007

http://allafrica.com/stories/200706181025.html

One foreign university has stripped President Robert Mugabe of an honorary degree. Others may follow suit, as they too realise how ruinous to their reputations this association could be. He still has many others, some honorary, others not so honorary. Enumerating them might be risky. Under AIPPA, they could haul you into court for publishing a falsehood. The universities, teeming with eggheads reciting the Magna Carta and Oedipus backwards, cannot believe their humiliation of this politician would transform him. After all, this man has used such low-brow language as "Go hang!" - aka "Get stuffed!" They must know all this wouldn't register with him the way they would expect - repentant and contrite, begging them: "Please don't do this to me, baas!" A man who publicly roasted his critics as "gay gangsters" is definitely past caring if they call him a "cradle robber", referring to his marriage to the young mother who went to him for a shoulder to weep on, but ended up getting what some people now allege is what she bargained for.

Politically, it would be amazing if Mugabe conceded, even grudgingly, that most of the ruin now facing Zimbabwe is even partly his responsibility. He must know that the "sanctions", as a scapegoat for our impending ruin, is as effective as a fig leaf. Yet he insists he is still master of his destiny, the people still love him. They trust he will pull off the political caper that would restore us to the glorious days before 2000 or 1997. What about the people around him? Who could speak bluntly to him? Would Gideon Gono, for instance, spring the political shock of the millennium by saying printing money reminds people of kids building sand castles? What about Joseph Msika, who spoke with candour about the real villain of Gukurahundi? True, he wasn't speaking to Mugabe, but to "the converted" - people who have known the truth since 1981. But has it never occurred to this former close comrade-in-arms of Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo that Mugabe needs to be shocked out of this Cloud Cuckoo land? What about Emmerson Mnangagwa? It's hard to accept he now shares the belief of the Zanu PF zombies that Mugabe holds the key to our salvation from Armageddon. Ditto John Landa Nkomo.

I was among Zimbabweans meeting with a group of Zimbabwe-philes - people so taken with the potential for Zimbabwe to become The Dream African Country they could be called Zimbabwe wannabes - in London, three years ago. Someone made this statement: "The Zimbabwean political crisis is complex." For one thing, most political crises have their complex element, usually forged by those promoting the status quo but anxious to disguise their positions with a lot of jawbreakers. For another thing, politics, not being an exact science, is filled with contradictions because the practitioners are usually motivated by faith in their capacity to sell to their constituents half-truths as the genuine article.In Zimbabwe, you have to remove this veneer of intricacies: and voila! Revealed is a political party and its leader who know they made monumental blunders, for which they must be punished by the voters. Neither the leader nor the party has ever confronted defeat graciously. Moreover, there are all these skeletons in their closets, some of them real, the remains of citizens killed in "moments of madness". To postpone The Day of Judgement, both want to hang on until their cleansing of all guilt is assured, or those capable of making the guilt stick have been eliminated by constant "bashing", or worse. The water and power persecution of the urban population has been seen as part of Zanu PF's plan to cow these pro-opposition voters. This has been strenuously denied by The Accused, Your Worship. Yet somehow, the guilt won't wash off. The people so persecuted have already declared Enough is Enough! That has not moved The Accused to confess their guilt. What's Plan B, after realising Enough is Enough is not Enough?

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