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Zimbabwe rising: The defeat of 'history teacher' Mugabe
Rejoice Ngwenya
July 29, 2013

In this of my last Xtreme Opinion piece ever [when man has to pursue other literary, artistic, intellectual and business interests] let me unleash a penultimate shot. This Wednesday 31 July, progressive Zimbabwean Voters will stab the last nail in the political casket of Robert Mugabe and his rogue ZANU-PF cowboys. On that day, we Zimbabweans will indulge in a collective orgy of exorcising an authoritarian demon that has tormented us for 33 years. We have been victims in our own - as Alvin Toffler says - ‘country that violates the rights of its own citizens - [a country that] is an outlaw and can claim no rights.’

MDC supporters and undecided voters already understand this message. Yet the fundamentalist fanatics, those thousands deceived by Mugabe’s expropriating antics and food handouts are enslaved. My advice: give Mugabe a single vote this coming Wednesday and you have condemned Zimbabwe to another five-year spree of looting, pillaging and plunder in the guise of indigenisation. Our memories cannot be that short! How many millions of villagers forced, since 1980, to sing ZANU-PF slogans can claim to even have ‘benefited’ from greed, venality and corruption? Why then, they should ask, is this 89-year old man so desperate for power when there are hundreds of younger people in ZANU-PF who can contest?

So you want to vote for Mugabe? From 1999, he has evicted thousands of grain producing commercial farmers. This year, Zimbabwe will import maize meal from Zambian farms run by the same ‘whites’ he expelled. Millions of Zimbabweans are still refugees in South Africa, exposed to xenophobia and abject poverty thanks to Mugabe and ZANU-PF. Mugabe’s obsession with expanding the army and police diverted billions of dollars from water, electricity, rail, roads, hospitals and schools which only recovered with the GNU.

For five years, Mugabe watched helplessly as Zimbabweans pushed wheelbarrows piled with Zimbabwean dollars after hyperinflation had reached an unprecedented 200,000,000%. Grocery stores and supermarkets were empty as Zimbabweans scrambled for food in South Africa and Botswana. This decimated local industry and turned most towns into ghost areas. ZANU-PF has lied that current indigenisation and economic empowerment polices benefit villagers. Only the elite and Mugabe’s cronies own shares, drive big cars and have big homes in Durban. Diamond mines in Manicaland should have given the nation two billion US dollars, but this money evaporates in the pockets of ZANU-PF praise-singers. More than 60 percent of Zimbabweans are poor while the latest surveys show poverty levels in Matabeleland North at 80% - credit to Mugabe and ZANU-PF! ‘Comrade’ Obert Mpofu is definitely not part of these grim statistics!

Recently, we were embarrassed by South Africans who switched off television transmission to Zimbabwean viewers - why - because Mugabe and ZANU-PF have refused to reform the media. For thirty years, they have only specialised in closing newspapers, arresting and intimidating journalists.

Let me conclude. People of Matabeleland, twenty thousand of your family members were murdered, and millions displaced by ZANU-PF and Mugabe’s Gukurahundi without compensation. You also expressed questions over the death of Lookout Masuku and the humiliation of Joshua Nkomo. Citizens of Manicaland are yet to benefit from Marange diamonds. Had Hebert Chitepo been alive, would you be so miserable? The Midlands is rich in platinum and chrome, yet the people are poor. Josiah Tongogara indeed died in vain.

On Wednesday, 31 July 2013, Zimbabwe rises up to make Robert Mugabe history.

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