At the closing stage of the Second World War, as the American naval juggernaut was charging across the Pacific Ocean towards Japan, everyone accepted the inevitable; Japan had lost the war. The Japanese people knew the end was near but the military junta of General Hideki Tojo was greatly encumbered from doing the right and honourable thing by a suicidal ego of national proportions. Instead of suing for peace, the junta adopted the suicidal and fatal strategy which entailed sending young pilots flying bomb-laden planes with fuel enough to reach the charging American navy and no more. These were the first air-borne suicide bombers, the Kamikaze bombers. The Japanese succeeded in inflicting huge damage but if they had hoped to forestall the impending defeat, they were badly mistaken. The Kamikaze strategy only hardened the resolve of the Americans who adopted the devastating nuclear option to end the war.
It is a mark of desperation that Comrade Mugabe has now adopted the same sorry Kamikaze strategy to keep his grip on power. Everything is crumbling around him. No government trusts him. George W. Bush brushes off Mugabe’s pretensions to power as illegitimate, as do the Tswana, South African and Nigerian governments. Mugabe’s clique, like the tragic Tojo junta, seems too crippled to do anything else but use brute force to try to stop the inevitable. Common sense says he and his henchmen should pack and go but then common sense is a rare commodity in the circle of lunatics that comprises Mugabe’s ardent followers. Nothing but a clear lack of common sense will lead a man to be humiliatingly told not to show up for a meal and not exhibit a scintilla of embarrassment after suffering such an indignity before the eyes of the whole world. When the world begins to think of a man more as a laughingstock than a president, surely it is time to call it quits.
Mugabe now presides over a country that he and his fellow kleptocrats have hollowed out into a shell. For instance, the health care system has collapsed. Hospitals are now closed. People are dying from preventable diseases. It should not surprise anyone. One of the major defining characteristics of ZANU-PF is its criminal ineptitude. It is this uselessness that has driven doctors, nurses and physiologists out of the country. We are talking about the best medical professionals on the entire continent and, based on anecdotal evidence, better than their western-trained fellow professionals. It is a crying shame that doctors who have decided to stick it out in Mugabe’s fiefdom are paid a monthly salary, if it can be called a salary at all, enough to buy only three loaves of bread. I am sorry but this sounds more like an insult than a salary. Perhaps some born-again Bible thumper in Mugabe’s government can bless the three loaves so they can multiply to a quantity that can feed an entire multitude.
This is ridiculous and yet Mugabe says he is in charge and the majority of the Zimbabwean people are on his side. How can a person claim to be in charge and yet doctors are paid a monthly salary not worth more than fifty United States cents?
If it was Mugabe alone running around making these ludicrous claims we could say these are the veritable quarks of a senile octogenarian, but, alas, even young members of the incompetent gang are making similarly silly claims. I am of the thought they have been eating too much of the melamine-laced food supplied by their dog-eating communist overlords in Beijing. Mugabe’s old age has nothing to do with ZANU-PF’s divorce from reality; it must be some mind-altering additives deliberately spiked into the food by the wicked Chinese so that their Zimbabwean puppets are rendered pliable. When you sup with the Mandarin-speaking devil, especially one that does not have qualms feeding its own children toxic milk, even a long spoon will not save you.
Mugabe is not in control of anything other than the means to beat and murder suffering Zimbabweans. He is helplessly watching his beloved ZANU-PF undergo a spontaneous atomization. Dumiso Dabengwa, Mugabe’s erstwhile ardent enforcer of ZANU-PF decrees picked up his wares in a huff and ran for the tall grass. ZANU-PF Trojan horse, Simba Makoni, after doing enough damage and divide the opposition votes and ensure Mugabe and ZANU-PF remained in power after the March elections has yet to return to the ZANU-PF tent. Does Madzibaba Chinotimba not want his share of ministries, too? He may not be alone in that regards. Rex Nhongo, the man who secured Mugabe’s leadership of ZANU-PF when Tongogara and Samora Machel wanted Mugabe thrown overboard, is also demanding ten ministerial posts. I cannot imagine that demand sitting very well with Comrade Mnangagwa and the diabolically cruel JOC crew. Unsubstantiated rumours have it that the blood-drenched Mnangagwa threw a temper tantrum and showered Mugabe with venomous saliva, apparently venting his displeasure at the course of the negotiations for the government of national unity. If true, it is inconceivable that Mugabe would brook this brand of mouth-frothing insolence and insubordination in complete silence like a neutered bull.
Mugabe may not suffer personal insults targeted at him gladly but, outside personal invective, the disrespectful and blatantly insulting behaviour of his ministers and minions clearly shows their disdain for his waning power and inability to keep them restrained. A consignment of illicit maize presumably belonging to Ignatius Chombo, Mugabe’s trusted minion, was impounded by the police. Like Chombo, ZANU-PF minister Flora Bhuka poked a finger into Mugabe eye by ordering local policemen to seize a government-protected sugarcane farm. We hear of someone exporting scarce maize seeds to South Africa at a shockingly low price. It should not come as a surprise if it turns out that it is one of Mugabe’s ministers insulting their benefactor by taking the sparse seeds to South Africa so as to peddle it at an extortionate price to the Zimbabwean diaspora desperate to buy seeds for their kinfolk.
This behaviour of the ZANU-PF parasites is symptomatic of the decay and erosion of Mugabe’s power. It is doubtful they would engage in such manifest criminal activity if they did not know that all is lost as far as ZANU-PF is concerned. Like the Japan of General Tojo, Mugabe’s malfunctioning government, or whatever he thinks as a government, is all but a goner. He can dispense favours to his thoughtless generals but even that cannot last into perpetuity. Lest we forget, these generals have relatives dying of starvation and cholera as well. Sooner or latter, the shelf-life of that patronage tactic will wear thin, fray and snap. It is simply postponing the inevitable and, mark my words, it will make the coming ZANU-PF collapse and emollition much more agonizing for these parties than it would have if they had graciously accepted the clear verdict of the voters in March.
Mugabe and his henchmen are staring down the abyss. Harare, once a beautiful metropolis with streets lined with luxuriant jacaranda trees has now been reduced to a huge swamp choking with raw sewage. It is not just Harare but Bulawayo, Mutare and pretty much every town that depends on water-borne sanitation that has been crippled by the lack of water and a consistent supply of electricity. Harare reeks of sewage and is blanketed in smoke. Mugabe and ZANU-PF have metaphorically and practically stunk up the whole joint and, mysteriously, they still want to be in charge.
It is apparent that the looming disaster will not sway Mugabe. The man seems to have decided that if he is to go down, he will go with the whole country. He is now Kamikaze Bob. If not driven by desperation, why would they want to provoke a fight with Ian Khama’s government? The world is being told that Botswana is training soldiers to destabilize Zimbabwe. That is a very strange charge given that Mugabe has shown an incredible aptitude for destabilizing Zimbabwe on his own. Like the defeated Japan of General Tojo, ZANU-PF is spoiling for a fight.
The people in ZANU-PF should be careful what they yearn for. Mugabe himself threw down the gauntlet when he declared that the power of a cross on a ballot paper would never supersede that of a gun. Someone may very well pick that gauntlet up. As the adage goes, a famished and crippled dog that is foolish enough to fight with a well-fed and sleek leopard will get killed. What guarantee does ZANU-PF have that they would prevail in such a fight? Such a confrontation may actually precipitate an en masse defection of the last soldiers standing on Mugabe’s side. Surely, one has to be blinded by hubris of epic proportions to believe that soldiers subsisting on beans will forever remain loyal to those who eat and drink as they please.
Moreover, insulting neighbouring countries can be very dangerous, especially in Africa. There is an African precedent. When President Nyerere got tired of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s incessant belligerence and provocations, the regional bacon-eating Moslem raging bull of the East Africa fled to Saudi Arabia following an abject defeat. Idi Amin looked just as fierce as our own Constantine Chiwenga but that did not stop Amin from cutting and running when all hell broke loose.
With help from the erratic pseudo-professor Mutambara, the hapless Mbeki and the supine sad-confreres, Kamikaze Bob hangs onto power. All the shenanigans notwithstanding, events on the ground are clearly conspiring against that ever-weakening grip; precisely the reason ZANU-PF will not let Jimmy Carter, Koffi Anan and Gracia Machel visit Zimbabwe to witness the catastrophic collapse of a once-great nation. The looming urban collapse into a cholera plague and impending starvation in the rural areas are growing exponentially out of control with each passing day. Does Mugabe have enough troops and willing killers to stop the country from exploding? While the common folk may be forced by desperation to fight to regain lost dignity, Mugabe will have to find someone willing to fight and get killed so that he and his wicked gang can retain power and keep their corruptly procured wealth.
If I were near Kamikaze Bob’s nexus of power I would be scared stiff by the ominous congruencies between the twilight of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s governance of Romania and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe nineteen Christmasses later. History has a way of repeating itself and those who choose not to learn from it will pay a hefty price. What happened to Comrade Ceauşescu is the devastating nuclear option of the oppressed and long-suffering masses. Had I been an advisor to ZANU-PF and Comrade Mugabe, I would warn them of history’s allusion to Comrade Ceauşescu
