via Politicsweb – Mugabe: What is Thabo Mbeki smoking? – FEATURES by Rhoda Kadalie
Rhoda Kadalie says the former president is still the same old nationalist dinosaur he has always been
So geriatric Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF wins another election at age 89, starting his seventh term in office. Suddenly the incorrigible former President Thabo Mbeki appears, on TV, from hibernation, extolling the virtues of the ‘free election’ and announcing that the “people have spoken” and that their “rights to self-determination” and to choose their leaders be respected.
What is he smoking?
Although the election was declared peaceful, thousands of Zimbabweans were denied the vote. Intimidation is par for the course, hence the US, UK and Australia, have, rightly, questioned the legitimacy of these elections. Yet President Jacob Zuma, echoed the utterances of his bête noir, Mbeki, urging opposition to accept the “harmonised elections” as “an expression of the will of the people.” Peas in a pod, Mbeki and Zuma are connected by this arcane sense of African nationalist solidarity, as much as they think they are different.
Stalking around the globe as though sanitized by Zuma’s dishevelled administration, Mbeki is still the same old nationalist dinosaur he has always been, with his African Renaissance and NEPAD in tatters. Unceremoniously recalled from office, Mbeki has learnt nothing with the benefit of hindsight.
While claiming Nelson Mandela as their national hero, both he and Zuma are too far removed from the modern icon’s wise decision to leave high office after one term. The antithesis of Madiba, they continue to elevate African leaders who personify governance with their own egos.
Zimbabwe exemplifies, par excellence, that deep reluctance of presidents to leave office. An online reporter so aptly put it: “Mugabe … has led Zimbabwe for so long that his defiant persona is embedded in the national identity of a country that has suffered economic turmoil, Western sanctions, periodic spasms of violence and periodic mass emigration to neighbouring South Africa.”
The longer these African despots stay, the deeper their tentacles reach into the largesse of the economy, twinned with the belief that they have the divine right to rule for life. Behaving every inch like pre-capitalist chiefs, they reduce the electorate to perpetual minors who cannot choose what is best for them, despite claims to “self-determination”, code for “we shall determine what is good for you.”
More seriously, the Zimbabwe elections are not really about the right to vote; it is about the military’s hold on power and their vested economic interests, inextricably linked to Mugabe’s vested interests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and his seizure of prime land and farms in Zimbabwe.
The wily Mugabe’s tentacles have penetrated even the United States’ Democratic Party. News have just emerged that he tried to influence two of their lawmakers from Chicago to lobby Congress to lift economic sanctions against his country “after being targeted by an illegal $3.4 million lobbying scheme, according to FBI testimony unsealed in federal court” (reported by Emma Dumain from Roll Call 7 August 2013). The report continues: “Two other Chicagoans, Prince Asiel Ben Israel and C. Gregory Turner, are charged with accepting millions in illegal payments from Zimbabwe officials to lobby U.S. lawmakers to remove sanctions against the African nation.”
This partly explains the 89-year old’s survival, made possible by such corrupt partnerships, chief amongst them South Africa’s ANC leaders, the African Union, Zimbabwe’s military, international lobbyists (as those mentioned above), and God alone knows who else.
These institutions do not care a jot about Mugabe’s legacy because they know, that they will install their cronies, after his death, to perpetuate the corrupt status quo. Central to this plot is to weaken opposition – a sine qua non for the survival of African liberation movements in government.
This article first appeared in Die Burger
COMMENTS
Mbeki is obviously smoking weed. Well said Africans will never known freedom with the current crop of leaders. It true that every man or woman has got a price!!! If not can anyone explain the sorry state of African leadership.
That means Zimbabwe, just leave Mugabe and his people ,western countries and other countries where is your problem? What favour do you want from us ….. Zimbabwe is for Zimboz.
why is the writer seem t have a euro centric view? Does it mean that if australia,US and UK are not accepting zim results then everyone must follow suit?i think yu are totally lost.if they ok wth results then why labelling them,so what yu wanted was for tsvangirai to win so that election become free and credible,manje iwe nevamwe vako makamama,go hang
Rather hang yourself. There is a substantial volume of evidence that the election was rigged. There is a substantial volume of reports showing that the intimidation of rural voters was going on last year and at the beginning of this year. The South African Government has spent millions in legal fees to stop the release of a report that shows Mugabe rigged the 2002 elections. It is common cause that Mugabe refused to and did not comply with the GPA. It is common cause that the ZEC and Registrar General failed to comply with the minimum SADC requirements for free and fair elections and as of todays date the voters roll is still not released by Mudede because it will show how he used it to rig the elections. The writer is an eloquent educated woman (unlike yourself)whose own family were victims of apartheid and what she wants to know is why Mbeki chose to ignore the obvious and try to santitise the rigged Zimbabwe election when there are 2 million Zimbawean refugees in South Africa, which South Africa cannot afford.
Africaners in SA ,US and UK believes in their supremacy. Sorry you guys can do that in your countries not Zim. Zimbabwe will never be a colony again. People wants to use economics to be in charge like what happens in SA. That will not work in Zim. We had an election and the better candidate won !
Hypocrite Mbeki! What about the will of the people in the previous elections?
Am just wondering, is it a crime to have a different view? I am not foreign meaning i am citizen, i, like so many others did not vote zanu pf. Again, like so many others vouch that the election was not free and fair. Does that in any way make me less Zimbabwean or unpatriotic. Myopic analysis of facts doss not help us resolve this national conflict and i must hasten to point out that you can feel an underlying sense of fear in the ‘victors’ in this 2013 election just like all the other plebiscites since year 2000. Why?? It must be because of a deficiency of LEGITIMACY.
Mbeki has something to gain by his utterance. So does Zuma and all the others. We just not sure yet what. Eventually we shall know. Mugabe is playing games with Zimbabweans and making a fool of himself. How can he tell us that majority of us loves him. I sure know that there are few who love Mugabe, but these are those who reaping where they did not saw. They has been bought by the abundance of resources that are being swayed away from the deserving majority.
One day our children will learn and read about these fools who’ve no ambitions and aspirations. They can’t think of themselves or anyone running the country except for Mugabe. Mugabe tells themthey are not ready and they say yes chef. Idiots and very useless blind followers of Mugabe.
All they can do is fo kill at their masters command. They are blinkered and programmed to obey without questions asked. History will speak of these weak man and women who have been turned into zombies.
The truth shall be known, and the wicked will be exposed for all to see.
Better must come Zimbabwe. God bless.
It’s not even interesting. He is smoking a pipe now ‘Die Burger off’.
He is smoking beetle dung. We r in deep crap bcoz of him.
I have come to the conclusion why he is still alive to steal our oxygen as well as elections…..because neither heaven nor hell want him!!!!
Thabo Mbeki is Mugabe other wife so to say!!
Mbeki was simply acting according to the interests of his country, complised of people who take great joy in lighting foreigners on fire.