Source: Stop the fights, Mr President – DailyNews Live
7 June 2017
HARARE – President Robert Mugabe is 93. At that ripe age, he is
surprisingly sprite and energetic, although he seems to have lost the
touch and the magic that helped him steer the country during very
difficult periods.
Indeed the spirit appears to be willing but the body is tired – both
mentally and physically – as he fails to negotiate situations he would
have dealt with easily at his prime.
Now the country is facing an uncertain future because of his failure to
bring to order his warring lieutenants, who are already thinking of life
after him.
Like most long-suffering but patriotic Zimbabweans, those in Zanu PF also
want a departure from the status quo and a dawn of a new era characterised
by prosperity and equal opportunities, job creation and respect for human
rights.
It is trite that Zanu PF’s dangerous brinkmanship game has become a threat
to the country’s peace and the concern to any right-thinking Zimbabwean is
Mugabe’s inability to not only denounce factionalism, which is now
ubiquitous, but punish those fanning it.
If this is not a clear indication that the nonagenarian has lost it and is
now out of sync with what the country is going through, then Zimbabweans
are in for a gnashing of teeth.
Zimbabweans are suffering, and this is illustrated by hordes of vendors
lining the country’s urban streets yet the ministers who are supposed to
offer solutions and provide direction are busy lampooning each other in
newspapers, spawning chaos.
There is no need for those in Zanu PF, who have no ideological differences
but are just tearing each other apart in the blind pursuit of power,
dragging the whole country into the mud, to hold the dreams of a nation to
ransom and Mugabe, as the principal, has the keys to end this.
It is sad that Mugabe misses opportunities such as his address to the
ruling party’s youths to announce his succession plan by encouraging free
debate which is currently an anathema in the crisis-ridden party.
Is Mugabe surrounded by liars and greedy individuals to the extent that he
does not see that it is his bad policies and not targeted sanctions that
are causing untold suffering on the masses, or the nonagenarian is now
divorced from the present that anything affecting people is no concern of
his.
Mugabe, whose long stay in power is largely due to a combination of brutal
force, propaganda and manipulation is, of course, cosy in the belief that
he is still adored, but honestly, the emperor has no clothes.
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