via Tolerating bad governance – NewsDay Zimbabwe March 22, 2016
In Zimbabwe, suffering is no longer a heavily-guarded State secret. Turmoil and misery litter the land as ordinary people struggle to make ends meet.
Masola wa Dabudabu
Despite the suffering, people live in harmony because of the natural bond of love imposed by virtue of being humans.
The suffering is affecting children’s developmental milestones and their progress at school.
In any language or creed, children deserve to be smothered in love. Zimbabwean children, who face abject poverty, are maturing rapidly as if nature desires to empower them with the necessary skills to seduce their way out of suffering.
Their accelerated maturity always invites sexual exploitation from a cruel world.
Children born out of love are finding relief by selling their fragile bodies for the gratification of perverts.
Any country that degenerates to a point where children resort to sexual activity for survival is a country gone to the dogs. Woof, woof, the dogs bark!
For a number of Zimbabweans, both old and young, sexual activity has become a source of income.
Suffering has begotten promiscuity and promiscuity is threatening to destroy the core of nationhood. Jobless women supplement their family incomes by engaging in prostitution.
Despite the prevalence of the deadly HIV virus, people are willing to risk their lives by engaging in sexual activities for a pittance.
What an irony: people are seeking to perpetuate life by dicing with a virus that can cause slow and painful death.
It is all a sadistic love triangle; the country exudes a false air of love and harmony; the people are engaging in embraces of love that are loveless as a desperate means of survival and to complete the trilogy, President Robert Mugabe, the man at the top, claims to love us all.
An observer with a neutral view would agonise on whether Zimbabweans deserve to be applauded for the humility with which they face relentless adversity or whether they need to be nudged towards spontaneous mass action against the deeply entrenched ruling establishment.
Preliminary indications are that Zimbabweans would not do anything to free themselves from their tormentors.
It is only meek Zimbabweans who can tolerate the amount of disrespect and humiliation from a bunch of elected politicians. The people choose to remain silent and the ruling party takes the silence for consent.
When will Zimbabwe experience her own Phoenician moment and rise from her current ashes?
Without a shade of doubt, blame for the sorry state of affairs lies squarely on Mugabe’s hands.
His party has done everything humanly possible to ensure that the suffering does not abate.
Zanu PF assumes that Zimbabwe exists because of concerted efforts by its membership.
The governing party is under the false impression that it single-handedly liberated the country from the clutches of colonialism.
For this reason, the ruling establishment has an expectation that Zimbabwe will forever pay homage to it.
Mugabe has even audaciously resorted to hibernate in this oversold “champion of the liberation war” tag and he does this with a degree of arrogance added to that too.
The ruling clique is busy engaging in unforgivable political transgressions with impunity while the people look the other way.
The State continues to pursue unproductive economic strategies with the aid of a bloated Cabinet that strains the meagre resources at hand.
The government has failed to demand proper payments from foreign firms that are exploiting and depleting the country’s resources.
The government has been sleeping while resources were being plundered. Tendai Biti, who was the Finance minister during the GNU, earned the cry-baby label for decrying the inaccessibility of proceeds from the diamond operations.
Only a few days ago, the erstwhile minister was absolved when Mugabe shamelessly admitted that the country had failed to realise any benefits from the overly-hyped diamond rush at Chiadzwa.
The President triggered a debate guided by speculations that the nation lost about $15 billion worth of diamonds to unscrupulous partners.
This is sacrilege of treasonable proportions. In any truly democratic nation, heads would be rolling by now. How can $15 billion disappear from the radar just like that?
What humbles even the thickest skinned thief is that Zimbabweans are not asking questions as to where the money went.
The stinking bit is that the government is not in a hurry to seek restitution from the culprits responsible for this grand theft of one of Zimbabwe’s lifelines.
Is there a chance that the people will know who exactly took the money? Not that this will give the people any comfort but let it be mentioned that it was not De Beers that swindled the proceeds from the diamond mining ventures.
It was neither BHP Billiton nor Rio Tinto Group that somehow misappropriated a huge chunk of the expected earnings.
This heinous act of depriving the people of Zimbabwe of their earnings was carried out by Zanu PF’s friends from the Far East with the connivance of the local mafia.
The Zimbabwe government roughly had a 50% stake in each diamond mining entity. This gave the government equal powers in the decision-making matrix.
With such control vested on our government, foreign partners would not have been so bold as to conjure ways of smuggling the light-refracting product in the wee hours without Zanu PF and its military contingent sniffing them out. Someone was definitely sleeping on duty.
The reason of the country’s current state of disrepair and pennilessness is because the Comptroller-General has been napping.
The people have neglected their responsibility of Comptroller-General by not making their concerns heard.
The people are tolerating bad governance by shying away from telling Mugabe that all is not well.
It is not sedition when suffering people stand up to share their suffering. If people continue to sulk in silence, Zanu PF will also continue to suck their blood for the joy of it.
● Masola waDabudabu writes in his personal capacity
COMMENTS
WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET! !!!MY DOGS ARE TOO SMART TO ACCEPT THIS COUNTRY GONE TO THE DOGS!!!!!!!!!
there is no doubt that governance by the mugabe governance is abysmal.
all the socio-economic and human rights indicators are amongst the worst in the world.
however despite this, zanu pf legislators and war veterans are constantly praising mugabe and the government. they refuse to even look at reality.
surely as a nation we should be able to assess our condition with openness and honesty and thus make changes and adjustments to improve.
but that is not the case. critics of mugabe disappear and are killed, like the martyr Dzamara.
citizens have to review their tolerance of mugabe’s behaviour and their right to demand change.
In their euphoria for Jongwe, the people were willing to let ZANU do a two-footed challenge on ZAPU and thereby get into power.
Little did they know of the monster that ZANU, is.
Too late now of course and sometimes a people have to suffer before they see the light.