Someone tell Mugabe that the bus has left 

Source: Someone tell Mugabe that the bus has left – NewsDay Zimbabwe November 21, 2017

What President Robert Mugabe is effectively doing is to pretend that he does not know what has been happening in the past week.

Learnmore Zuze

This is a sly art of deceit that he has mastered well over his decades of misrule.

He would pretend that he knows little of the people’s suffering, instead telling international gatherings that his people are willing to die for him.

He would, with ease, ignore calls to appoint a successor. The man, again, would pretend that there is no crisis in the country.

This is the same trick he tried to call upon yester night, but the message reverberating across Zimbabwe is unequivocal.

“When a leader no longer has the support of the people then that is the time he should quit politics,” Mugabe himself said these words in 2002.

This is the same man who, today, is clinging onto power despite emphatic rejection by almost every living creature on Zimbabwean soil.

Mugabe is clearly a man living in his own world by attempting to ignore continued calls for him to step down.

There is no doubt that he saw the thousands on Saturday who rejected him.

It is hypocritical and unacceptable that a man wants to force himself on a nation that has overruled him.

It is ironical that while the world had feared that events leading to the clipping of his wings by the army would trigger civil unrest, it is now his very obstinacy that threatens to ignite social upheaval and necessitate another demonstration.

Mugabe’s Sunday night speech, devoid of substance, is a classic case study in ignoring what is before one’s eyes and what is clear even to the blind.

The man is apparently abusing the residual respect, as he acknowledges in his speech, accorded to him in the entire operation by the military command.

They never roughed him up which they could have done. He is exploiting the military command’s respect for the Constitution by trying to cling on to power that is long gone.

He has to be helped by experts in the field of psychology to accept that the bus has left.

Mugabe is behaving like a grieving widow who won’t accept that she has lost a spouse and the process cannot be reversed.

Apart from his well-documented obstinacy, it is clear the man needs experts in psychology and psychiatry who can make his mind come to terms with what is irreversible.

How can he be talking of something as useless as the ZimAsset and the coming rains at a time when his own party and the nation at large have rejected him?

Suppose by some unaccounted for process he gets back to power, who does he want to rule?

He has, by definition, become the very leader he described ahead of the 2002 election who has no support of the people. There is nothing new that Mugabe can address now which he failed to address in the last 37 years. His speech is irrelevant to say the least.

The war veterans, youth, the opposition, Zanu PF in general and the legislature have stood in unison that he must resign, yet the man won’t accept reality.

It also gives credence to the widely held view that dementia could be at play. While it may sound rather comic, it may be very close to the truth that what Mugabe needs as a matter of urgency are those specialists who have been thoroughly schooled to break unpalatable messages to the grieving.

So far we know the man has been in intense talks with the military command, with Roman Catholic priest, Father Fidelis Mukonori mediating.

While these men have done well to handle a delicate situation, there is little doubt that Mugabe has not accepted the truth staring him in the face.

Many, who are familiar with the well-known stages of the grieving process as enunciated by behavioural scientist Elizabeth-Kubler Ross, can attest to what is happening to Mugabe.

There isn’t the remotest possibility of him coming to rule over organs and a people that emphatically rejected him.

Mugabe must come out of the denial stage. It is understandable, having ruled Zimbabwe for almost four decades and escaping electoral defeats through ballot fraud, Mugabe is without doubt unable to reconcile himself to what has just happened.

He was not prepared for it and never saw it coming. It is common place for human beings to take slightly long in the denial stage, but then Mugabe must see that he is holding the nation captive. Life has to return to normalcy.

True, impeachment, with its legal intricacies is the next inevitable step, but is it necessary?

Mugabe is proving to be a kind of Pharaoh. A true leader would derive satisfaction from leading a people who acknowledge his leadership.

It’s unfortunate that Mugabe has rejected a dignified exit. Either way now, he will leave power in a disgraceful way.

Learnmore Zuze is a law officer and writes in his own capacity. E-mail: lastawa77@gmail.com