Why did he do it?

They intercepted a white farmer and his family on a mountain road and watched as they were murdered. He then went on to derail a train and was betrayed and arrested. In the subsequent trial he was sentenced to death, he was saved by the intervention of a Catholic Priest and spent the next 10 years in Prison in Harare.

Released under an amnesty, he was deported to Zambia where he became a lawyer and promptly left to join Zanla in Mozambique where he spent the rest of the war of liberation. On returning to Zimbabwe, he became the youngest Minister in the new Government and then served the new leadership faithfully for 37 years. I wrote his biography and when we discussed what to call it, we agreed on “A Life of Sacrifice”. I still agree with that title, but it was also true of thousands who gave everything to win majority rule and dignity for the indigenous people.

When he was sworn in as President in front of 60 000 people and hundreds of dignitaries from the whole world in 2018, I sat in the Stadium and heard a brilliant speech of acceptance of this great privilege in which he pledged to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law and to put right all that was wrong in the country he helped bring to freedom. I knew that was genuine because he had called me in November 2017, in the midst of his takeover of the Presidency, to ask me if I would help him put things right. I agreed, after all, I am above all a nationalist.

There is no doubt that he has fulfilled much of that promise in 2018 over the past 8 years. We are a very different country to that which Robert Mugabe left behind in 2017. Still much to do and many problems to tackle but no one can argue that progress has not been made.

So why has he broken the 2013 national Constitution? Those of us who are citizens of this country need and deserve an explanation. I was part of the team that crafted the 2013 Constitution. It was in many ways our first real grass roots Constitution. The Constitution before 1980 was crafted and designed by my ancestors who were white settlers of mainly European decent. They produced a document that followed established global norms in so far as the separation of powers, the rule of law, freedom of religion and of course a franchise which limited control to the 3 per cent white vote.

Then after a 15 year liberation struggle in which tens of thousands died and with the help of the global community and the rest of Africa, we secured freedom under majority rule, the former colonial power, Britain, crafted a new Constitution which came into force in April 1980. Subsequent changes to this document by the new Government sought to concentrate power in one Party and in central authority. Opposition was eliminated, partly by a genocidal campaign against Zapu.

By 2008, Zimbabwe was a failed State, nearly totally isolated from the world, life expectancy collapsed, millions on food aid. Faced with a flood of economic refugees from Zimbabwe, South Africa intervened and the 2009 Unity Government was the result. After 3 years of rapid recovery, we sat down as a Nation, to craft our first truly indigenous Constitution. We held thousands of meetings across the country, we debated and argued over every sentence, almost every word. Eventually it was done and we published the result and asked the people to endorse what we had done.

In the subsequent referendum, millions voted and nearly 94 per cent of the vote was in favour of this new dispensation.

How important is a constitution? I think this question is easily answered by the experience of the United States of America. In 1876, after defeating the attempts of Britain to maintain its colonial grip on the continent, the 13 States on the Eastern seaboard came together in Philadelphia and drafted a constitution on three pages. This has stood the test of time over the past 250 years and created a country of 350 million people and given them the highest income per capita in history. In the process, creating a super power who has dominated much of the past two centuries.

Another example of the importance of these national documents is perhaps the history of China after Mao Zedong is another example. Like Mugabe, Mao had led China through the Civil war and unified the country under centralized Communist leadership. But under his leadership China remained isolated and poor. Tens of millions died of poverty and hunger. The wild attempts at industrialization and radicalization led to massive suffering and the collapse of leadership.

Then came the new leadership and with it new principles for management of this vast country. Like the US Constitution, not long winded but a few critical principles. China shook off the shackles of history and in a short period of 50 years has become the second largest economy in the world, lifted a billion people out of poverty into middle, even upper income class. China today bears no resemblance to the China of Mao.

Those of us who have held power in Zimbabwe since 1980 have to answer for how we have done. It’s not pretty, no local currency, we import the great majority of what we buy every day. Our infrastructure is in a terrible state – railways barely operating, Air Zimbabwe a joke, ZESA a bankrupt shadow of its past and unable to meet our needs. Our farm sector remains shattered from a failed reform process; our state schools are turning out kids who cannot count or read. Our state hospitals cannot meet the basic needs of their patients. 90 per cent of adults must make their living from the informal sector and remittances or gold mining.

Despite our Government, Zimbabwe is now doing quite well but is unable to meet the basic needs of our people. Our educated young people look to other countries for any real sort of a career. At Independence we projected our 2025 population at over 32 million. It was half that, the rest in foreign countries trying to make a living and enough to allow them to send money home.

So why did Emmerson Mnangagwa break his promises in 2018, why did he violate to basic principles we adopted in 2013? I find it impossible to understand, because it was not necessary. Our Constitution was meeting our needs as a country, we had started trying to run proper democratic elections, our few international friends were helping us restructure our national debt, unserviced for nearly 30 years. After nearly 100 years under some form of sanctions for violations of law and human rights, we were throwing off those shackles, now we threaten all that progress, why?

It was not to protect his legacy – he has in fact put that in jeopardy. It was to not to correct any fundamentals in our economy, Mthuli is doing what he can but there are things he cannot touch. It was not to bring corruption under control, the worst of the individuals responsible for corruption that makes the Gupters in South Africa look like amateurs, flaunt their wealth in public. Was it to control the transition to the next generation of national leadership? Perhaps, but why, our generation has failed the task given to us by the people who died to win our freedom in 1980, if anything the transition is overdue.