When a president celebrates while people die around him – Tanonoka Joseph Whande

via When a president celebrates while people die around him by Tanonoka Joseph Whande | SW Radio Africa February 24, 2014

Under normal circumstances, living to age 90 would be cause for celebration. It would be an indication of how the gods have decreed.

In our case, watching Mugabe cause so much misery, rule violence, kill people and destroy the nation, it is difficult to tell on whose side the gods, not God, are.

It is a worrisome issue of why good things happen to bad people while the good die you.

When Robert Mugabe or any of his ZANU-PF people speak about the war of liberation, one would think they themselves did a wonderful job.

They ignore the fact that they survived because they are cowards and conniving thieves.

The brave ones died to liberate people like Robert Mugabe himself. What we see today is not what the people died for during the war of liberation.

Every day, we witness something ZANU-PF does against the people. They are so self-centered that the deaths of people no longer bother them.

They cause deaths of innocent people and say they are protecting the nation from us.

Nothing confirms the insensitivity of Mugabe and his bootlickers than the amount of money used to celebrate Mugabe’s birthday at a time the nation is in financial distress and at the very moment when our compatriots are left to fend for themselves during and after the Tokwe-Mukosi disaster.

As Phyllis Mbanje of the Standard aptly observed, losing a home, along with a lifetime’s collection of belongings, robs an individual of their self-esteem and sense of worth.

Apart from pooling national resources and being with the disaster victims, a normal president would have been with the people, comforting them and giving them hope while instilling a sense of belonging.

Instead, Mugabe is such a coward that he flies, at taxpayers’ expense, to Singapore whenever he thinks there is some speck of dust in his eye.

How do ZANU-PF adherents themselves feel at such show of selfishness?

While thousands of displaced Tokwe-Mukosi villagers huddle at a Zimbabwe Red Cross Society transit camp in Masvingo Mugabe and his stooges are putting up a senseless million dollar birthday celebration for a man who permanently extinguished birthdays for thousands of Zimbabweans.

Even if we were to believe the nonsense that no taxpayers’ money was used and that ZANU-PF party faithful raised the money, it still boggles the mind as to why they prefer to fundraise for a useless birthday party and not send a cent to the flood victims elsewhere in the nation.

Is that not appalling enough? Is that not evidence that Zimbabwe is being run by organized criminals? Where is our sense of purpose when we decide that a birthday party is more important than assisting our compatriots ravaged by the floods?

Why did former Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Gideon Gono give Mugabe 90 head of cattle instead of giving even just ten cattle to the flood victims marooned at a transit camp in Masvingo?

There are children and elderly people there, for goodness sake. If evidence is ever needed that Mugabe is an evil demon, we cannot ask for more. And the little greedy devils like Gono are beginning to grow their tails and horns as well.

How can anyone in their right mind celebrate anything at this time in Zimbabwe?

Mugabe himself goes to the British to ask for money to pay fees for poor students while he squanders money on birthdays and endless trips to Singapore as if he will ever get well. Even if he were to get well, so what?

Million dollar birthday celebrations at a time when we are punishing students at our own university with fee hikes instead of assisting them.

The fee hike per semester now sees parents earning less than what their children need at school.

This at a time when all our parastatals are struggling and are embroiled in massive financial chicanery.

These are the same people who say they fought for dignity, freedom and independence yet they stripped us of all dignity; we are still not free and we are not independent.

What Mugabe and his thieves have excelled in is theft, murder and corruption.

And they claim they liberated the nation? This is nationalism?

ZANU-PF is outdoing itself in corruption and thievery. Now I see why Ian Smith called Mugabe and his ZANU-PF “gangsters”.

When will the abuse and rape of the nation end?

Aren’t these people ashamed at all, wining and dining while people are dying around them? What kind of animal is this president who treats the country as if it were his own tuck-shop?

When it comes to milking the nation, they attack as a unit like a pack of wild dogs.

It is painful for us to watch people who used us to free this country mercilessly riding on our backs while subjecting us to the worst living standards imaginable because these people decided to be corrupt enough to steal from their own people.

I agree that corruption destroys the economic and administrative backbone of a nation.

“The politicians, the bureaucrats and the criminals gain at the cost of the common man…the people remain poverty stricken…”

Corruption leads to economic stagnation and both the people and the nation suffer.

Corruption creates poverty and the people suffer; corruption hinders the nation’s growth.

But ZANU-PF “stalwarts” do not care about all this. They want more and they are taking more than they need. That is the unfortunate thing about greed; you just amass what is not yours while the next person starves to death.

With corruption, the poor stand no chance of improving their lives and yet a government is in existence to improve the people’s lot.

The state of affairs in our country cannot be allowed to continue.

I know that, one day, Mugabe and his people will go on trial for these heinous crimes. Those who survive will pay dearly for these transgressions, which are literally killing our nation, our children and our people.

We have killed three generations already and ZANU-PF does not care. Such crimes will not rot; someone is going to pay.

I frequently hear ZANU-PF murderers, from Mugabe all the way down to the fake illiterate war veterans, say, “Zimbabwe yakauya neropa” (Zimbabwe was born out of bloodshed).

We are often reminded of the spilled blood when we resist some diabolical moves forced upon us by our so-called liberators or when we question the way they handle our nation.

They think that having gone to Mozambique to fight for the liberation of Zimbabwe was itself a license to do as they please with us and the country.

They think that crossing into Mozambique gave them the right to own Zimbabwe and to do as they please with it.

The morons think since they used violence to wrestle the nation from colonialists, they must use violence to force people to toe the line.

The heart of the matter is that time will come when Mugabe and his people will answer for all they are doing to the people, to the nation and to the country.

ZANU-PF’s evil is unequaled.

I cannot understand how such a large group of literate men and women can stoop so low as to cause the demise of fellow Zimbabweans while actively destroying our nation.

How can they ignore victims of disaster and fail to provide school fees for the nation’s children while they bake 90kg cakes to celebrate murder and thievery?

How can they not feel for the dying children, starved by their party, or the elderly, driven from their homes by their youths?

Yes, ZANU-PF is right when they say Zimbabwe was born out of blood.

But whose blood?

Mugabe and his thieving aides are the cowards who let others spill their own blood while they survived to take the country out of the dead liberators’ hands…only to ruin it for everybody.

Those who died paid the ultimate prize, not those who survived like Mugabe.

A leader who wines and dines while his people are suffering and dying is no leader. We will get even soon enough and that is not a threat; it is a promise.

I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, Monday, February 24, 2014.