Enough jive talking, Mugabe must comply

Both ZANU-PF and the MDC-T have recklessly spent the trust they got from the people.

Robert Mugabe accepted people’s accolades, encouragement and respect yet he spat into the faces of those who adored and believed in him well enough to make him president of Zimbabwe for more than thirty years.

Mugabe has always been an unthankful man who accuses the very same people who are trying to rebuild a country he destroyed, calling them traitors.

I dare you to look back and find any time that Mugabe ever took anyone’s advice. He never listened to anyone.

Mugabe has a defect, unrelated to age, that prompts him to do those things that hurt other people. He has a delusion, worsened by fear.

He specialises in vindictiveness, which has ruined many good citizens of our country.

Now he is old, tired.

The demons of those wandering spirits, whose lives he unnecessarily and evilly cut short, are haunting him.

His power is fading while his spirit is burning.

Enough is enough, I say!

Africa must wake up and put a stop to the madness in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabweans must take a stand and put a stop to this nonsense that Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF continue to use to stall progress towards the normalisation of the situation in our country.

Mugabe stalls progress at the expense of many well-wishing countries, organisations and individuals who feel that they have an affinity with us and our country.

The rot has to stop. And it must stop now.

Over the years, many countries, near and far, have shown a keen interest in the normalisation of the political and economic situation in our country. They showed patience with us while believing that the Zimbabwean people, who had waged Africa’s most resilient and successful liberation war than any other African country ever witnessed, would get their act together and show the world that they fought for democracy, justice and equality and would eventually find their footing and bring peace and development to their country.

Not only did our leaders do the opposite, they went on to murder thousands of our compatriots from as far back as 1982, shamefully, only two years after Zimbabwe gained its independence.

There was no talking to Robert Mugabe, who had set out to plug all holes of dissent while trying to impose a one-party state on our nation.

‘Opposition leaders’, like Joshua Nkomo and Ndabaningi Sithole, who genuinely wanted to make peace and negotiate with Mugabe, were humiliated and, subsequently, accused of attempting to overthrow Mugabe’s government.

All of them were accused of treason and attempting to assassinate Mugabe.

Joshua Nkomo, targeted for assassination, was humiliatingly forced to flee his country.

Sithole was harassed, arrested countless times and appeared before court many times to answer to charges of attempting to kill Mugabe and seize power.

Years and years after incessant harassment by Mugabe, both Nkomo and Sithole died under separate circumstances that, we were told, were not political.

Nkomo died as Vice President of Zimbabwe in 1999, clearly a post he did not deserve, after Mugabe had somehow made Nkomo accept that PF-ZAPU disbands and join Mugabe’s party.

For me, it was difficult to accept Nkomo serving under Mugabe or for Nkomo to be Mugabe’s deputy. Nkomo gave too much to his unthinking compatriots.

Nkomo should have been president at that time, maybe, just maybe, we would not be in such a rut today.

I hope Nkomo’s capitulation taught us that we need not give up fighting for our own principles, just to show unity with an opposition entity. Unity does not mean abandoning a vision for our nation to adopt those of another political party to show solidarity and unity.

I am only trying to show the man we are dealing with, Robert Mugabe, who does not deserve anyone’s ear or sympathy.

The heart of the matter is that the leaders of SADC and those of the African Union, who continue to give Mugabe space, are the morons who are killing our people.

I fail to understand why some incompetent man like Jacob Zuma ended up being president of South Africa.

But then, if South Africans voted for Thabo Mbeki, who they later recalled, what should we expect?        

South Africa will not wake up because, like any other nation, its interests are internal.

Zuma cannot solve simple problems in his own country and we expect him to deal with Zimbabweans who are, believe it or not, much more keyed up and knowledgeable than South Africans.

Oh, dare me, please; Zimbabwe is the best country in Africa, if only we could get rid of these politicians.

Regional groupings, the African Union, international organisations and governments and, above all, the people of Zimbabwe themselves must band together and put a stop to ZANU-PF’s antics to retard the advancement of our nation.

Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF have, for years, stalled talks and still refuse to implement all of the outstanding GPA issues they agreed to.

The South Africans are always flying into Zimbabwe to “kick start the stalled constitution-making process”.

For a very long time, Zuma ‘forgot’ all about Zimbabwe, as he always does, but “jetted into Zimbabwe” a few days before the SADC Summit in Maputo, Mozambique, from where he was to give an update on Zimbabwe when his police massacred 34 striking miners who were demanding nothing but decent wages.

Zuma gladly left Maputo because of the crisis in his country only for us to see the victims being charged for murdering their striking comrades…just like in Zimbabwe.

Forget about African solutions to African problems.

Zuma, like Mbeki, wants endless talks because he has no solutions.

We are tired of talks, mediators and facilitators.

They have achieved absolutely nothing since they adopted the Zimbabwean crisis.

The talks between ZANU-PF and the two MDC formations, on one hand, and South African presidents and SADC, on the other, have been ongoing since the days of Thabo Mbeki and we have not seen any movement except for things getting worse for the people of Zimbabwe while so-called mediators and facilitators fly in and out of Zimbabwe without making and noticeable headway.

Why shouldn’t South Africans love their colony of Zimbabwe? It’s not like they can’t solve the crisis in Zimbabwe if they wanted.

They are taking care of their “territorial governor”, Robert Mugabe, a steward of their property.

South African business is making a killing in Zimbabwe so why would any sane South African president want the situation in Zimbabwe to improve or get back to normal?

Things are clear enough.

To hell with SADC.

To hell with South Africa, which has become not only Africa’s Big Brother but a coloniser in its own right.

Africa is better off without SADC, without the African Union. Africa is better off without its presidents.

I do not understand how these SADC presidents, who have a plethora of problems in their own countries, can solve similar problems elsewhere in the region.

Believe me, Jacob Zuma cannot and will never solve the Zimbabwean issue. If he does, he fails at home. If he doesn’t, he fails at home and abroad.

Meanwhile, South African business does not want him to succeed for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile, the MDC-T clearly has joined the gravy train and the expulsion from the party of small corrupt fish does not hoodwink into believing that the MDC-T is still the people’s choice.

We, Zimbabweans, are our own liberators.

I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, Thursday, September 6^th, 2012.