|
Mugabe playing soccer in the graveyards of Matabeleland
Robert Mugabe continues with his inhuman taunting of people he has abused since being elected into office in 1980.
Mugabe’s unpardonable behaviour shall remain a subject of fascination for sociologists, psychologists and gerontologists for years to come.
He sends his thugs to beat up suspected members of the opposition and when the victims go to the police to report, they are themselves arrested and locked up.
He sends his goons to shoot at opposition politicians, like in the case of the late Patrick Kombayi, and then thumbs his nose at his own judges by pardoning the convicted perpetrators after a costly trial.
And instead of just designating farms and taking them over as he wished, he went the extra mile and watched as his subordinates killed the farm owners.
Mugabe is a deranged and vindictive man as can be attested by the late politicians like Joshua Nkomo, Ndabaningi Sithole and others.
At independence, he lulled the world into a false sense of security by announcing a policy of reconciliation, a welcome decision, especially considering how traumatised the people and the nation were after the long war of liberation.
He was later to turn around and inflict deaths on a misguided and badly executed land reform programme, which could easily have been addressed without the loss of a single life.
When people went to war, it was for Zimbabwe, the land, but Mugabe only tried to do something about the land imbalances after more than twenty years in power and only did that as an effort to prop up his waning political fortunes.
Mugabe was later to use the same freedom fighters who liberated the people and the nation but this time for his own personal ends.
But first, he had to make them hungry by not paying any attention to them and by simply neglecting them as if they never existed.
Once Mugabe and his party were firmly in control of Zimbabwe, they paid little or no attention to the freedom fighters who needed serious attention.
They needed medical care.
They needed psychiatric care after killing so many people and witnessing horrific deaths.
They needed re-training to learn how to survive in a none war situation.
They needed to pick up the pieces educationally, socially and even politically.
They had no skills except the knowledge of assembling an AK 47 rifle in the shortest possible time, yet it was time to lay down arms and live with civil society, something they were totally unequipped for.
They needed re-integration and Mugabe denied them all that.
Today, there is not a single veterans Memorial Hospital in honour of those who died in war and in assistance to those who survived.
After denying them all that, they, of course, became hungry and destitute as they became the poorest of our then thriving nation.
And Mugabe knew when to hook them back, and he did as soon as he noticed that he was no longer popular with the masses.
He gave the war veterans money and unleashed them on an unsuspecting nation.
To this day, it remains one of the most tragic and ironic situations the world has ever witnessed.
How does it feel when the Samaritans, who risked limb and lives to serve their brethren, turn around and start bludgeoning to death those they had served from abuse at the hands of some evil system?
Today, Zimbabweans do not know what to make of it and can only watch as the so-called war veterans, their original emancipators, literally kill the people and plunder the nation they fought so hard to liberate.
And, in the background, like a contended vulture, Mugabe folds his arms and watches in admiration.
The Germans have a word for such a sick mind; they call it schadenfreude – which is pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune or the satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.
Mugabe cannot thrive where there is order or where the people are happy and peaceful.
Like the hyena that benefits from chaos it causes at a kill, Mugabe flourishes on chaos and disorder.
Vampires need blood to survive but for that blood to be available, someone has to lose it; someone has to die so the vampire can live.
We are in trouble.
In the early and mid 80s, Mugabe, in a futile attempt to make himself the only undisputed cock in the chicken run, concocted another of his evil tricks and unleashed the army on the nation, most notably in Matabeleland and Midlands Provinces.
His target was those he thought were supporters of Joshua Nkomo.
The army unit that carried out these barbaric acts was the Fifth Brigade and it was trained by the North Koreans.
The military exercise was code named Gukurahundi, a Shona word that means the early rains that wash away chaff before the spring rains.
Estimates as to how many innocent people were killed vary from 20 000 to 35 000.
To this day, Mugabe has neither acknowledged nor apologised for these atrocities. The nearest he came to commenting on this sad chapter he authored was to refer to it as “a moment of madness that must never be repeated”, and that was it.
But, Mugabe, vindictive as he has always been, is toying around with the idea of insulting his victims once again.
Before the nation has even recovered, if indeed we ever will, from the massacres, Mugabe wants to invite the North Korean national soccer team to camp and train for the World Cup while stationed in Bulawayo, the capital of the Matabeleland region.
It is not easy to categorise such masochistic vindictiveness, or blame it on senility, especially when one recognises that it is done, not to benefit anyone but to, as they say, rub salt into the wounds.
Mugabe does not want the nation to heal; he does not care about the trauma he caused to the people, to both victims and survivors, in Matabeleland.
I really wonder if Lucifer himself can do any worse than this.
To make it worse, just like he did in denying help to those he used and dumped, Mugabe does not want people to express their feelings about what he did in Matabeleland and Midlands Provinces.
Said Joshua Malinga, A ZANU-PF Politburo member and former Mayor of Bulawayo: “People should be allowed to talk about Gukurahundi because these things happened; people were killed and you can’t just sweep it under the carpet and say, ‘Shut up’”.
In March this year, the police raided the Bulawayo Art Gallery and shut down the Gukurahundi Exhibition which was underway. They then arrested the organizer, Owen Maseko.
“I don’t see any reason why the police should continue harassing and arresting human rights activists who openly discuss about this issue,” said Malinga.
The heart of the matter is that inviting the North Korean soccer team to Zimbabwe, let alone to their killing fields of Matabeleland, is arrogant insensitivity at its worst. It is just another indication that Mugabe does not regret what he did.
The man must be tried for genocide and made to retrieve all the bodies from where he threw them in the mineshafts.
Mugabe is more than evil and should be made to pay for every drop of blood he wasted.
It is sad that Mugabe can sit with the MDC leadership in both cabinet and government and take separate flights to Tanzania to attend contradicting conferences.
Mugabe must be isolated and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai should be man enough to take the lead.
The world accepts Mugabe largely because of the efforts of the MDC.
I find it ironic that a president, who agreed to the creation of a ministry responsible for reconciliation and national healing, putting three ministers in charge of the ministry, would do something that defeats and that negates efforts by his own ministers.
It is a sad indictment, not only on Mugabe but also on his partners in government.
What do you think?
Send me your comments on tano@swradioafrica.com
The fact that some people in government made noises and succeeded in having the decision to host the North Koreans deferred does not take away the evil intentions of a man who remains the stumbling block to any reconciliation and to the possible revival of Zimbabwe.
Just the thought of it should never have crossed anyone’s mind.
Zimbabwe continues to pay heavily for the morons in government.
I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, Thursday May 6th, 2010.
|