Over the years, individual presidents, from John Kuffour of Ghana, Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo to Abudoulaye Wade of Senegal, tried but failed to make Robert Mugabe see reason.
They found Mugabe in power and left him there.
Several others, including business people and archbishops, have tried to knock some sense into Mugabe but failed.
SADC talked to Mugabe and was exposed to be a toothless bulldog.
The African Union did not even try but always supported what Mugabe did.
Former South African president Thabo Mbeki and his predecessor Jacob Zuma tried and failed. Zuma is still at it half heartedly.
Mugabe never listened to anybody and has done pretty much as he liked with Zimbabwe and the international community powerless to do anything even when people got killed in thousands.
Last week, Tanzania president Jakaya Kikwete, recently named Chairman of SADC’s Troika on Politics, Defence and Security, assembled his SADC counterparts to think of what to do with Mugabe who, once again, is stalling progress by backtracking and making outrageous demands.
Just as what happened countless times before, Kikwete and his assembled fellow presidents from Namibia and Mozambique agreed to hold a summit in October to discuss the Zimbabwean stalemate.
We have seen and heard it all before. The only thing SADC comes up with is naming another date to meet in the future and that is the end of the matter.
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.
Mugabe has a defect, unrelated to age, that prompts him to do those things that hurt other people. He derives enjoyment from the troubles, pain and misfortune of others.
It is called schadenfreude, delight in another person’s misfortune.
Mugabe has a delusion, worsened by fear.
He specialises in vindictiveness, which has ruined and killed many good citizens of our country.
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. Africa just has to. The tragic-comedy has run long enough and we must pause to count and bury the dead. This cannot be allowed to go on forever.
Zimbabweans too must take a stand and put a stop to this nonsense that Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF continue to smear on our hopes as he stalls progress towards the normalisation of the situation in our country.
Mugabe retards 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 Zimbabwe. They showed patience with us while believing that the Zimbabwean people, who waged one of 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 implement democracy, justice and equality.
Not only did our leaders do the opposite, they went on to murder thousands of our compatriots, 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 for Botswana disguised in a dress.
Sithole was harassed, arrested countless times and appeared before court many times to answer to charges of attempting to kill Mugabe and seize power.
Nkomo died as Vice President of Zimbabwe in 1999 after Mugabe had somehow persuaded Nkomo to accept that PF-ZAPU disbands and join Mugabe’s party.
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 your 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.
SADC leaders and those of the African Union, who continue to give Mugabe space, are the morons who are killing our people.
Think of the outrage against South Africa when the police gunned down 34 striking miners. It’s no less than what is happening in Zimbabwe, the difference being that ZANU-PF is killing our people by instalments.
And SADC appoints South Africa president Jacob Zuma to bring sanity to Zimbabwe. Some jokes just aren’t funny.
Zuma cannot solve simple problems in his own country and we expect him to deal with Zimbabweans?
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 the striking miners.
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.
But 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 most 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.
I am embarrassed by the opposition in Zimbabwe; Zimbabweans are their own liberators.
