Friday, February 7, 2025

Is Zimbabwe finally hitting rock bottom?

Since the early 1990s, concerns have been raised about the fast pace at which Zimbabwe was headed to the bottom.

Acres and acres of space have been dedicated to how President Robert Mugabe has presided over the economic meltdown in that country.

During that time, consensus was reached that indeed Zimbabwe had reached rock bottom ÔÇô economically and politically. And that in every way the country was now a wasteland.

Abuse of human rights had become so ingrained in that nation’s psyche that at one point, it seemed no bad news coming from that country was ever going to be grisly and gross enough as to elicit international shock and condemnation.

Yet from time to time, the situation in Zimbabwe has continued to prove all of wrong.

Just when we though the country could only go up, hell breaks loose and all of a sudden a new spiral downwards continues.

The ongoing stalemate which has all the hallmarks of the situation in the late 1990s is the latest evidence of just how Zimbabwe never ceases to surprise the world.

Last week civil society called a one-day strike that literally closed up the country. They are threatening another strike action, saying it might this time not be one day, but two.

The situation on the ground is ripe for a disaster.

As we speak public servants have not been paid for the month of June. And we are already going towards the end of July.

In response to the worsening situation, the government banned the flow of imports including food from outside the country.

Just how a government could not have foreseen the natural and inevitable consequences of such an ill-advised economic decision is impossible to determine.

But like we say, the situation in Zimbabwe as seen from the previous decades is always totally different from what obtains in other parts of the world.

The biggest problem that we have in that country is that Zimbabweans themselves do not seem to have started factoring in a life and a future without Robert Mugabe.

That is by itself very scary. Such a scenario, if it is true, plays into fears that the country might very well descend into chaos were Mugabe to exit the stage by any means.

Last week Gabz Fm conducted an excellent interview with Secretary General of the official opposition in Zimbabwe, MDC-T.

He said SADC must intervene, or else Zimbabwe would descend into a civil war. There is nothing wrong calling for SADC intervention.

But have we not been there before?

Our view is that past interventions by other SADC leaders only left Zimbabweans worse off, while perching Mugabe on a higher pedestal including giving him a totally underserved new lease of life.

Morgan Tsvangirai of the same UDC would recall the deal that was forced into him by former Southern African president, Thabo Mbeki.

Mbeki literally forced Tsvangirai into becoming a junior partner to Mugabe following an election that Mugabe had lost.

Zimbabwe is a difficult problem to solve.

Zimbabweans have for many years been let down by their own leaders but also by SADC and indeed African leaders.

But still it is important for Zimbabweans to appreciate that there is only so much that outsiders can do.

It is high time Zimbabweans asked themselves questions of how it has been that they have been enslaved en masse by a senile dictator whose balance of mind has for long been a subject of public suspicion.

Robert Mugabe’s time will one day come to an end, as indeed it does for all of us, but what guarantee is there that he will not leave in his place one of his proxies, someone like Emerson Mnangagwa for example or worse still an obnoxious  puppet like his wife, Grace Mugabe?

Mugabe is the prime culprit in the tragedy that is the wasteland called Zimbabwe. But Zimbabweans also need to accept their own share of the blame.

What role did they play in creating the Frankenstein monster that today they are not able to get rid of?

That is a difficult to answer, especially as it entails blaming the victim. But if there is to be a solution to this long running tragedy everybody should accept their share of the blame.

Whatever the answers to all the above problems, one thing is clear; by the time he dies, if he ever does, Robert Mugabe will leave Zimbabwe with a multitude of problems that will take longer to correct than the close to forty years that he has presided over their creation.

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