A couple of weeks ago, Zimbabwe’s president, Emerson Mnangagwa, hit Zimbabweans with a cruel and unrealistic fuel price increase then boarded a hired plane and left to visit Russia and some of its former states.
By morning, demonstrations against the steep fuel price increase had erupted nationwide. It was no surprise that the army was first on the streets.
People were shot, beaten up and kidnapped.
Mnangagwa was shamed into returning home when he was heading for Davos and, of course, the police and army continued their rampage, breaking down doors and beating up innocent residents and kidnapping some in the middle of the night.
Women were raped; 36 children under 17 years of age are under arrest for alleged looting and, says the Zimbabwe National Council for the Welfare of Children, the youngest is 7 years old.
On his return, Mnangagwa did not do anything in sympathy with a bleeding nation but, instead, the soldiers and police embarked on midnight door-to-door searches looking for perceived enemies, raping women, beating and abducting people.
This continues to this day as more and more opposition Members of Parliament have dived into hiding, with several of the MPs reportedly skipping the border to seek asylum in South Africa and Namibia.
As the people of Zimbabwe groaned forward under siege by their own government, Mr. Mmusi Maimane, the President of South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance, announced both his intention to visit Zimbabwe and have a talk with Mnangagwa in solidarity with the suffering people and to also “write to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as part of its interventions to resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe”.
In addition, Maimane also announced that his party would also “approach the UN Commissioner on Human Rights requesting the intervention of its council in the crisis in accordance with its mandate to protect human rights”.
It is amazing that the Democratic Alliance would stand up in defense of the oppressed people in Zimbabwe.
Whether or not this is for show, the impact of kind, comforting words from any quarter are welcome. After all, when you are drowning in a flooded river and a crocodile (no pun intended) is swimming towards you, would you take or not take the rope of rescue the devil throws at you? We find comfort from the most unlikely of places.
Having been blind-sided by Maimane’s aggressive behavior on Zimbabwe, including a stroll to the Zimbabwean Embassy to book an appointment with Mnangagwa, the more than 100-year-old African National Congress (ANC) tried to upstage Maimane by sending an ANC delegation to Zimbabwe, led by (Oh, God!) something called Ace Magashule, said to be the 100+ year-old party’s Secretary General.
They were, of course, treated like royalty and got fast-tracked to see Mnangagwa.
Magashule repeated the tired, useless rhetoric about solidarity of former liberation movements that today are best known for killing the people they allegedly liberated.
“And as former liberation movements, I think we have agreed that this is the time to consolidate and strengthen our relationship,” Magashule told Zimbabwe state media.
The ANC is doing this to the people of Zimbabwe at a time when they are even afraid to go to mortuaries to claim the bodies of their dead, for fear of being arrested themselves.
This is the same ANC whose one-time president, Thabo Mbeki, had the gall to tell the world that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe when people were being slaughtered by Robert Mugabe as international organizations were involved in frantic efforts to minimize the cruelty reigned on innocent Zimbabweans.
The ANC might mean something to South Africans, but it is an abusive and cruel existence on the continent that enjoys the oppressive perks from colonial masters and is now burdening the whole of Africa with its greed and reactionary policies.
South Africans better be advised that when the ANC runs out of countries to abuse, it will turn on them.
South Africans better control the ANC.
After years of railing against Julius Malema, who himself annoyed me plenty with accolades to Mugabe at a time I had been rushed out of Zimbabwe and became a refugee in Botswana, I am humbled to hear him talk about his concern for the people of Zimbabwe vis-à-vis Zanu-PF oppressors.
I guess we grow a different kind of respect for the axe we always use to cut firewood when that same axe cuts us good.
The ANC’s shenanigans cannot be allowed to continue. They are lying about Africa.
The ANC is misrepresenting the opinions of the African people.
The ANC must not make itself the voice of Africa by thinking that its economic power gives it the right to speak on other people’s behalf.
Just four days ago, Magashule said that the ANC and Zanu-PF “acknowledge the peaceful and credible manner in which the July 30, 2018 harmonised elections were conducted and the subsequent deserving endorsement of the election results by the regional and international observer groups…”
Do you see how confident the ANC is when it tells lies?
This man and his ANC ignore the fact that their own past president, Kgalema Motlanthe, was handpicked by Mnangagwa to head a “Commission of Enquiry” into the shooting deaths of Zimbabweans the day after the July 31 elections.
Today, we have more people killed during protests and, of course, there will be another Commission of Enquiry to pacify potential investors and what kind of enquiry could Zanu-PF constitute without South Africa?
Friday, February 1st is National Clean Up Day in which Zimbabweans are asked to clean up the areas in which they live and work.
President Mnangagwa participated as part of a detail that cleaned up an area at Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare.
As the president was having fun pretending to be doing civil service outside the hospital, a 29-year-old man succumbed to renal failure after having been transferred from Mutare General Hospital, where he had been admitted after a beating from the soldiers during the national stayaway two weeks ago.
Not a word from Mnangagwa.
Members of Parliament are in hiding, some have fled the country. The orgy continues and the ANC legitimizes the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe.
Up to this point, President Mnangagwa has not consoled the families of those who lost their lives to his soldiers and police.
Without a word to the nation or to those Zimbabweans who lost loved ones at the hands of the police and army, Mnangagwa has, instead, scheduled a “thank you rally” for an election he did not win.
Even if this is not fooling all the people all the time, I thank South Africa’s ANC for never hiding its willingness to betray Africans; for its enthusiasm in retarding the freedom of Africans.
South Africa’s fingerprints are all over Africa and their presence in these countries almost always strengthen the hand of the despots.
South Africa’s ANC must stop siding with Africa’s despots; it must cease retarding the freedoms of peoples of Africa.
Africa does not belong to South Africa or to the ANC.
South Africa’s ANC must stop betraying people of Africa by supporting their oppressors.
Zimbabwe suffered for the liberation of South Africa while the ANC and other parties therein were busy necklacing each other, only to be liberated by sanctions, not by armed struggle.
If South Africa had fought a war of liberation, they would see how much they are carrying on the wishes of their apartheid rulers.
Apartheid South Africa did not want a successful African country, unless it was under its control.
South Africa today is the same since it mimics its old masters.
This Magashule and the ANC can take their Freedom Charter and shove it!
