The exhaustion of the Mugabe regime is there for everyone to see.
On its deathbed, the regime’s collapse is simply unmistakable and we better start preparing for the coming celebrations.
Many Africans, including multitudes that used to literally worship him, are now agreed that Robert Mugabe belongs to another era.
The reason is because many years ago the man ceased to have the interest of his people and country at heart.
His only enduring force is an insatiable desire to continue as President while he pushes Zimbabwe further and further near the brink.
Which is why almost four weeks since a peaceful election was held the results are still to be announced.
Botswana has a vested interest in seeing Mugabe’s back.
Pretending to be neutral observers will only make us accomplices in his heinous crimes against his own countrymen.
As a country, we have paid very dearly for the man’s follies.
It is exactly because the unelected warmonger in Harare has reduced his country to ruins that so many Zimbabweans fled here. With our own growing problems, it is becoming clear that, as a country, we cannot continue to sustain more of them forever.
Everybody knows how Mugabe’s gruesome cruelty has driven millions of innocent citizens of Zimbabwe into the wilderness, leaving their beloved country against their will.
The stakes have never been higher.
In power for close to a generation, Mugabe knows better than all of us that he is at the lowest ebb of his long tyranny.
What matters though is that he should not be allowed to hang on a minute longer.
It’s true that in the past he has done miracles to confound his detractors.
But since the election over three weeks ago, Mugabe is at his weakest and no effort should be spared to finish him off.
He should not be allowed any breathing spaces as to be able to reemploy his old and well known antics of dividing the Southern African region.
Thankfully, the SADC leadership seems to have had enough of Mugabe’s tricks.
All body language points to a sub-region that now means business.
For the first time in many years, the Sub-region is also led by a Chairman who is not afraid to tell Mugabe off.
Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia should be commended.
He has been doing a very good job under what are no doubt exceedingly difficult circumstances. He has brought some aura of urgency and fresh thinking inside SADC, and these at the time when the people were losing faith in the organization.
As for Botswana, we should be grateful we have a new President who owes Mugabe nothing.
In fact, compared to Ian Khama, Mugabe is from another era.
In South Africa, where Mugabe has always had an ample supply of friends, space for refuge seems to be on a fast decline.
President Thabo Mbeki who has done so much to prolong Mugabe’s stay in power is on the last lap of his presidential run.
Mbeki’s ANC is under the grip of a new pair of hands.
And the new regime is chanting the anti-Mugabe slogans.
The political, social and economic meltdown in Zimbabwe is fast tracking the whole events.
And Mugabe’s erstwhile henchmen better start bracing themselves for the Post-Mugabe era.
An experienced schemer politician, Mugabe knows better than many that he is cornered and that his days are truly limited, hence his swift tactics to blame games of accusing the West for all his crimes.
Credit be to the Zimbabweans who have suffered for so long at the hands of an evil regime yet continue to resiliently and patiently look to the future with hope.
The Zimbabweans can rejoice that for the first time in many years there seems to be a movement in the region to earnestly engage Mugabe at his game.
There is a change in language.
Looking from recent developments in Lusaka, time for quite diplomacy – which by all intents and purposes has been given a chance – is finally over.
It would seem like the Zimbabweans are bracing themselves for a fresh start.
And they deserve it.
Like I have said before, when all is said and done, it still remains a mystery to me as to how a grumpy, probably senile old man like Mugabe was able to hold on to power for so long as to inflict and survive all the grim tidings in his country for all of which he has been a chief catalyst.
