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Zimbabwe Crisis
This is a version of a talk given by
Philip Bhebhe
during the morning service at the Mint on 1 March 2009
Nothing
is permanent except change. Mugabe said he would never share power with Morgan Tsvangirai. Morgan Tsvangirai
said he would never be in a government led by Robert Mugabe. Today the two men
are eating together and Mugabe has Tsvangirai in his
government and Tsvangirai is in a government led by
Mugabe.
Nothing is as Democratic as Death. The
poor will die and the rich will die. Those who carry guns will die and those
who do not will die also. Those protected round the clock will die and those
without protection will also die. Mugabe is not immortal. He will not live
forever. His cronies will die also. We shall overcome some day.
“You
can never finish eating an elephant” - African Proverb. In Zimbabwe, people
have finished eating, not one elephant but thousands of elephants. There is no
food in Zimbabwe today. Even our soldiers are fed on elephant meat. The poor
are told daily to tighten their belts because times are hard, but they have
reached a point where they cannot tighten them any further. Mugabe tells his
cronies to loosen their belts. They have become so fat that the POVO (people of
various opinions) as the peasants are called, cannot carry them anymore - hence
the pending collapse of the Mugabe regime.
The country is bankrupt. Nobody uses
Zimbabwean money anywhere because it is worthless. It is not even worth the
paper on which it is printed. Despite the bankruptcy, the country has:
1 President
2 Vice Presidents
1 Prime Minister
1 Vice Prime Minister
61 People into the cabinet
Among
the 61 people into the cabinet are eight (8) ministers of State, five (5) from
ZANU P.F. and three (3) from the MDC. These have vague or no responsibilities
at all. All these people need:
Ÿ
Offices and Staff
Ÿ
Salaries and hefty allowances
Ÿ
Accommodation
Ÿ
Official vehicles most of which are new E - series Mercedes Benz
limousines.
Their
homes are guarded round the clock by four policemen at any one time. Several of
these people have more than two homes which have to be guarded even when empty.
Money for all these has to be donated. If all the money donated goes to pay
salaries and allowances, how then can the country stand on its own? The country
wants money for the productive sectors which will create employment.
Unemployment stands at 94%. Money is needed for the agriculture sector to
enable the country to feed its people and to export in order to generate
foreign currency which is badly needed today.
One MDC official said to me: “this is
the product of compromise.” The culture of “eating” and living above our means
has destroyed the country. Robert Mugabe and his cronies have completely
stripped Zimbabwe of its assets and delivered the country’s population into
despair, poverty and illness. In January 2006, a survey carried out by Erasmus
University, Rotterdam found that Zimbabweans were the unhappiest people in the
world. That year in April, the World Health Organisation announced that people
in Zimbabwe had the lowest life expectancy in the World 37 years for men and 34
years for Women. In November 2006, it was estimated that 70% of the 18 to 65
age group lived outside the country. Well over 68% of those left in the country
were poor, sick and hungry. The hungry swelled from three million in 2007 to
8.5 million today. The money you donated towards the end of the year in 2008
managed to purchase 250´50kgs
of maize meal the staple diet in Zimbabwe. Getting to Zimbabwe in December many
people who would have had nothing to eat that month had at least one meal a day
thanks to your kindness. Once more thank you. “How did they know I had gone for
two weeks without a meal,” one woman is said to have asked. God provides when
we least expect. Starvation is still rife in Zimbabwe today.
Ÿ
The inflation rate is astronomical - a staggering more that 6, 328,
767%, the worst ever recorded in a country not at war.
Ÿ
Cholera is still claiming lives at the rate of 1 person per minute as
at the beginning of February 2009. According to the World Health Organization
the death toll in the five - month epidemic stands at 4,200 with 75 000 infections.
Experts say these figures are the worst ever recorded in one country in
history. That it covered the whole country is a record of its own. In most
areas it would cover one or two regions in a country.
Ÿ
Schools remain closed as teachers have no money to return to their
schools after the December holidays.
Ÿ
Hospitals remain closed as there is no money to pay the doctors and
nurses.
The
trouble with Zimbabwe is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. The
recycling of ministers is a big problem. There is nothing wrong with the
Zimbabwean people, land, climate or water or air or indeed anything else. The
Zimbabwean problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to
the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership. We have lost the
twentieth century; are we bent on seeing that our children also lose the twenty
- first? God forbid.
Many a time I have wondered if the so
- called Zimbabwean leaders sometimes lack the capacity to think and understand
the ramifications of their actions. After all the bloodshed (Gukurahundi, Farm Invasions, Operation Murambatsvina,
Operation Maguta, 2008 March elections etc) one would
think we have learnt a lesson but no! Idiocy of our power hungry leaders seems
to triumph over pragmatism and common sense. The rationale of the current
arrests and trials of the opposition supporters and land seizures by Grace
Mugabe defies logic. The world must be tired of us, given our self - inflicted
tragedies galore. We seem to lack any sense of urgency to handle problems in an
expedient manner devoid of bloodshep. Lord have Mercy on us!
A big obstacle to the economic growth
in Zimbabwe is the tendency by Mugabe to point a finger at everyone else but
himself. He (Mugabe) puts all blame, failures and shortcomings on outside
forces. Progress might have been achieved; if we had always tried first to
remove the log in our own eyes then we would clearly see the mote in the eyes
of other people.
The MDC leadership totally underestimated
Mugabe. Mugabe is a killer and he kills. They (MDC) believed and still believe
the struggle for Democracy would be hard, but never understood that Mugabe is
prepared to destroy everything in order to survive. He is prepared to destroy
the economy, all opposition parties, the institutions, the infrastructure and
the whole country.
No one must allow themselves to be
deluded by what is going on in Zimbabwe. By making Munangagwa
Minister of defence Mugabe is saying to the people of Zimbabwe: “Remember this
man during the Gukurahundi period.” We have seen this
before and it never worked. As long as Mugabe is there nothing will work. The
country is run by the five generals who do not recognize Morgan Tsvangirai. Just as the 5th Brigade was designed
to kill, so were the farm Invasions, so was Operation Murambatsvina and the Unity Accord of December 22, 1987.
This Unity Accord never worked, but plunged the country into a defacto one Party State as there was no opposition.
Mugabe and his cronies do not care
about posterity. He often quotes Groucho Max: “Why
should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?” The true
measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
The task of responsible leadership is to avoid irreconcilable positions. The
MDC vowed never to be in a government in which Mugabe was the Head. They
capitulated. The MDC appealed to the electorate to reject Mugabe and vote for
the MDC in numbers. The electorate did, but the MDC leadership let them down. Mugabe
is still pulling the strings which explains why Roy
Bennett is still in prison. A judge who signed papers to have Roy released is
also now in prison. The politics of capitutation, the
politics of expediency, the politics of compromise and the politics of
unfulfilled promises will not work in Zimbabwe today.
The longer Mugabe remains in power,
the more people will be killed, tortured, raped maimed etc. The regime will not
stop killing, torturing and starving innocent Zimbabweans until someone stops them.
The million dollar question is: Who will stop them?
Go to “Zimbabwe
and the Wilderness” - Sermon preached on 1 March 2009
Go back to Mint Homepage