Welcome to the real Zimbabwe of Bob Mugabe and the wailer!

Simon Allison (Opinion Reports of Mugabe's decline have been greatly exaggerated) is right Zimbabwe's economy "has gone from bad to much worse, with no sign of light at the end of a very long, very dark tunnel". Common sense would dictate that Zanu PF members and the nation at large would be up in arms against the corrupt and murderous tyrant who, for 34 years has frog matched the nation into this hell. It has had the opposite effect; Zanu PF members are tripping over each other in their hurry and enthusiasm to endorse Mugabe and his wife's continued rule. The ordinary Zimbabweans are playing their designated role of the long suffering but silence and helpless majority!

Mugabe matched in like the knight in shining armour and offered 30 heads of cattle, tonnes of maize meal and bucks of milk for tea to the Zanu PF Youth Conference delegates who were starving and they all burst into song in his honour.  90% of these youths - that is the nauseating unemployment rate nationwide - are out of work and their lives have been a bed of thorns and things are set to get much, much tougher. It is amazing how quickly they forgot all that when they have a piece of meat!

Mugabe used the Youth Conference to crack the whip on the rest of his party leaders with the ominous warning "Don't cry!" come the elective party congress in December. (He is the one who got the nation into this mess and not them and therefore he would be the one whose neck is on the block!) It worked wonders; the party's central committee and politburo members dug deep into their own pockets; the Women League Congress schedules days after his warning had more meat, more maize meal and more milk for tea than the delegates could eat and drink.

The women rewarded Mugabe, two-fingers to those who had contributed, by pre-empting the party's elective congress and naming Mugabe their choice for president for 2018 national elections. Of course Zanu PF women league members have faced the same economic hardship of no running water, collapsed health service, soaring unemployment, etc. as everyone else. They too know that things are going to get much, much worse as long as this tyrannical regime remains in power. But put a piece of meat in their hands – even if the feast will last but a few days and followed years of starvation – and they too, like the youths before them, want Mugabe and his wife and no one else to rule forever!

The Zanu PF party's elective congress in December will too endorse Mugabe as the leader. Mugabe has ruled the nation with an iron fist and, although it is rarely said, those in his own party have not been spared the knockout punch of that fist! When Mugabe warned the top Zanu PF leaders "Don't cry!" he might just as well have said "Start crying!" because the wailing started immediately.

Not that Mugabe was going to face any real challenge to his leadership in December; he has been careful always to surround himself with the dullest members in the party. First he had Simon Muzenda as Vice President and now Joyce Mujuru; it has taken these two a life-time to learn East from West and that is all they have ever learned!  Mnangagwa is not much more than a distant red-dwarf in the sky in which Mugabe is the sun. Mugabe has made it a point of honour to dismiss both his main challengers with uttermost contempt.  

On the political front the ordinary Zimbabweans do not have much of a say in who rules as was so graphically shown with the blatant rigging of last year's elections. The political enervation of the Zimbabwean masses was evident when the people cast their first vote back in 1980, they voted to end the war – far cry from the meaningful say it was supposed to be. The blatant vote rigging last year would have outrage other voters but not people who had long accepted that they do not have a meaningful vote nor do they deserve one!

Of course MDC failed the nation by failing to implement even one of the raft of reforms designed to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship. Tsvangirai and his MDC friends were ever so grateful to Mugabe for the trappings of power he allocated to them; they did not dare to upset the tyrant by reminding of the reforms. How the MDC leaders failed to see that this was the chance to end the Mugabe dictatorship and seize on it is a reflection of their breath-taking political incompetence.

The people played their role in the rigged 2013 elections in that they failed to see it coming. They have been clamouring for democratic change for the last decade and voted for MDC in drove on the ticket to bring democratic change and yet they clearly did not have a clue what changes they wanted. If they did, then they would have forced MDC to implement the reforms!

With the national economy going "from bad to much worse, with no sign of light at the end of a very long, very dark tunnel", as Simon has said; common sense would say the people will revolt and demand change. Although one can never rule that out completely, it is right to say the chance of that ever happening in Zimbabwe is remote one.
Zimbabweans, it seem, have developed this boundless capacity to suffer. Give them a piece of meat and there is no limit to the suffering and deaths they will endure in muted deafening silence! Some people have said it is not boundless capacity to suffer but plain stupidity borne out of rock bottom self-esteem; they have a point! If you treat yourself as no more than a worthless subject tyrants will turn you into a slave; accept that and in no time they will grind you into the dust!  

"There's nothing to suggest that it (Mugabe and/or his wife's tight hold on the levers of power) won't remain so for some time to come," Simon concluded.  He is right.

What some Zimbabweans would want to see as light at the end of the long and dark economic tunnel is in fact the light of a runaway freight train! God only knows the hardship, suffering and deaths that this continued tyrannical rule will bring!

Zimbabweans from right across the board from the lowly Zimbabwean povo,  Zanu PF youths, Zanu PF women right up to the Zanu PF grandees are all wailing in agony at the overwhelming economic hardships brought on by decades Mugabe's corrupt and tyrannical rule and yet, in total defiance of reason and common sense, are wailing for his continued rule! The nation is suffering and yet given one piece of meat they are all wailing for more suffering. Confused! Welcome Simon to the real Zimbabwe of "Bob Mugabe and the wailers!"