Democracy is that simple, really! Mnangagwa must win his own election

When you are unelectable, you seek power via coups or acts of intimidation and threats. You also seek to vandalise an order (however imperfect) so you can ride on the back of violence or undemocratic and choreographed 'popular' uprisings, such as Mnangagwa and his Team LaLizard have tried to do in cahoots with General Chiwenga via this fast-unravelling coup.

Mnangagwa must win his own election in his own right in his own name, both at party and government level, and stop seeking coronation when he is un-coronable in the first place.

Because Mugabe had blocked the only means by which Mnangagwa – long suffering from Power-Entitlement Syndrome (P-ES) - could ever have dreamt of ascending to power, he and his acolytes have panicked and sort to execute a poorly thought-through coup that nobody needed, or wants. Entitlement to something you have not worked for, or cannot own on your own in your own right, breeds dangerous and desperate measures, the likes of which we believe we have seen Mnangagwa and his surrogates in the army attempt to do. 

Emmerson Mnangagwa is unelectable. He can't even stand and win against himself. Mnangagwa's record is appalling, let alone that he has any reputation of any kind that doesn't collapse into despised notoriety. And Mnangagwa is unsaleable either, however corrosive the political bleach used to attempt to whitewash him, except to the desperate and angry. Mnangagwa is uncleanble. That's simply how bad Mnangagwa is.

And all this must go back to our inability to interrogate, post-colonial rule, Mnangagwa's actions and activities under the so-called 'Crocodile' gang. Was that poor white man killed, killed callously by a person or group of persons acting as guerrillas who were just evil and sadistically murderous, rather than persons who killed legitimately in the course of a war? The so-called war of liberation - the one that gave us murderous individuals ranging from Robert Mugabe to Edgar Tekere – attracted all manner of criminals from the urban centres and evil people from the villages, the likes of which were only bound to give rise to Gukurahundi, unless they were professionally trained, such as was the training given in Zipra. We know that Zanla wreaked absolute havoc on the civilian populations in Mashonaland throughout the war, maiming and killing at will. General Chiwenga, while intimating his poorly-executed coup last week, alluded to some of these murders within Zanu-PF, as if they were real historical markers to be proud of. All those involved in this attempted putsch have clearly not outgrown their Zanla mentality of yore.

We see those same people who pillaged and murdered during the war – now masquerading as the so-called 'war veterans in 2000 - murdering innocent people, Black and White, in the name of defending Mugabe and advancing Zanu-PF and 'taking the land' from the Whites to give 'the people'. Where were the Mnangagwas, the Chiwengas, and Mutsvangas of today's attempted coup, if they were not in the think of the 2000 orchestrated mayhem, directing their macabre operations for their, and Mugabe's, ends, while trampling all over the rights and expectations of the same people they today pretend to be executing a coup on their behalf? All of them benefitted, directly, personally, and greedily from Mugabe's patronage, and kept quiet - until now -when most of them have been spat out by the system or threatened to be spat out by the system they so worshipped and deified only until yesterday. Chiwenga well-knew he was next after Mnangagwa. He had to act pre-emptively and angrily before being knocked over the cliff like Mnangagwa.

Grace Mugabe did not emerge last week when she and her husband fired Emmerson Mnagangwa from the party and government. All of them -the putschists - exhorted and extolled Grace Mugabe when her misguided antics were directed at others, not them. The social media is awash with videos of Mnangagwa, little less than leaking where his 'Dr Stopit' had sat and walked. They are chilling videos of sycophancy - driven by a deterministic right to heirship – gone truly mad. And Mnangagwa fits the part - an old man driven to meowing insanely when he concluded – prematurely -the crown was now his through a coronation.

Frankly, the way Mnangagwa, Chiwenga, Mutsvanga and their gangs in army uniform have treated an old doddering man is not only appalling, but also says something about their unbridled opportunism, callousness, treachery – and frankly – an inhumanness that runs through their veins. These are persons that yesterday people joined, unquestioningly, in a 'mass rally' to force Mugabe – elected constitutionally (certainly not democratically) – out! The very same Mugabe that was 'elected' at their instigation, with their intimidation, and with their collective electoral fraud.  I don't care how appalling and reprehensible Mugabe is – and Mugabe is all of those things and more at the same time – but you do not execute an old man that has given you political life so callously, treacherously and cynically. It's a hatchet job that stinks to high waters. It is the cowardly act of desperate villains, sordid characters and shifty persons who must not be trusted by anybody, let alone entrusted with public power, whether in the form of a democratic mass movement, or a State.

And how can our people be so gullible, so vulnerable to deceit and political miasma at such an amazingly short notice? General Chiwenga and his gangsters in the army - all of them Mugabe patronage appointees - create a storm in a tea-cup in the form of an attempted coup, and, on the click of two fingers, people suddenly see them as 'liberators' when only a minute ago those very same people have been wreaking havoc and mayhem on the civilian population through intimidation, rigged elections, and even murder! Villainy has seldom come this crude, cynical and unrehearsed. This has to be their natural state, these villains. It is all distasteful and shameful, a straighjacket from a past so used to wrong-doing it's so easy to repeat wrongs with such easy usualness. How low can one get on the scale of political and moral depravity?

I refuse to be distracted by a blinding mirror held at me by the Chiwengas, the Mnangagwas and Mutsvangas of our time reflecting Mugabe badness. I still see, and want to see, the bad hand of General Chiwenga, Mnangagwa and Mutsvanga aiming the blinding mirror at me.

If we stand up to bad and challenge it, then let us do so to all bad things regardless of who is authoring them, than act as these puschists who have sought to condemn factionalism while being factional themselves, and who are seeking to coronate their own unelectable candidate via the very same method that those they are now attempting to coup sought to use. The shamelessness of monkeying the very methods of the G-40 by Team LaLizard, is break-taking and jaw-dropping – whipping up provincial structures of Zanu-PF and the general public to 'expel' Mugabe from 'the party', as Mugabe did of Mnangagwa! At least attempt a new disguise! Evil and mischief often innovate well. What is the madness of this one that it can't even disguise copying?

And what is the public being fooled about, anyway, when this whole attempted coup is unravelling right before our eyes as a failed coup?

We learnt yesterday that the same army – which has now unlawfully arrogated to it's the functions of government (via an attempted coup) – sending its troops to stop marchers that the army has 'sanctioned' to march against Mugabe, from getting to Mugabe's official residence. Why this political oxymoron? What is the coup-ing army afraid of? And a day before that we learnt that Mugabe had officiated at Zimbabwe Open University.  Did the coup-ing army 'release' Mugabe from his house arrest for the occasion? Why are they afraid of detaining him outright than pretend that he is one thing (a president) and not (not a president), at the same time? Why this ambiguity written into the attempted coup from the beginning?
And how about the big political and constitutional question now underway? Do we have a government now or we don't? Is that government the army or Mugabe's government? Or is it both, as one might read into the apparent 'normal' functioning of some government ministries and organs, while others still have their ministers unlawfully detained by the coup-ing army?

Where is government, General Chiwenga? Is it only where the army 'sanctions' demonstrations against Mugabe, or all of it anytime, everywhere? And which all of it? Which everywhere?

It is crazy, plain right ludicrous! This is what happens when an army overreaches itself and begins to see itself as a power in its own right simply because it trades in lethal force. And this is what happens when an army interferes in politics, whether party or government, and seeks to advance a particular candidate who the army knows – as in this case – is unelectable. All of this is usually called treason.
But the source of this ambiguity over the attempted coup is not difficult to work out. And Mugabe's 'silence' has only served to worsen the army's jitteriness, and hence, ambiguity. Hats off to Mugabe for giving General Chiwenga and his marauding army of booted men the silent treatment. (The attempt to propagandise their failed coup along the Arab Spring – as we saw yesterday in the so-called 'Rally Against Mugabe' - is sad at best!). Social media photos, whether photoshopped or not, do not make a legal case or argument for a coup. It is a poor retroactive reconstruction of a failed coup. It simply does not fool anyone.

General Chiwenga and his friends now know that Mugabe is waiting for their agitation of the public to peak and wane, which by last night it had already begun to. In the next few days, the hyped hysteria will all peter out and we will be at the business end of things. General Chiwenga and his friends are desperate to prevent that happening and will in all probability stock things in a nasty way here and there to precipitate chaos. The game has long changed, and, sadly, people have not seen it. It is no longer about the so-called army generals seeking to extract 'confessions' from Mugabe, but about the so-called Generals seeking Mugabe's mercy to save their skin.

The reason behind all this ambiguity over whether it's a coup or not a coup lies in the regional and continental processes.  General Chiwenga and his friends are now trying to pretend that this was never a coup because they now know something they should have known from the beginning.

They should have known before starting on their poor misadventure that Mugabe would talk, not internally, but externally, and would seek recourse to regional and continental processes – SADC and AU – both of which he is rightly entitled to have recourse to. Only a fool driven by quest for row power would not have seen that and mounted a stupid coup, such as General Chiwenga and his friends have attempted to do. Mugabe was always going to speak to SADC and AU under such circumstances.

Already we know, the AU has been unequivocal about Mugabe being re-instated and the army returning to the barracks. The US has already landed weight along that course. The sledge hammer is coming soon via SADC's Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation. The message has therefore gone to General Chiwenga and his friends, loud and clear. Their last cast of the die is a popular uprising instigated by them, such as we saw a desperate and cynical attempt of yesterday. By all accounts, that has now failed. Now what for the General and his friends?

As we speak, SADC might be preparing and massing a regional and continental force that will march into Harare to humiliatingly disarm this band of Mnangagwaists and send them one by one to prison. That, and only that, explains this ambiguity over: Was this a coup or not a coup? The now 'good and great' General and his friends are now trying to pacify both Mugabe and the continent and region before something drastic happens. You can bet, calls and other forms of communication have already been conveyed to General Chiwenga and his friends and they are in no doubt about the heavy cloud of impending consequences hanging over them.

But where is Mnangagwa in all this, the man on whose behalf General Chiwenga and his friends have so foolishly acted? We are talking of Mnangagwa the 'business savvy' and 'smooth political operator'  favoured by the West to succeed Mugabe, interestingly, in a region dominated by 'anti-Western States' who themselves fear being coup-ed similarly if they don't  act decisively and stamp out this emerging political cancer that has dared rear its ugly head  in Zimbabwe before it takes root in the region?
This bad hatchet job was already cut out for General Chiwenga and his friends even before he stared. General Chiwenga should have paused and confronted Mnangagwa and his so-called 'war veterans' and hung them to dry. Now General Chiwenga and their friends are co-conspirators with Mnangagwa in an enterprise that was nothing short of suicidal. Sometimes desperation answers better to humility than conceit!
Mnangagwa must be watching in total disbelief and bewilderment from his hiding as his and his friends' evil enterprise unravels and collapses like a deck of cards right in front of him. Politically, Mnangagwa has made himself totally unredeemable and unrehabilitate-able. He has politically buried himself by row political ambition and political avarice. As for Mnangagwa's co-conspirators, the scale of their folly is about to be revealed in full in one-to-one interviews, often called interrogations.

Mnangagwa has politically served at the mercy and pleasure of Mugabe for all his political career, and for him to have sought to repay Mugabe in this unsavoury manner, was altogether too much for fate. Now he must carry his cross and face many years of painful exile, just as many of his victims he has sent to painful exile for all these years. But who wants to host Mnangagwa as an exilee?

Mnangagwa should have known that his only true and authentic claim to power was through an election in his own right. In seeking to short-circuit democracy and the electoral process in these ways he should have known he was tempting fate. Today, at least in weeks to come, we will know he has lost both political coronation and the benefit of any rigged political outcome in his favour. He is truly a fugitive from everything!

The accountability vultures are now circling menacingly over him, just this time, on an extended charge sheet than would have been the case had he known his place and accepted it. The moral and political lesson: dare not storm the Heavens if you don't need to. And now, that scary blast from the past – Gukurahundi – is no longer knocking, but kicking the door his inside down.

Mnangagwa deserves no sympathy – and will get no sympathy from anyone - but the most lunatic of fringes. When a dangerous murderer – long sanitized by political office – is loose and on the run, common sense suggests that you cooperate with arresting authorities to bring him to book. Democracy in Zimbabwe certainly starts by arresting all Gukurahundists and Shonaists, for there, we will get all the answers to historical wartime murders and post-independence murders. How the culprits are picked up, and what order they are carted in, is neither here nor there. Mnangagwa would be a good first catch over which we will all celebrate! Over this attempted coup – if indeed he is involved as all evidence suggests – he needs to be booked in.

This failed coup bears the finger-prints of one Emmerson Mnangagwa – the hallmarks of intimidation (this time seeking to intimidate the State) and extracting power by hook and crook – ever on display!