Coup removed Mugabe, mouthful of the autotomy gecko's tail, whilst dictatorship got away

Zanu PF, especial the state control public media, is fighting a desperate rear-guard action to promote last month's coup as the silver-bullet to solve all our political paralysis and economic meltdown problems allowing the nation to finally climb out the hell-hole we have been stuck in all these last 37 years. The truth is Zimbabwe is still stuck in the hell-hole because Mugabe's departure has changed nothing other than allow one lot of thugs to replace the last lot. Zimbabwe is a still as lawless today as it was before Mugabe resigned, for example.

"Members of the public are warned against seeking the services of the ZDF to settle old personal scores taking advantage of the ongoing Operation Restore Legacy. Such cases are clearly a violation of the law," reported The Herald quoting a joint Police and Army statement.

"They said there are also some malicious individuals abusing the social media to generate and circulate inflammatory content that potentially causes unnecessary alarm and despondency within the defence and security services "with the ultimate objective of disturbing the prevailing peace and stability in the country."

Nonsense! What "prevailing peace and stability" can there be in a country in the middle a military coup whose dust is yet to settle? No amount of political spin can change the fundamental fact that the coup was an internal Zanu PF matter that did not solve the Zimbabwe's problem of bad governance at the heart of the country's political paralysis and economic meltdown.

Operation Restore Legacy was about making sure absolute power within the Zanu PF dictatorship was wrestled from Grace Mugabe and her G40 members, which is what Robert Mugabe was planning to do, and handed back to the Joint Operation (JOC), the Junta that has ruled Zimbabwe with an iron fist all these last 37 years. The firing of the VP Mnangagwa early last month was to clear the way for Grace Mugabe to succeed her husband. JOC, the majority of whom supported, Mnangagwa to succeed Mugabe was left with no option but to stage the coup to restore the Junta's political supremacy.

Of course, Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and all the other JOC members were aware that Zanu PF lost its popular support decades ago. The challenge for them was to stage the coup to not only achieve the more immediate objective of removing Mugabe and stop the G40 succession but to do in such a way that the populous showered the Junta with rose petals as the nation's liberators. That is exactly what has happened!

To the naïve and gullible public, Mugabe was the head of Zanu PF dictatorship; and, to them, cut-off the head spelt the death of the monster. In reality, Mugabe was nothing more than the tail of the autotomy gecko which, when cornered, it sheds off. The shed-off tail assumes a life of its own as it wriggles with vigour as if determined to get away. It will take the predator minute or two to subdue the tail; enough time for the gecko to get away.

It going to take some Zimbabweans few months if not years to realise that the Zanu PF dictatorship survive the coup and all they ever got was the gecko's tail. The dictatorship replace Mugabe with Mnangagwa within two weeks and has since resumed corruption, vote rigging, etc. It will not be long, the elections are just round the corner, before the Police and Army resume their joint operations turning a blind eye to Zanu PF thuggery, disrupting opposition party activities and even playing an active role it the political thuggery and lawlessness to keep the Zanu PF dictatorship in power at all cost.

If we really want to address the country's teething economic and political problems of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption, blatant vote rigging and tyrannical oppression then we must go back to implementing the democratic reforms. It is the Zanu PF dictatorship we are after; the gecko and not its tail.