Mudenda sheds crocodile tears over Gukurahundi but will not resign over rigged 2013 elections

Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Mudenda, confess to witnessing the Gukurahundi atrocities.

 "I went there with other politicians and found soldiers beating up people. I asked them why they were beating people and they told me that they were looking for dissidents," he said. But why now?

Jacob Mudenda was the Matabeleland North provincial governor, appointed by Mugabe on a Zanu PF ticket. In terms of political support PF Zapu was the dominant party in the province. Gukurahundi targeted PF Zapu supporters and therefore the political gains to Zanu PF and governor Mudenda himself were obvious.

Mudenda said he asked senior politicians, among them the late Vice-President Joseph Msika, to help stop the massacre, but they refused.

No doubt Mr Mudenda is now keen to recast his own role in this tragic story as the good guy who tried to stop the beatings and murders. It is all nonsense, he did not even try.

The murders were not a one day affair involving a few people; the beatings, rapes and murders happened over a period of four years and 20 000 people were murdered, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands beaten and raped. If Mudenda could not stop this madness in all this time as governor then he should have done the only sensible thing then – resign in protest!

"The wounds are there and they need reparation. We confess as the government and this is the reason why Mugabe has said it was a moment of madness," continued Mudenda. "We don't want that to happen again."

But Mr Speaker, you have allowed this to happen again and again and again! What do you think Zanu PF has been doing by rigging elections if not denying the people their basic human right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country.

The main aim of the Gukurahundi massacres was to destroy PF Zapu, and to send a warning to any other opposition party that might follow, so there will be no political threat to Zanu PF's political ambition of ruling until "donkeys have horns" as Simon Khaya Moyo has so aptly put it. The political intimidation, threats, beatings, rapes, murderers and vote riggings have continued even after Zanu PF and PF Zapu signed their unity accords.

The people of Zimbabwe have paid dearly for established and maintained this de facto one-party dictatorship – they paid with the denied basic freedoms and rights, stolen hopes and dreams of having even the bare necessities of life, broken limbs and with many human lives. Mugabe and Zanu PF have continued to extort more from the nation to feed their insatiable appetites for power and wealth.

"We must confess our wrong doings and if we haven't admitted to them, it is impossible to achieve peace. As the State, there are things that need to be confessed," Mudenda told his listeners.

If Mr Mudenda is sincere in wanting to confess then he should start by confessing what is relevant here and now. Was last year's election free, fair and credible?

As the Speaker of Parliament, does he not see it as his duty to the nation to have this important, urgent and critical matter of free, fair and credible elections addressed properly?

Assuming you have tried (no doubt you will confess that at some convenient date in the future) but after a year and given the critical importance of free, fair and credible elections (Nothing, absolutely nothing, of any substance will ever be accomplished as long as those in power remain accountable to no one else but themselves!) should you not resign now in protest over the rigged 2013 elections?

Jacob Mudenda airbrushing the image of the fat, mean, corrupt and indifferent Jacob Mudenda, Matabeleland North provincial governor, we all know so well off our collective memory to replace it the completely fictitious meek and peacemaker Jacob Mudenda. One thing is clear; the Zanu PF ship is sinking and the rats are hightailing ashore! The nation must be careful not be fooled and overwhelmed by the antics of these very late-day saint Jacob Mudenda.