Opinion / Columnist
Mnangagwa dismiss cyanide attempt as 'normal'?
12 Dec 2014 at 17:22hrs | Views
Audio of the interview is at the end.
Two more individuals have been hospitalised following the attempted cyanide assassination of Emmerson Mnangagwa. The poison was sprayed in his Zanu-PF HQ office on Tuesday night.
Mnangagwa said he was unfazed by the incident, adding that death threats had become part of his life.
"Threats to my life are normal. I have had these throughout my 52 years of political life; so it has become part of my life," he told the US-based VOA Studio 7 radio station.
"Zanu-PF ndeye ropa!" (Zanu-PF is a party of blood!) He might just as well have added.
If you the only "business" you have ever known for 52 years is intimidating, harassing, beating, raping and even murdering your critics, opponents but even more so defensive civilians to keep the whole nation subdue with fear; it would be naïve to think your Mafia rivals will seat back and not try to take you out.
The cyanide poison was sprayed in Mnangagwa's office in the Zanu-PF "Shake-Shake" building on Tuesday night. Cyanide is a powerful poison that can kill within seconds. So whoever sprayed it meant business; to kill and no messing round. It is almost certain that whoever the assassin was he/she must have from within Zanu-PF or have strong party connections.
So Zanu-PF is not just corrupt but worse still this is a party that is determined to stay in power at all cost. The Mnangagwa faction, whose members constitute the brains in the Joint Operations Command (the Junta that has ruled Zimbabwe for the last 15 or 20 years) headed by Mugabe himself, was not content with blatantly rigging national elections it went on to blatantly rig the party's own elections. And now, it seems, faction members are after each other with murder on their minds. Yeap! Zanu-PF ndeye ropa!
The armed struggle to end white colonial rule was guaranteed to deliver its main objective of ending white colonial rule but there was a big risk with going down this route. The armed struggle, by its very nation, was always going to produce violent individuals, men and women who are unfazed by violence, intimidation, vote rigging, murder and lawlessness. Whilst the ability to consider all this violence and lawlessness helped to produce heroic freedom fighters the worry question is what kind of national leaders will they make?
Having fought in the war to drive the white colonialists, it was naïve to think that these freedom fighters would give up the power to impose their will that the gun had given them. There is no question that the 1980 elections were, above all else, a vote to end the civil war; the people knew if Zanu-PF and-PF Zapu had lost the election, war would have continued. You do not argue when you are looking up the business end of the AK47 rifle.
"The ballot cannot undo what the bullet did!" Boosted Mugabe in 2008 at the peak of the worse election violence the nation has ever seen. He was only saying out loud what he and his party have always believed in and practised. He is not fazed by violence and lawlessness; indeed he has boosted of having "several degrees in violence".
After 34 years of corrupt and tyrannical rule we in Zimbabwe certainly know what kind of leaders a violent armed struggle throws and the dire consequences of having such a regime in power for decades.
Many Zimbabweans have pinned their hopes of seeing an end to this corrupt and oppressive Zanu-PF dictatorship with Mugabe's death; he is 90 years old, even with all his regular medical trips (eight in 2013 alone at $3 million @) to Singapore even he must know that the sun is setting. The prospect of the tyrant being replace by younger Mnangagwa who is himself a senior member of JOC and is schooled in the life of violence and lawlessness and considers someone spraying his office cyanide "normal" is clearly disheartening.
We have no chance in hell of getting a health and function democracy with a Head of State who thinks violence, rigging elections, spraying cyanide poison, murder, etc. "normal". In Mnangagwa we have just got ourselves the tyrant Mugabe mark2!
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Wilbert Mukori can be contacted at zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.om
Two more individuals have been hospitalised following the attempted cyanide assassination of Emmerson Mnangagwa. The poison was sprayed in his Zanu-PF HQ office on Tuesday night.
Mnangagwa said he was unfazed by the incident, adding that death threats had become part of his life.
"Threats to my life are normal. I have had these throughout my 52 years of political life; so it has become part of my life," he told the US-based VOA Studio 7 radio station.
"Zanu-PF ndeye ropa!" (Zanu-PF is a party of blood!) He might just as well have added.
If you the only "business" you have ever known for 52 years is intimidating, harassing, beating, raping and even murdering your critics, opponents but even more so defensive civilians to keep the whole nation subdue with fear; it would be naïve to think your Mafia rivals will seat back and not try to take you out.
The cyanide poison was sprayed in Mnangagwa's office in the Zanu-PF "Shake-Shake" building on Tuesday night. Cyanide is a powerful poison that can kill within seconds. So whoever sprayed it meant business; to kill and no messing round. It is almost certain that whoever the assassin was he/she must have from within Zanu-PF or have strong party connections.
So Zanu-PF is not just corrupt but worse still this is a party that is determined to stay in power at all cost. The Mnangagwa faction, whose members constitute the brains in the Joint Operations Command (the Junta that has ruled Zimbabwe for the last 15 or 20 years) headed by Mugabe himself, was not content with blatantly rigging national elections it went on to blatantly rig the party's own elections. And now, it seems, faction members are after each other with murder on their minds. Yeap! Zanu-PF ndeye ropa!
The armed struggle to end white colonial rule was guaranteed to deliver its main objective of ending white colonial rule but there was a big risk with going down this route. The armed struggle, by its very nation, was always going to produce violent individuals, men and women who are unfazed by violence, intimidation, vote rigging, murder and lawlessness. Whilst the ability to consider all this violence and lawlessness helped to produce heroic freedom fighters the worry question is what kind of national leaders will they make?
Having fought in the war to drive the white colonialists, it was naïve to think that these freedom fighters would give up the power to impose their will that the gun had given them. There is no question that the 1980 elections were, above all else, a vote to end the civil war; the people knew if Zanu-PF and-PF Zapu had lost the election, war would have continued. You do not argue when you are looking up the business end of the AK47 rifle.
"The ballot cannot undo what the bullet did!" Boosted Mugabe in 2008 at the peak of the worse election violence the nation has ever seen. He was only saying out loud what he and his party have always believed in and practised. He is not fazed by violence and lawlessness; indeed he has boosted of having "several degrees in violence".
After 34 years of corrupt and tyrannical rule we in Zimbabwe certainly know what kind of leaders a violent armed struggle throws and the dire consequences of having such a regime in power for decades.
Many Zimbabweans have pinned their hopes of seeing an end to this corrupt and oppressive Zanu-PF dictatorship with Mugabe's death; he is 90 years old, even with all his regular medical trips (eight in 2013 alone at $3 million @) to Singapore even he must know that the sun is setting. The prospect of the tyrant being replace by younger Mnangagwa who is himself a senior member of JOC and is schooled in the life of violence and lawlessness and considers someone spraying his office cyanide "normal" is clearly disheartening.
We have no chance in hell of getting a health and function democracy with a Head of State who thinks violence, rigging elections, spraying cyanide poison, murder, etc. "normal". In Mnangagwa we have just got ourselves the tyrant Mugabe mark2!
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Wilbert Mukori can be contacted at zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.om
Source - Wilbert Mukori
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