We can have a rich and prosperous Zimbabwe

I would like to thank you for providing this forum for open debate and exchange of ideas. As someone who has been in the public gallery in our parliament on countless occasion I can honestly say there has been better quality debate here than in that house. There was no debate during the war of independence and there was none after, this is why Zimbabwe ended up being a corrupt and oppressed nation it is today.

I visited my aunt in Mangunje in August 2008, this was soon after the Presidential run-off elections in which Zanu-PF had used violence to ensure a President Mugabe victory. The day I arrived my aunt had been to collect her family's share of Drought Relief package, 5 kg maize meal, 1 kg sugar, half a litre of cooking oil a bar of soap and tooth paste for a one member house hold. She got most of the items.

She was lucky to get anything, she explained, as most people got the Chinese tooth paste. "Zanu-PF officials will either give their family and friends extra rations or sell them. Most people refuse to take the tooth paste, particularly when it is given out with nothing else!"

So the government was forcing people to go to bed in an empty stomach provided they brushed their teeth before going to bed!

I asked her what their village headman, himself an ex-combatant, was doing about this. She dismissed him with contempt. He was the ring leader. He was the one who had organised the Zanu-PF youths who harassed and beat opposition supporters in the area during the presidential run-off elections.

Of course what was happened in my aunt's village in Mangunje in 2008 happened everywhere in Zimbabwe that year; it is the story our lives. President Mugabe is the ring leader just as the ex-combatant is the ring leader in my aunt's village.

Not only have those of us who carried the gun and fought in the war of independence failed to deliver freedom and liberty to the ordinary people as promised, we have done worse; we have granted ourselves the super-numeral right to deny the ordinary people their freedom and liberty to become the new oppressors.

Over the years I have asked myself and many of my former ex-combatants how was it possible that we had so readily abandoned the dream of freedom, liberty and mass prosperity to become oppressors just like the white colonialists who ruled before independence. I have come to the conclusion that we abandoned the dream because it was just that a fussy and ill-defined dream which, in the wrong hands was open to manipulation and misinterpretation. And that is exactly what has happen.

Ever since independence Mugabe has redefined the nation's struggle for independence as ending white colonial rule. He has declared himself and his party Zanu-PF as the only leaders worthy of the honour and trust to be the custodians of the nation's sovereignty.

During the war there had been little discussion on what it is we expected after independence, it was assumed we all knew; besides, we were told by the party machinery, such discussions were distraction from the war.

After independence there was no meaningful debate as all those calling for freedom of expression, freed media and all the other human rights were dismissed as counter revolutionaries fighting for the privileges of the petty bourgeois. Zanu-PF was concerned with the bread and butter issues of the proletariat povo and it was there to ensure the interests of the petty bourgeois do not trump those of povo. As far as the party was concerned the two groups' interests were mutually explosive; the nation could have the individual rights and freedoms or mass prosperity but not both!

It was only when it became clear that the party had failed to delivery mass prosperity that President Mugabe and his propaganda machinery shifted emphasis from mass prosperity to sovereignty. So Zimbabweans have lost their freedoms and rights and millions poor and yet they should still be pleased because the nation still has its sovereignty.

Of course national sovereignty has become President Mugabe's new tooth paste gift to the nation starved of freedom, liberty and a fair share of the nation's wealth and riches.

Before the SADC Heads of State meeting in Victoria Falls, President Mugabe called on all Zimbabweans to forget their economic troubles and smile at the visitors. One can imagine one visitor remarking; "Most Zimbabweans are frightfully thin but they all have milk-white teeth!"

Zimbabwe needs an open debate to dispel the myth that we cannot have a rich and prosperous Zimbabwe where we all enjoy freedom and liberty and are well fed and milk-white teeth too! This is why I thank Bulawayo24 for allowing the space for this important debate to take place.  

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Patrick Guramatunhu can be contacted at patguramatunhu@gmail.com