Opinion / Columnist
Sabotage through political activism should be criminalized
12 Jul 2016 at 05:42hrs | Views
The wind of political hallucination and wishful thinking blowing across urban areas in Zimbabwe appears to have chipped away at the minds of most opposition activists, who are all now believing that it is the opportune moment to nudge President Robert Mugabe out of power.
All cheap politicians have now jumped on the bandwagon of either posting preposterous social media video clips or release press statements, urging the President to step down.
Buoyed by inconsequential sporadic protests and orgies of violence witnessed last week, we hear the Youth Advocacy for Reform and Democracy (YARD) leader, Temba Mliswa, rushed to the citadel of European hegemony in Brussels in Belgium to exhort the funders and founders of the opposition movement to now deliver their fatal blow on Zimbabwe.
Tracing the ignoble footsteps of his opposition godfather, Morgan Tsvangirai, who unashamedly invited illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe, Mliswa wormed his way to Europe to beseech the former colonisers to once again throw spanners in the country's economic endeavours.
Mliswa became a thorny sideshow to the all-important visit by the Minister Patrick Chinamasa-led Government delegation to the United Kingdom that was on a mission to lure foreign investors to Zimbabwe.
The YARD leader carried a neo-imperial mandate to scuttle the efforts of the Government delegation and paint a miserable and unattractive picture of the country, so as to repel any potential foreign investors from the country.
During his dissident European jaunt, Mliswa made unsubstantiated claims on alleged human rights abuses and governance failure in Zimbabwe.
He also foolishly called on the European bloc to spurn any negotiation overtures from Zimbabwe until the country first re-joined the Commonwealth group.
It still boggles the mind why Mliswa regards rejoining the Commonwealth as an important step in the re-engagement between Zimbabwe and Europe, for the group offers nothing concrete to its members except tea, resulting in it being called a ‘Tea Club', a reference to its tea guzzling nature associated with its matron, the Queen of England.
Mliswa's delirium did not end there as he also used his European visit to call on President Mugabe to step down before the expiry of his tenure.
You would think that Mliswa has suddenly become some political High Priest who at the click of his finger would tell a President to abdicate his position, of which the YARD leader is not, for he is simply a political reject and a nonentity seeking political relevance.
Mliswa forgets that the President has a popular mandate to govern the country until 2018, when he would be due to call for another round of elections to choose the country's national leader.
As long as the President's current tenure has not expired, it would be treasonous and ludicrous for anyone to think that an outbreak of foreign engineered urban civil disobedience would force the President out.
Zimbabwe is not a jungle democracy but a constitutional democracy that only allows power to be transferred through elections and not through uninformed protests and demonstrations.
Mliswa was not the only Zimbabwean who wanted to scuttle the efforts of the Chinamasa team, as there were other unpatriotic political malcontents who smuggled themselves into the Zimbabwe UK Investment Conference and sought to deride Government officials as looters.
One such opposition loose cannon, is the bigoted Petina Gappa, who fools herself, believing that she is so knowledgeable and influential so as to block any would-be investors from setting foot in Zimbabwe.
In a pitiful Facebook post, Gappa gleefully boasted about her subversive role in seeking to humiliate the Zimbabwean delegation by throwing a barrage of hate-filled questions at them in the hope of projecting the country as ill-prepared to host foreign investors.
Her act was shameful and unpatriotic.
In her foolishness, she failed to realize that she was actually plundering an investment opportunity for millions of young Zimbabweans that might have become an economic lifeline that could have translated into jobs and improved standard of living.
In her selfish bid to build an anti-Government profile, she simply sacrificed the dreams of millions of sanctions-emaciated Zimbabweans.
In other countries, such seditious behaviour by Mliswa and Gappah would lend perpetrators in jail.
No country would brook such blatant unpatriotic tendencies and sell-out proclivities that sabotage the economic fabric of the country.
We urge our legislators to consider promulgating a law that would make a crime for Zimbabweans to sabotage the economy through political activism.
---------------
Gwinyai Mutongi <gwinz.mutongi@gmail.com
All cheap politicians have now jumped on the bandwagon of either posting preposterous social media video clips or release press statements, urging the President to step down.
Buoyed by inconsequential sporadic protests and orgies of violence witnessed last week, we hear the Youth Advocacy for Reform and Democracy (YARD) leader, Temba Mliswa, rushed to the citadel of European hegemony in Brussels in Belgium to exhort the funders and founders of the opposition movement to now deliver their fatal blow on Zimbabwe.
Tracing the ignoble footsteps of his opposition godfather, Morgan Tsvangirai, who unashamedly invited illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe, Mliswa wormed his way to Europe to beseech the former colonisers to once again throw spanners in the country's economic endeavours.
Mliswa became a thorny sideshow to the all-important visit by the Minister Patrick Chinamasa-led Government delegation to the United Kingdom that was on a mission to lure foreign investors to Zimbabwe.
The YARD leader carried a neo-imperial mandate to scuttle the efforts of the Government delegation and paint a miserable and unattractive picture of the country, so as to repel any potential foreign investors from the country.
During his dissident European jaunt, Mliswa made unsubstantiated claims on alleged human rights abuses and governance failure in Zimbabwe.
He also foolishly called on the European bloc to spurn any negotiation overtures from Zimbabwe until the country first re-joined the Commonwealth group.
It still boggles the mind why Mliswa regards rejoining the Commonwealth as an important step in the re-engagement between Zimbabwe and Europe, for the group offers nothing concrete to its members except tea, resulting in it being called a ‘Tea Club', a reference to its tea guzzling nature associated with its matron, the Queen of England.
Mliswa's delirium did not end there as he also used his European visit to call on President Mugabe to step down before the expiry of his tenure.
You would think that Mliswa has suddenly become some political High Priest who at the click of his finger would tell a President to abdicate his position, of which the YARD leader is not, for he is simply a political reject and a nonentity seeking political relevance.
Mliswa forgets that the President has a popular mandate to govern the country until 2018, when he would be due to call for another round of elections to choose the country's national leader.
As long as the President's current tenure has not expired, it would be treasonous and ludicrous for anyone to think that an outbreak of foreign engineered urban civil disobedience would force the President out.
Zimbabwe is not a jungle democracy but a constitutional democracy that only allows power to be transferred through elections and not through uninformed protests and demonstrations.
Mliswa was not the only Zimbabwean who wanted to scuttle the efforts of the Chinamasa team, as there were other unpatriotic political malcontents who smuggled themselves into the Zimbabwe UK Investment Conference and sought to deride Government officials as looters.
One such opposition loose cannon, is the bigoted Petina Gappa, who fools herself, believing that she is so knowledgeable and influential so as to block any would-be investors from setting foot in Zimbabwe.
In a pitiful Facebook post, Gappa gleefully boasted about her subversive role in seeking to humiliate the Zimbabwean delegation by throwing a barrage of hate-filled questions at them in the hope of projecting the country as ill-prepared to host foreign investors.
Her act was shameful and unpatriotic.
In her foolishness, she failed to realize that she was actually plundering an investment opportunity for millions of young Zimbabweans that might have become an economic lifeline that could have translated into jobs and improved standard of living.
In her selfish bid to build an anti-Government profile, she simply sacrificed the dreams of millions of sanctions-emaciated Zimbabweans.
In other countries, such seditious behaviour by Mliswa and Gappah would lend perpetrators in jail.
No country would brook such blatant unpatriotic tendencies and sell-out proclivities that sabotage the economic fabric of the country.
We urge our legislators to consider promulgating a law that would make a crime for Zimbabweans to sabotage the economy through political activism.
---------------
Gwinyai Mutongi <gwinz.mutongi@gmail.com
Source - Gwinyai Mutongi
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