Opinion / Columnist
20 years on Mugabe still demanding UN veto - his maxim 'What is yours must be mine!'
22 Sep 2016 at 12:30hrs | Views
When it comes to how Robert Gabriel Mugabe relate to others, be it at an individual, group or national level, everything he has ever said or done have all been guided by the following three cardinal rules:
"What is yours must be ours in true socialist tradition and spirit of sharing." Mugabe can be a socialist to the bone marrow and will use all manner of tricks to force everyone else to become a socialist and an egalitarian. He has haunted the petty bourgeois, capitalists and colonialists and blamed them for all the ills in this world.
Mugabe has turned Zimbabwe into a Chinese colony; right now he has started giving the farms he seized from the European white farms to the Chinese. He gave the farms initially to his Zanu PF cronies but has taken them back after they failed to put them into productive use.
Corruption is Zimbabwe is rife which suits the Chinese given the Chinese government's secretive culture. The Chinese are also at the heart of the wholesale looting and plunder of Marange diamonds and other resources. So the Chinese are actually worse than the British as a colonial power but they are Mugabe's friends and we, ordinary mortals have no say.
"What is ours must be mine." All wealth and power in Mugabe's Zimbabwe is ostensibly owned by the people with government managing and controlling it much as a guardian of a minor would. The Zimbabwe government owns and runs the usual state institutions like civil service and judiciary, state controlled institutions like NRZ and ZESA which Mugabe has increased since independence by the forced acquisition of such companies as the country's biggest bus company ZUPCO and government has since extended its reach and influence to every sector of society include the private sector giving rise to such self-contradictory anomalies as GONGO – (Government Organized) None Governmental Organizations.
From the word go Mugabe has deliberately made the distinction between government and his party Zanu PF blurred but his end and purpose has been very clear – government is there to above all else serve the party's interest to become the new owner of everything and to secure absolute power.
Whilst on paper Zimbabwe is and has always been a multi-party democracy; in practice Mugabe has ruthlessly pushed his selfish agenda to turn it into a de facto one-party dictatorship in line with his desire to secure and enjoy absolute power. He has bribed, cheated, harangued and even murdered his political critics and opponents to ensure he secured and retain absolute power at all times.
So in Zimbabwe ownership of wealth and power has moved from the white colonial regime and the mainly white capitalists to black government to Zanu PF and ultimately to Robert Gabriel Mugabe.
"What is mine is mine and mine alone, you touch it and you die!" Mugabe has often said "Zimbabwe is mine!" and nothing has encapsulated that he meant this literally and in deadly earnest that his cavalier attitude when he admitted that corruption was costing the country billions of dollar!
Zimbabwe is facing a serious economic meltdown with unemployment now a nauseating 90% and government is so short of cash it is failing to pay civil servants their wages let alone pay for other necessities as medicine. And yet when Mugabe announced that $15 billion of diamond revenue had been "swindled" he could not have been more casual about it. He has since underlined that point by doing absolutely nothing to hunter down the swindlers and thus recover the loot and, more significantly, to stop the looting.
$15 billion is a fortune even to a wealthy nation like USA with a GPD of $18 trillion; it is humongous amount money to a country like Zimbabwe with a GDP of $14 billion!
On the political front, Mugabe has ruthlessly robbed the ordinary people their freedoms and basic human rights including the right to free and fair elections and even the right to life itself with the arrogance and heartless indifference of the slave master!
Robert Mugabe's speech to the UN General Assembly captured the essence of his arrogance and his me! – me! mentality perfectly.
"For over 20 years, many of us have come to this rostrum, pleading and demanding for reforms of the Security Council. Today we are no closer to achieving that goal than we were 20 years ago. This is so in spite of the universal acknowledgement of the injustice, unfairness and inappropriateness of the current composition of the Security Council," said Mugabe.
There five permanent members on the Security Council and they have a veto; make no mistake about it Mugabe demand a permanent seat and veto too, initially for Africa but ultimately for himself of course.
The UN has often failed to protect the weak and voiceless people all over the world, especially those from failed states of which Africa has plenty of, because existing five permanent members have abused their UN Security Council veto to serve their selfish interests. Now imagine adding to that mix a corrupt, vote rigging and murderous tyrant like Mugabe wielding a UN veto too; that will rather the UN completely useless!
"This session of the General Assembly will elect the next Secretary-General of our organisation. We have witnessed commendable efforts aimed at making the selection process of the next Secretary-General inclusive and transparent. The greater involvement of the General Assembly, and therefore of the majority of our membership, does not, however, mask the opaqueness of the process at Security Council level." Every Zimbabwean was surprised to hear Mugabe say this.
Here is the man who has never, in his 36 years in power, ever held free, fair and credible elections talking of an "inclusive and transparent" election process. He has failed to release the voters roll at least a month before the July 2013 elections as is required by law and has failed to do so to this day.
Nearly one million voters were denied the vote that year because their details were not in the constituency voters roll where they expected. If the voters roll had been made public as judiciously as is required by law; most of these people would have had the mistake put right – proof this was in fact a deliberate and calculated vote rigging move. Mugabe's victory margin was just over a million!
But without doubt the crass of Mugabe's duplicity and hypocrisy was in him lying about why Zimbabwe has repeatedly failed deliver any meaningful economic development.
"On our part, I am happy to inform you that we have established national multi-stakeholders and multi-sector structures to domesticate and implement the 2030 (UN development) Agenda in a co-ordinated and integrated manner with our national development programme, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset)," explained Mugabe. "Our biggest impediment to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda is the burden of the punitive and heinous sanctions imposed against us by some among us here."
Anyone remotely familiar with Zimbabwe's economic story knows that ZimAsset died soon after the rigged July 2013 elections. Mugabe thought he would rig economic recovery just as he had rigged the elections; that did not happen. He failed to get anyone, not even his "all weather" Chinese friends to bankroll the $27 billion ZimAsset budget; without the funding the plan was died in the water.
Mugabe continues to live in his own cloud-cuckoo-land not subject to the same laws of thermodynamic and of basic economics that apply in the real world. In the real world there is no way an a country with a GDP of $14 billion would sustain much less thrive and prosper when corruption in the said country has reached the nauseating heights of $15 billion is "swindled" in a few years and those in positions of power and authority are not even alarmed!
Mugabe's epitaph should simply read:
Here lays a tyrant who believed and ruthlessly imposed his maxim; "What is yours is ours. What is ours is mine. And what is mine is mine, touch it and you die!"
"What is yours must be ours in true socialist tradition and spirit of sharing." Mugabe can be a socialist to the bone marrow and will use all manner of tricks to force everyone else to become a socialist and an egalitarian. He has haunted the petty bourgeois, capitalists and colonialists and blamed them for all the ills in this world.
Mugabe has turned Zimbabwe into a Chinese colony; right now he has started giving the farms he seized from the European white farms to the Chinese. He gave the farms initially to his Zanu PF cronies but has taken them back after they failed to put them into productive use.
Corruption is Zimbabwe is rife which suits the Chinese given the Chinese government's secretive culture. The Chinese are also at the heart of the wholesale looting and plunder of Marange diamonds and other resources. So the Chinese are actually worse than the British as a colonial power but they are Mugabe's friends and we, ordinary mortals have no say.
"What is ours must be mine." All wealth and power in Mugabe's Zimbabwe is ostensibly owned by the people with government managing and controlling it much as a guardian of a minor would. The Zimbabwe government owns and runs the usual state institutions like civil service and judiciary, state controlled institutions like NRZ and ZESA which Mugabe has increased since independence by the forced acquisition of such companies as the country's biggest bus company ZUPCO and government has since extended its reach and influence to every sector of society include the private sector giving rise to such self-contradictory anomalies as GONGO – (Government Organized) None Governmental Organizations.
From the word go Mugabe has deliberately made the distinction between government and his party Zanu PF blurred but his end and purpose has been very clear – government is there to above all else serve the party's interest to become the new owner of everything and to secure absolute power.
Whilst on paper Zimbabwe is and has always been a multi-party democracy; in practice Mugabe has ruthlessly pushed his selfish agenda to turn it into a de facto one-party dictatorship in line with his desire to secure and enjoy absolute power. He has bribed, cheated, harangued and even murdered his political critics and opponents to ensure he secured and retain absolute power at all times.
So in Zimbabwe ownership of wealth and power has moved from the white colonial regime and the mainly white capitalists to black government to Zanu PF and ultimately to Robert Gabriel Mugabe.
"What is mine is mine and mine alone, you touch it and you die!" Mugabe has often said "Zimbabwe is mine!" and nothing has encapsulated that he meant this literally and in deadly earnest that his cavalier attitude when he admitted that corruption was costing the country billions of dollar!
Zimbabwe is facing a serious economic meltdown with unemployment now a nauseating 90% and government is so short of cash it is failing to pay civil servants their wages let alone pay for other necessities as medicine. And yet when Mugabe announced that $15 billion of diamond revenue had been "swindled" he could not have been more casual about it. He has since underlined that point by doing absolutely nothing to hunter down the swindlers and thus recover the loot and, more significantly, to stop the looting.
$15 billion is a fortune even to a wealthy nation like USA with a GPD of $18 trillion; it is humongous amount money to a country like Zimbabwe with a GDP of $14 billion!
Robert Mugabe's speech to the UN General Assembly captured the essence of his arrogance and his me! – me! mentality perfectly.
"For over 20 years, many of us have come to this rostrum, pleading and demanding for reforms of the Security Council. Today we are no closer to achieving that goal than we were 20 years ago. This is so in spite of the universal acknowledgement of the injustice, unfairness and inappropriateness of the current composition of the Security Council," said Mugabe.
There five permanent members on the Security Council and they have a veto; make no mistake about it Mugabe demand a permanent seat and veto too, initially for Africa but ultimately for himself of course.
The UN has often failed to protect the weak and voiceless people all over the world, especially those from failed states of which Africa has plenty of, because existing five permanent members have abused their UN Security Council veto to serve their selfish interests. Now imagine adding to that mix a corrupt, vote rigging and murderous tyrant like Mugabe wielding a UN veto too; that will rather the UN completely useless!
"This session of the General Assembly will elect the next Secretary-General of our organisation. We have witnessed commendable efforts aimed at making the selection process of the next Secretary-General inclusive and transparent. The greater involvement of the General Assembly, and therefore of the majority of our membership, does not, however, mask the opaqueness of the process at Security Council level." Every Zimbabwean was surprised to hear Mugabe say this.
Here is the man who has never, in his 36 years in power, ever held free, fair and credible elections talking of an "inclusive and transparent" election process. He has failed to release the voters roll at least a month before the July 2013 elections as is required by law and has failed to do so to this day.
Nearly one million voters were denied the vote that year because their details were not in the constituency voters roll where they expected. If the voters roll had been made public as judiciously as is required by law; most of these people would have had the mistake put right – proof this was in fact a deliberate and calculated vote rigging move. Mugabe's victory margin was just over a million!
But without doubt the crass of Mugabe's duplicity and hypocrisy was in him lying about why Zimbabwe has repeatedly failed deliver any meaningful economic development.
"On our part, I am happy to inform you that we have established national multi-stakeholders and multi-sector structures to domesticate and implement the 2030 (UN development) Agenda in a co-ordinated and integrated manner with our national development programme, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset)," explained Mugabe. "Our biggest impediment to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda is the burden of the punitive and heinous sanctions imposed against us by some among us here."
Anyone remotely familiar with Zimbabwe's economic story knows that ZimAsset died soon after the rigged July 2013 elections. Mugabe thought he would rig economic recovery just as he had rigged the elections; that did not happen. He failed to get anyone, not even his "all weather" Chinese friends to bankroll the $27 billion ZimAsset budget; without the funding the plan was died in the water.
Mugabe continues to live in his own cloud-cuckoo-land not subject to the same laws of thermodynamic and of basic economics that apply in the real world. In the real world there is no way an a country with a GDP of $14 billion would sustain much less thrive and prosper when corruption in the said country has reached the nauseating heights of $15 billion is "swindled" in a few years and those in positions of power and authority are not even alarmed!
Mugabe's epitaph should simply read:
Here lays a tyrant who believed and ruthlessly imposed his maxim; "What is yours is ours. What is ours is mine. And what is mine is mine, touch it and you die!"
Source - Wilbert Mukori
All articles and letters published on Bulawayo24 have been independently written by members of Bulawayo24's community. The views of users published on Bulawayo24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Bulawayo24. Bulawayo24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.
