Wrong-footed by Mugabe Lacoste might fail to impeach, unless...

Robert Mugabe's refusal to resign which was played out in front of millions of Zimbabweans on national television and millions more on international news channels exposed a reality that Zimbabweans have been living with for years and which the international community does not know.

Zimbabwe is being ruled by a totally self-obsessed individual who has no normal feelings, does not know comradery, nor sympathy, and does not have basic human values.

All he knows is how to manipulate people and situations to please himself; and what pleases him most is exercising power for self aggrandisement.

He is a master of divide-and-rule and an expert at identifying and manipulating people's needs and their greed, thus he has kept senior civil servants and military officers, and cabinet ministers and judges, loyal to him with a range of perks that kept them in a separate world from the rest of the deprived Zimbabweans.

He is also a master of rhetoric which would make the whole of the Third World believe that he is the most principled anti-imperialist leader who is leading his country to self-sustaining socialist development.
He is also so cunning that despite being under house arrest he was able to make his captors believe that he was going to give a resignation speech, only to remove the relevant pages when cameras had started rolling.

The generals could not do anything but allow him to finish his speech in which he made it clear that he was not about to resign.

The battle has now moved to Parliament where the Mnangagwa faction of his party his expected to impeach him, but he might well brew another shocker for them, since he has already wrong-fired them.
In fact ZANU PF legal secretary and secretary of the Lacoste faction of ZANU PF Patrick Chinamasa  who yesterday believed that they had succeeded in getting Mugabe to resign put his foot in it when he said ZANU PF does not need the opposition for what they were about to do.

When the War Veterans who were mobilising people for a mass demonstration to remove Mugabe they talked of a national non-sectarian effort, urging everyone to attend.

But yesterday as soon as he felt assured that Mugabe was going to resign, Chinamasa was slagging off the opposition saying ZANU PF did not need the opposition as this was an internal cleansing of ZANU PF.
It was an unfortunate statement because he exposed the same manipulative ways of the boss that he was trying to fire, and showed that all that his faction was was interested in was to remove Mugabe and replace him with Mnangagwa.

But before the day was out Mugabe had performed a somersault, and the Lacoste faction now needs the opposition MPs to buttress their numbers to effect the impeachment.

For the opposition it makes no difference; they can take it from where they left it before the coup-not-coup - demanding free and fair elections in an environment that is peaceful and without intimidation.

But for those who attempted to remove Mugabe, if they fail, that will be the end of their careers, and possibly their lives, because Mugabe is also not forgiving.

The opposition would be well within their right to leave the Lacoste faction to its own struggle, and tell it's members not to vote for the impeachment, even if it means that Mugabe does not get impeached. It will have done more damage to ZANU in the run up to the election.

Or they can negotiate for concessions in exchange for their voters, e.g. that they include the MDC in a transitional administration before the election.

They can also assist the international Press that is in Zimbabwe now - attention which the opposition has been seeking for years and thus far failed to receive - to shine the light on these ZANU PF officials who are trying to remove Mugabe.

How clean are they in the corruption that has defined the Mugabe regime, its abuse of the opposition and violations of human rights, including murders and disappearances.

Information on them and their activities is available from NGOs such as Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Zimbabwe Human Rights Association, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, Electoral Resources Centre Zimbabwe and political parties such as the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and alliances such as the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance, and other alliances.