Opinion / Columnist
Moyo's BBC HardTalk failed to get to the heart of November 2017 coup - necessary evil to remove a greater evil
11 Jan 2018 at 16:07hrs | Views
I stayed late to listen to the 04.30 am UK time Thursday 11 January 2018 BBC HardTalk interview of Professor Jonathan Moyo. To say I was very, very, disappointed is an understatement, I used it complete with the superlatives only because there no other way to express my feeling – the limitations are with the language.
HardTalk, as the name of the programme implies, is supposed to ask the hard question and get to the heart of the matter. I therefore expected Zaniah Badawi, the BBC interviewer, to drive home the point that Zimbabwe's 15 th November 2017 military coup had become a necessary evil because there was no other way of removing then President Robert Mugabe from power. Here are some of the hard questions she should have asked:
Professor Moyo, are you denying that President Mugabe had failed to hold free, fair and credible elections in all his 37 years in power?
Is it not true that the 15 November coup was the second after the de facto coup staged in 2008 to stop Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC party taking power after Mugabe and Zanu PF was defeated in the March vote?
Professor Moyo and former President Mugabe talk of rule of law and constitutionalism only when it suits you but ignore it to pursue your no regime change agenda. SADC forced Mugabe and Zanu PF to go into the 2008 to 2013 GNU on the understanding Zimbabwe will implement democratic reforms designed to restore the ordinary Zimbabweans' freedoms and basic human rights including the right to free and fair elections.
Sadly, not even one of these reforms were implemented. It was President Mugabe and his Zanu PF party that has systematically eroded the people's freedoms and rights since independence and now the regime is undermining all efforts to restore them. You, yourself, Professor Moyo has even publicly boasted that "You can't expect us to reform ourselves out of power!" Are you saying Zanu PF has the right to rig elections, stage coups, etc. to stay in power?
So, you and your G40 friends have seen nothing wrong with vote rigging and military coup per se, the only reason you are condemning the 15 November 2017 coup is because you were the victims?
Professor Jonathan Moyo is "one of the most hated man in Zimbabwe", Ms Badawi said in her introduction but, as the interviewee, he was as slippery as a catfish, she soon learned. She tried to remind Moyo that Mugabe's legacy was the 90% mass unemployment, abject poverty that has ¾ of the people living on US$ 5.00 or less a day, etc. He dismissed that as a "challenge" not a legacy!
According to Oxford dictionary a legacy "is a gift left in a will; something handed down by a predecessor". So, after 37 years of corrupt, vote rigging, staged coups and murderous oppression Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs are handing today's generation an impoverished nation whose economy is in total meltdown after decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption ruled by lawless thugs.
Most of the interview was taken up by Moyo giving details of how he and his colleague, Saviour Kasukuwere escaped under the very nose of Chiwenga's armed hit-squard!
Professor Moyo went town about the regime now in Harare being "illegal led by thugs", of course it is illegal and Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and the rest are thugs but then so was the Mugabe regime. Zanu PF was a party of lawless and ruthless thugs before the slip, this is a characterisation the splinter factions will take with them wherever they go. It saves the pot's purpose to call the pan black and so it will call the pan black.
Letting Jonathan Moyo escape is the biggest blunder the Mnangagwa faction has ever made because he knows a lot of dirty stuff about Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and many, many others in the regime's coup-plotters cabinet! Moyo is on the run for his life from his erstwhile for thugs, he knows that they are ruthless and there will not be kissing and making up if they catch him. His mission is to do everything in his power to make life as uncomfortable for them as he can; he will be leaking a lot of their dirty past, of that we can be certain.
For the record, Professor Moyo, it was not the 15 November 2017 military coup that made Zimbabwe "a banana republic", as you claimed. The country has been a banana republic all along. The coup was just one event in a string of other similar cases of lawlessness and thuggery that have made Zimbabwe a pariah state ruled by the filthy rich but ruthless and oppressive few robbing the majority blind of their wealth, freedom, human rights, hopes and their very humanity.
HardTalk, as the name of the programme implies, is supposed to ask the hard question and get to the heart of the matter. I therefore expected Zaniah Badawi, the BBC interviewer, to drive home the point that Zimbabwe's 15 th November 2017 military coup had become a necessary evil because there was no other way of removing then President Robert Mugabe from power. Here are some of the hard questions she should have asked:
Professor Moyo, are you denying that President Mugabe had failed to hold free, fair and credible elections in all his 37 years in power?
Is it not true that the 15 November coup was the second after the de facto coup staged in 2008 to stop Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC party taking power after Mugabe and Zanu PF was defeated in the March vote?
Professor Moyo and former President Mugabe talk of rule of law and constitutionalism only when it suits you but ignore it to pursue your no regime change agenda. SADC forced Mugabe and Zanu PF to go into the 2008 to 2013 GNU on the understanding Zimbabwe will implement democratic reforms designed to restore the ordinary Zimbabweans' freedoms and basic human rights including the right to free and fair elections.
Sadly, not even one of these reforms were implemented. It was President Mugabe and his Zanu PF party that has systematically eroded the people's freedoms and rights since independence and now the regime is undermining all efforts to restore them. You, yourself, Professor Moyo has even publicly boasted that "You can't expect us to reform ourselves out of power!" Are you saying Zanu PF has the right to rig elections, stage coups, etc. to stay in power?
So, you and your G40 friends have seen nothing wrong with vote rigging and military coup per se, the only reason you are condemning the 15 November 2017 coup is because you were the victims?
Professor Jonathan Moyo is "one of the most hated man in Zimbabwe", Ms Badawi said in her introduction but, as the interviewee, he was as slippery as a catfish, she soon learned. She tried to remind Moyo that Mugabe's legacy was the 90% mass unemployment, abject poverty that has ¾ of the people living on US$ 5.00 or less a day, etc. He dismissed that as a "challenge" not a legacy!
According to Oxford dictionary a legacy "is a gift left in a will; something handed down by a predecessor". So, after 37 years of corrupt, vote rigging, staged coups and murderous oppression Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs are handing today's generation an impoverished nation whose economy is in total meltdown after decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption ruled by lawless thugs.
Most of the interview was taken up by Moyo giving details of how he and his colleague, Saviour Kasukuwere escaped under the very nose of Chiwenga's armed hit-squard!
Professor Moyo went town about the regime now in Harare being "illegal led by thugs", of course it is illegal and Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and the rest are thugs but then so was the Mugabe regime. Zanu PF was a party of lawless and ruthless thugs before the slip, this is a characterisation the splinter factions will take with them wherever they go. It saves the pot's purpose to call the pan black and so it will call the pan black.
Letting Jonathan Moyo escape is the biggest blunder the Mnangagwa faction has ever made because he knows a lot of dirty stuff about Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and many, many others in the regime's coup-plotters cabinet! Moyo is on the run for his life from his erstwhile for thugs, he knows that they are ruthless and there will not be kissing and making up if they catch him. His mission is to do everything in his power to make life as uncomfortable for them as he can; he will be leaking a lot of their dirty past, of that we can be certain.
For the record, Professor Moyo, it was not the 15 November 2017 military coup that made Zimbabwe "a banana republic", as you claimed. The country has been a banana republic all along. The coup was just one event in a string of other similar cases of lawlessness and thuggery that have made Zimbabwe a pariah state ruled by the filthy rich but ruthless and oppressive few robbing the majority blind of their wealth, freedom, human rights, hopes and their very humanity.
Source - zsdemocrats.blogspot.co.uk
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