Opinion / Columnist
Mugabe running out of time
21 Jul 2013 at 10:32hrs | Views
With less than two weeks before elections, President Robert Mugabe is running out of time to convince a hungry and desperate nation what he is offering - something which he has failed to do in his 33 years of power.
What has been disappointing is the fact that nothing new is coming out of his so-called star rallies except boring history lectures.
It is now clear that Mugabe has no message to deliver to the people.
Like in the previous elections, the 89-year-old's campaign has been centred on history lessons, insulting the British, the whites and their purported puppets, the MDC.
His wife, Grace, is also not helping matters by openly displaying her shallowness through brute and unintelligent personal attacks on Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
In Grace's case, the old adage: "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones" is making sense because we all know how she got involved with Mugabe at a time when the president's wife, Sally was on her death bed.
Mugabe seems to have nothing new to offer and his rallies have become predictable. He cannot continue to harp on the tired land issue because even the MDC has a manifesto with an excellent agricultural turnaround programme.
Mugabe is also campaigning on appeasing war veterans whom he has neglected for long. But he seems to remember them come election time.
In centring his campaign on land, liberation war and war veterans, Mugabe continues to lose the plot and has shown that he has little on the table for the electorate.
What this campaign has however, shown is the abundance of resources that Mugabe's election campaign possesses.
Zanu-PF has printed millions of T-shirts, caps and other party regalia. Zanu-PF says the campaign material funding is coming from the First Family.
Mugabe's speeches are poorly-packaged and seem to be the same rhetoric we have heard for more than a decade. There is no message of hope.
For those who went through the turbulent 2008 and the years that ensued, Mugabe destroyed our lives, jobs, schools, clinics, roads etc and the campaigns should have given him the chance to admit his mistakes and redeem himself.
But no, he spends time lecturing history and insulting people.
Mugabe is scoring own goals as he continues to attack the Global Political Agreement (GPA) as the arrangement brought him legitimacy after losing the 2008 elections.
The GPA also brought about stability at a time when Mugabe had no clue on how to salvage a collapsing economy.
What has been disappointing is the fact that nothing new is coming out of his so-called star rallies except boring history lectures.
It is now clear that Mugabe has no message to deliver to the people.
Like in the previous elections, the 89-year-old's campaign has been centred on history lessons, insulting the British, the whites and their purported puppets, the MDC.
His wife, Grace, is also not helping matters by openly displaying her shallowness through brute and unintelligent personal attacks on Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
In Grace's case, the old adage: "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones" is making sense because we all know how she got involved with Mugabe at a time when the president's wife, Sally was on her death bed.
Mugabe seems to have nothing new to offer and his rallies have become predictable. He cannot continue to harp on the tired land issue because even the MDC has a manifesto with an excellent agricultural turnaround programme.
Mugabe is also campaigning on appeasing war veterans whom he has neglected for long. But he seems to remember them come election time.
What this campaign has however, shown is the abundance of resources that Mugabe's election campaign possesses.
Zanu-PF has printed millions of T-shirts, caps and other party regalia. Zanu-PF says the campaign material funding is coming from the First Family.
Mugabe's speeches are poorly-packaged and seem to be the same rhetoric we have heard for more than a decade. There is no message of hope.
For those who went through the turbulent 2008 and the years that ensued, Mugabe destroyed our lives, jobs, schools, clinics, roads etc and the campaigns should have given him the chance to admit his mistakes and redeem himself.
But no, he spends time lecturing history and insulting people.
Mugabe is scoring own goals as he continues to attack the Global Political Agreement (GPA) as the arrangement brought him legitimacy after losing the 2008 elections.
The GPA also brought about stability at a time when Mugabe had no clue on how to salvage a collapsing economy.
Source - dailynews
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