Doomed Didymus

President Robert Mugabe flew back from his long and controversial holiday in the Far East on Thursday afternoon and, sadly, went into a predictable but mindless rant against hapless former Presidential Affairs minister, Didymus Mutasa.

Among other unbecoming epithets, the only leader that Zimbabweans have known since the country's independence from Britain 35 years ago, branded his erstwhile lieutenant as "deranged, mad, little-brained" and "a stupid fool".

It really is gobsmacking that after spending nearly one-and-a-half months luxuriating in the Far East with his family, at huge cost to long-suffering taxpayers -  and at a time that the majority of Zimbabweans are wallowing in abject poverty - that the CEO of the Republic felt that this was the most important issue requiring his attention as soon as he returned home.

Let's look at the climate into which the Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, as lickspittle State media like to refer to him, flew in - just in case there are some among us who either suffer from amnesia or have just landed on Planet Earth from Mars.

Thanks to Zanu-PF misrule, the Zimbabwean economy is truly in the doldrums, which has worsened poverty levels and driven the unemployment rate to beyond 90 percent.

Conservative official estimates say hundreds of companies shut their doors last year, with at least 60 000 Zimbabweans in the formal sector losing their jobs in the process.

As if this is not bad enough, economic analysts say 2015 will be worse, which means more company closures, retrenchments and worsening poverty levels - all solely thanks to the fatal political and policy choices of our heartless rulers.

Yes, the "evil" West, so-called sanctions, white commercial farmers, Morgan Tsvangirai and the opposition, former Vice President Joice Mujuru and now Mutasa are pathetic Zanu-PF ruses to try and explain away their gross corruption, misrule and incompetence of the past 35 years!

And the health sector is in no better shape, and is in fact in intensive care - to the extent that our proud leader and his family don't themselves have the slightest confidence in being attended to locally.

Indeed, as we write this opinion, his quarrelsome wife Grace is recuperating in comfy Singapore after having undergone a successful operation for appendicitis there.

And who can blame the First Family for their hypocrisy, where Zimbabwe is good only when it serves their political and economic interests, but not quite good enough when it comes to their health, as well as their shopping and holiday needs.

Indeed, most of our hospitals and clinics are, in truth, nothing more than glorified mortuaries where poor people go to die due to gross mismanagement and a dire lack of funding presided over by the same rulers who go overseas for their medical needs.

And we could go on and on.

With regards to Mugabe's undignified tirade against Mutasa, it was also quite revealing that the president did not once deal with the very real and substantive issues that the former Cabinet minister has raised about both the ugly goings-on in the warring ruling party, as well as the implications emanating therefrom for the country.

Thus, while many people are sceptical, and rightly so, about Mutasa's Damascene conversion to democracy given his Zanu-PF record of the past three decades, this does not nullify the important issues that he is raising, and it also does not mean Zimbabweans are blind to how utterly useless, murderous and uncaring those who lord over us are.

That some people will "welcome" and "cheer" at crass pronouncements at Harare International Airport when leaders come back to Zimbabwe from their five-star pampering overseas does not mean that they are oblivious to their own pain, suffering and poverty - as well as their leaders' extravagance and heartlessness.

And to zero in on Zimbabwe's biggest undoing, it doesn't give us any pleasure to say it is Mugabe's and Grace's strange belief that the country would cease to exist if the nonagenarian were not on the throne.

The fact is that Mugabe has become the biggest impediment to progress and development in this country, with Zimbabweans' only enduring memories of him having to do with his ineptitude and misrule as our leader; the endemic corruption in the country that is synonymous with Zanu-PF; Gukurahundi; Murambatsvina; record poverty and unemployment, as well as a million other things that have gone wrong since 1980.

These are the issues that we expect him to address when he comes back from a nice holiday that we pay for, not poor Didymus Mutasa.