There is nothing to celebrate on 35th Independence anniversary but plenty to reflect on!

Today is the 18 April 2015, Zimbabwe is 35 years old! There will be no celebrations or fanfare across the land because there is really little cause to celebrate. Let it be the day of deep reflection. Let it be the day history will say we stopped to take a long look at ourselves, at the political and economic hell-hole we had dug for ourselves and, instead of wallowing in self-pity or shooting off in a panic on yet another ill-thought hare-brain escape scheme, we sobered up.

We sobered up to stop the rat-race of the last 35 years that had landed us in this hell-hole in the first place. The ensuing peace had allowed us to take directions of where we and to reaffirm where we wanted to go as a nation. We did not come out with a clear plan how we were going to get ourselves out of the hell-hole that was to follow in time what matters is that we had made the start.

The Zanu PF government has announced that the theme of this year's 35th Independence Anniversary will be; "Zimbabwe @35: Consolidating Unity, Peace and Economic Sovereignty".

Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister Ignatius Chombo has said the theme was inspired by the fact that at 35 years, Zimbabwe was accelerating the implementation of Zim-Asset and enjoying economic sovereignty as espoused under the indigenisation policy buoyed by unity and peace. No doubt this will be the recurring theme in all the speeches the party leaders will be delivering across the land. Having prepared a speech, as we all know, Zanu PF politicians are not the type to shy away from delivering it, especially Mugabe, regardless of how inappropriate and contradictory it may be. They will soldier on and deliver their speech regardless, just like Robert (not his real name) a former high school mate.

Every year our high school hosted a ball to which girls from our neighbouring school were invited. Each girl was given a ticket and three lucky girls whose numbers came out of the hat were given a prize. Robert was picked to be the Master of Ceremony.

 Instead of calling out the numbers and just giving out the prize as was expected, Robert staged the whole thing as if this was a beauty pageant, he even played Steve Wonder's "Is she lovely!" song as each girl walked up to collect her prize. He even had a running commentary of the "Second Princess" and then the "First Princess".

When it came to the "Beauty Queen!" as luck would have it girl happened to be this 13 or 14 year old who had absolutely nothing in the form of beauty features to recommend her. Worse still, the girl was fighting a losing battle with pimples – the curse of puberty. Robert, using phases no doubt borrowed from the Miss World Beauty Pageant, rattle on about how beautiful the girl, "talk and elegant" (the girl was short and fat) but it was the "smooth and lovely face" that killed it!

After three and half decades of denying that mismanagement and corruption were these cancerous problems destroying the economy the cancer have been allowed the time to grow and spread. Today the gross mismanagement and rampant corruption have become tumours the size of tennis balls and there are everywhere.

Mugabe had hoped to rig economic recovery by throwing lots and lots of ZimAsset money at the economy and hopefully revive it without ever having to address the underlying problems of mismanagement and corrupts and hence his request for a staggering $27 billion in the ZimAsset plan. No donor was willing to bankroll the hare-brain scheme.

Mugabe's ZimAsset economic recovery plan is dead in the water; not even his Chinese friends would fund such a wasteful project. Like my High School friend, Robert, the regime still talks of "accelerating the implementation of Zim-Asset" knowing the plan is dead.

The national economic is in real serious trouble; government is failing to pay the civil servants' wages let alone anything else, unemployment has soared to nauseating heights of 90%, 16% of the our people or 2 million are now living in abject poverty, etc. Of course the regime is doing its best to deny the economic meltdown.

There say you can convince a blind man he is having duck and not chicken but if there is hot pepper, he will know. Zimbabweans are having a dish of red-eye hot chills and nothing else and they know the national economy is in a mess.
 
The two questions we must now reflect on and answer is who did we get into this mess? Second, how are we going to get out?

We did not get into this mess by accident; we sealed our own fate way back in 1980 when the nation did nothing to stop Robert Mugabe's political machinations undermining the judiciary by appointing Zanu PF party loyalists, denying the people freedom of expression and undermining press freedom by politicizing the public media, etc. The nation accept Mugabe's systematic erosion of the people's political voice and power as long as his regime delivered mass economic prosperity which he never seem to tire of promise.

By the mid1990s, when it was evident that instead of mass prosperity all the ordinary Zimbabweans were ever going to get from Mugabe and Zanu PF is mass poverty; it was, alas, too late to stop Mugabe. The people had lost both their political voice and power, in the form of a meaningful free and fair vote!

Of course it was very naïve of the people to very even believed that their economic rights could ever be guaranteed in a political system in which they had no say. What the people should have asked themselves is what is Mugabe failed to deliver mass prosperity what recourse will we have for redress?

Over the years many people have argued that mismanagement and corruption were the cancers destroying the Zimbabwe economy. Mugabe and Zanu PF have vehemently denied there was no mismanagement and corruption and accused the "evil sanctions imposed by West" for the economic down turn. In a healthy and functioning democracy where the electorate a meaningful free vote, the people will decide who has won the economic argument and therefore will form the next government. Not so in Zimbabwe, because the people had lost their vote and elections were a formality tolerated as long as it did not produce regime change.

As stated above, mismanagement and corruption were denied for decades allowing them to grow and spread because having usurped the people's political voice and power Mugabe was able to impose the de facto one-party state on the nation. The people could not remove Mugabe and Zanu PF from office and hence the nation was stuck with whatever economic policy the regime saw fit to pursue.

By 2000 the nation was fed up with Mugabe and Zanu PF and the national consensus was that there must be democratic changes to allow free, fair and credible elections. There were a number of opportunities to deliver the changes but by far the best chances were during the 2008 2013 GNU when the changes were listed as a raft of democratic reforms in the Global Political Agreement.

Sadly at the end of the GNU's five years life not even one of the reforms had been implemented. Not one!

The reforms were designed to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship and therefore it would be naive to expect a tyrant like Mugabe would ever want to do this. The task of implemented the reforms therefore fall on Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends. They were reminded countless time to implement the reforms but ignored the warnings. It should also be noted that Tsvangirai threatened to quit the GNU but ever since when Mugabe gave him the $4 million Highlands mansion Tsvangirai and MDC cooperated with Zanu PF especially in making sure no reforms were implemented.

There are no other logical explanations as to why MDC failed to get even one reform implemented other than that MDC leaders are corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent.

There is one other group who must shoulder the responsibility for wasting the opportunity to end the Zanu PF dictatorship during the GNU; the Zimbabwean people. Although people have talked endlessly about democratic change; "Chinja maitiro! Guqula izenzo!" (Change your ways!); when push came to shove it was clear they did not have the foggiest idea what these changes were or why they were important. If the people had understood what the democratic changes/reforms were then there is no doubt they would have known this was the nation's ticket out of the hell Zanu PF had landed us in. They would have seen to it that MDC implemented all the reforms!

As a way out of this economic hell, some people have been calling for mass street protest. To what end and purpose, I would ask?
Those who say to demand that this government does something to end the economic crisis. My answer to them is that this regime ran out of ideas years ago and has since given up of it coming up with any policies to deliver mass prosperity. Of course, the regime will never admit that it has run out of ideas, indeed this time it will repeat its last statement that it is "accelerating the implementation of its ZimAsset plan".
Engaging Zanu PF on whether or not ZimAsset is dead or alive is an exercise in futility akin to the corruption or sanctions debate in who is right or wrong is irrelevant as long as Zanu PF remains in power it is the party's policy that will prevail.
The way out of this hell is that the people should decide who rules the country. If the people are to stage street protests then they must demand the implementation of all the democratic reforms that should have been implemented during the GNU.

The only way the nation can be sure the reforms are fully implemented this time is if the people themselves take the time and trouble to make sure they understand what these reforms are and not be content with parroting change in meaningless slogans like last time.
The reforms are themselves simple and commons and therefore easy to follow and understand but, like all things in this world worth having, will require some effort on the people's part.

After 35 years of independence there is no doubt that the people of Zimbabwe have had many chances to establish a fair and democratic system of government one that would have delivered freedom , justice, human dignity and economic prosperity for us all. People get the government they deserve and, like it or not, we deserve this corrupt, vote rigging and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship. We also deserve its accompanying corrupt and incompetent MDC opposition.

If we are serious about wanting to end our economic suffering and political oppression then we must reclaim our political voice and power; but first we must prove that we are worthy of these rights and freedoms by knowing what they are. The right to a free vote and choose, for example, is of no value whatsoever to anyone unless the voter can differentiate one choice from the others. 

Yes a lot has been wasted in the last 35 years and yet there is still so much there to make Zimbabwe a free, just and prosperous nation. Before independence Zimbabwe was the bread basket of the region; the land is still there and so are the good rains, we can still be the bread basket of the region! The only thing stopping us is what has brought us into this hell in the first place – we have stopped thinking and turned ourselves into blindly following leaders like Mugabe and Tsvangirai who did not have a clue where they were going.

It would wonderful if today, on the 35th anniversary of our independence, was to break with the tradition of bleating "Pamberi navaMugabe! kana Guqula izenzo!" (Forward Mugabe! Or Change your ways!) like sheep. And finally ask the pertinent questions; forward – where are we going? Change – what changes and what ways?

We need to thinking outside the box and stop milling around like crabs in a tin-box left in the sun!
Food for thought!