Mugabe held hostage

Zanu-PF replicates many of the doctrines that defined the Rhodesia colonial regime by devoting much of its energy to victimize and demobilize the popular constituency that brought the independence of Zimbabwe through personal sacrifices and loss of life. The popular constituency of the ordinary citizenry is deprived of political, social and economic transformation and mobility. Little improvement in the last 36 years has trickled down to the ordinary people to enjoy the fruits of their hard won independence.

The so called revolution movement of Zanu-PF has sabotaged the revolution goals of majority rule, human freedom, democratic principles, rule of law and the excise of human rights. The strategy of Zanu-PF of suppressing people's constitutional pursuit for political and economic change by using over played propaganda that portrays advocates for political and economic change as plotting for regime change, undermining the authority of the president, destabilizing peace and unity can no longer hold. Peace and stability cannot be achieved through unfair and unequal relationship with  the people; not through a faulty constitution; repressive laws, faulty electoral laws; use of the security service sector such as the army, police, CIO and the prisons to silence freedom of expression and association. The government owned media is used to undermine the popular constituency by suppressing the truth using well known failed and incompetent political communication strategies. The Zimbabwe Zanu-PF mainstream media with all its intents has lost readership and following because of its bias,  lack of objectivity and  balanced reporting.

Zanu-PF is driven by the principles of dictatorship and patronage politics fraught with major incompetence, that of failure to reform. It uses a strait jacket approach; it is rigid; not adaptable to change. Zanu-PF patronage system is premised around politics centralized to a power holder Robert Mugabe who is responsible for distributing material favours to the patronage machinery all of whom are strategically deployed in government ministries, the security services, parastatals, government missions and commissions.  Their mandate is to work for the interest of the president not the general populace. In fact the general public is viewed as an adversary to the patronage machinery and therefore the public must be kept in check.

The  Zanu-PF President Mugabe led government depicts the hallmarks  of a dictatorship characterized by propaganda  declaring Mugabe as flawless, clean, incorruptible and an earthly God. The dictatorial predisposition of Zanu-PF patronage system is the central strategy of governance rooted in violation of human rights and freedoms, selective application of the law, use of government departments and agencies as private property and a deliberate impoverishing of the general population as a means of controlling people behavior and compliance  

The Zanu-PF dictatorship and patronage politics machine is now set to crumble driven from within its patrons and clients caused by a defective political dichotomy of factionalism, corruption, tribalism, nepotism, cronyism, social and economic vandalism and more so by diminishing material resources to pay its clientele within the patronage system. There are growing signs of the collapse of the Zanu-PF rigid system as is always predicted that with time the patronage system will always certainly suffer economic and social diminishing scales of returns. The reason is that the patronage system does not allow for variables. It does not allow for adjustment and readjustment to respond to changing social and economic variables. President Mugabe is a producer of political patronage exchange that is rigid in its mentality and thinking because of his ideology of centralizing power to him. Dictatorship has a limited life span because of its tradition of lack of flexibly. Evidence is that the departure of the powerful patronage holder means a complete breakdown of the whole patronage machinery. It does not have a successor because the dictator is paranoid about loss of power and naming a successor is unsettling for the dictator. The current tractions and chaos around succession within Zanu-PF is the consequence of dictatorship leadership based on the philosophy that a new day does not raise before the fall of the old one.

The popularity of Zanu-PF is declining as some of the patronage holders and clients are beginning to seek a change in the system as the realization is that the life span of the patronage system is coming to end. It is without doubt that President Robert Mugabe's days are at twilight in response to the natural dictates of nature and advanced age. The scramble for control of the state resources by aspiring new patronage power holders will naturally attempt to displace the old political patronage machine to set up a completely new set of patronage players and their clients. It is common knowledge the success of a patronage machine is the control of national and state resources to use to buy patronage. The transition will certainly become vicious and ugly. The signs are there for everyone to see. The groups of G40 and Team Lacoste are now attempting to consolidate their positions in readiness to take control of  state resources while the naivety of President Mugabe is that he is still loved by people and will live beyond the detects of nature not withstanding that he has become a victim of his own patronage system.  The ideology of G40 and Lacoste is that of egoism and self-serving. G40 appears to be attempting to form a new patronage movement to exclude many of the old patrons of the liberation struggle opting for a generation of young patrons while Team Lacoste appears to seek to maintain the ethos of the revolution struggle and aspiring to recycle the old guard who feel that the sacrifices of the liberation struggle will be sacrificed if G40 took charge of the patronage system.

The purged and breakaway group of former Vice president Joice Mujuru is transforming and transferring its focus and support for improved service delivery to the ordinary people. Patronage material gains in this group have got to a point where the patronage benefits and privileges have been taken away from them. Their new claim is that patronage material no longer gives them any sense of fulfillment; their new found awareness has been triggered by being purged. They now aspire for non-material benefits such as honest, love, happiness, shared values and personal freedom. People of Zimbabwe now value provision of services and public goods instead of popular politics of patronage. If the Mujuru's group means what it says then they are the winners because their power and focus base is the people.  

The opposition political parties are now thinking beyond their political goals to embrace a coalition of parties which is a welcome fundamental and realization that the people of Zimbabwe are by nature united very much against the culture of tribal segregation by Zanu-PF. This move by opposition political parties is to counteract the tradition of dictatorship and divisionism which has always been a political trade mark of Zanu-PF. People can easily be united as a nation while acknowledging their diverse ethnic, geographic and political identities

 The general populace is in essence more powerful than the patronage dictatorial power holder. The ordinary people of Zimbabwe are more aware of their stake in the politics of their country. Zimbabweans have for a long time been subjected to victims of poverty and oppression by the Zanu-PF black oppressor. The Zanu-PF government is known for its arrogance taking people for granted viewing them as too rural, too illiterate, too poor and too ethnic to influence any political transformation. The new reality is that Zanu-PF government can no longer control the flow of information to ordinary people that it has held victims by information control and misinforming. Mugabe and his cabal's weapons to misinform and manipulate information have been taken away.  The people power has unfolded by the deployment of the new social media postings, chatting, texting, tweeting, youtube, blogging, facebook and whatsapp. Social media is now the spur for people's revolution, self-expression and street mobilization. Social media has become the avenue for civic engagement and popular participation. It is now used as a tool for a new forum of grassroots journalism and activism, it's in the grapevine; its fast, it is raw and uncensored, it's interesting; within easy reach and cuts across a range of the social divide. The dictator is finding it hard to outdo the social media. People can now circulate information, videos and pictures with amazing speed to spread information about acts of abuse and corruption by the anti-popular constituency and democracy.

People have suffered the imposition for poverty and starvation. The people's loss of dignity and self-worthy imposed on them by Zanu-PF's political strategy of subverting the people's confidence and self-esteem. The people are hungry and angry. People are poor and have nothing more to lose. People have nothing and nothing to protect of themselves as human beings. People have lost their dignity and want to reclaim it. The dictator pretends not to see the signs clearly written on the wall. Zanu-PF and its hangers continue unabated to use heavy handedness tactics to stop the people's revolution by abducting, killing and causing injuries to pro-democracy activists and protestors, manipulating the constitution, buying more guns and more guns, recruiting more soldiers, more policeman and more CIOs.  A clever dictator needs to be careful how much these thoughtful human-beings carrying guns are used to cause emotional and physical harm against their kith and kin. The solders live with the poor. The CIOs live with the poor. The policemen live with the people.  The policemen, soldiers and the CIO are also the poor. The anger is now reaching boiling point. A big volcano is going to erupt. It only needs a spark and no dictator with all its guns can stop the blazing volcano of the people's desire for freedom and better livelihood.

 The dictator is making more mistakes by using more force to suppress the people's desire towards a people oriented political and social change. A new revolution for a people's independence driven by grassroots activism (#the Flag/ Tajamuka/Sesijikela/Buya/#My Zimbabwe/Beat the pot/Woza/ churches) is a reality that cannot be ignored by any thoughtful and reasonable government. Certainly all these people cannot be out of their minds but they can certainly be something wrong with a government failing to take heed to what the people are saying by failing to do the constitutional and right thing to respond to authentic needs of the people

Other dictators have in the past tried to use the same brute method to stop the people's wishes for change but failed; talk of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Northern Mali and Burkina-faso. Those dictators could not stop the wave of people power. Fascist Italian dictator Benito was short and his body stoned by civilians. Manuel Noriga was captured and now serving a long term prison sentence in USA. Saddam Hassain was captured hiding in a muddy foxhole and sentenced to death by firing squad. Mengistu is living in exile in Zimbabwe away from the fun and glitter that he created for himself and used to enjoy in his home land. Mengistu fled his country with 50 family members and aids. This is a reminder that dictatorship is most likely to end in a bad note.

It is hard to guess how Zimbabwe dictatorship will end. President Mugabe still has the chance to do the right thing to preserve the future of the country, his legacy and future of his family. Many dictatorships end when the dictator becomes too weak, too sick to continue, suddenly dies or gets ejected by the popular constituency. Unfortunately dictators in many cases get replaced by other dictators.

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themba mthethwa <thembamthethwa05@yahoo.co.uk