Fight Mugabe yourself, Namibian President tell Zimbabweans - being cruel to be kind

"Kune anonzisisa, chokwadi hachipudzi chinowaka!" so goes the Shona adage. (To him who hears and understand, the truth does not destroy but builds!) It is in this enlightened context that one must view Namibian President Hage Geingob's candid words of advice to both Zimbabwe's leaders and people.

"We must get rid of the days where we believed in strong presidents, personality cults, and that some are (demi)-gods," he advised the leaders.

"We must know that killing our people is not the way to go.

"If you do that, you can't expect the world to respect you. They will intervene and tell you that you are doing a wrong thing".

In the case of President Mugabe the advice is coming too late; he has rigged elections and even murdered over 30 000 of his people to establish and retain his one-party cum one-man dictatorship.

President Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies have enjoyed absolute power for the last 36 years and their greed for wealth has grown in leaps and bounds; they have more than the lion's share of the nation's wealth, they are taking everything. President Mugabe admitted in February that the country lost $15 billion of diamond revenue to "swindlers". It is no secret that Zanu PF leaders, including Mugabe himself, together with the Chinese and other foreigner who are doing the mining are the swindlers.

So far, no one has been arrested for this grand theft; confirming that the swindlers are the ruling elite and they are above the law.

Last week, Harare Central Hospital announced that it was stopping all operations because it did not have essential drugs like painkillers; needless to say the smaller hospitals and clinics are even worse off. So hundreds of ordinary Zimbabweans are dying every day because the health service has all but collapsed for lack of funds whilst a select few are pocketing billions of dollars.

The Zimbabwe government has to pay for the health and other public needs of the 12 million population from a misery $3.8 billion in collected revenue and billions of dollars of potential diamond revenue is shared out amongst just a handful of the ruling elite, the demi-gods!

President Hage Geingob's advice is clearly too late Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies; their hands are bright red with all the innocent blood their have shed. And, now that their primeval appetites have been fully aroused, their insatiable greed has gone into overdrive, they cannot stop the looting.

Zanu PF's 36 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption have dragged the Zimbabwe economy into total economic meltdown; the regime is nothing more than that a bacteria culture that grows exponentially only to collapse suddenly after eating all the available food.

Mugabe's decades of misrule have dragged Zimbabwe and the whole SADC region deeper and deeper into the abyss and the import of President Geingob's advice to the tyrant is that he must expect the people of Zimbabwe, SADC and all those concerned about the tragic consequences of his selfish greed to criticize him for it!

The Namibian President had words of wisdom for the ordinary Zimbabweans too; "Zimbabweans, who are unhappy with strongman President Robert Mugabe should fight for themselves," he advised, according to Namibian newspaper report.

SADC leaders' frustration with the people of Zimbabwe, specially the MDC party is understandable for all those who have cared to follow the Zimbabwe crisis. The MDC had the golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms during the GNU and SADC leaders did their best to remind Tsvangirai and company of this but were ignored. MDC failed to get even one reform implemented in five years of the GNU.

Since the rigged 2013 elections MDC-T has failed to take advantage of its MPs and Senators to push for the implementation of meaningful democratic reforms. The party has failed to articulate reforms are required much less how they should be implemented!

"We don't go out in public and shout, so that you can be happy and dance in the streets of New York," came the Namibian President jab! Of course he has a point!

MDC leaders have wasted one opportunity after another to dismantle the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship and replace it with a healthy and functional democratic system of government. The dismantling is done by proposing and implementing democratic reforms and parliament is the only forum in which this can be done. MDC has never taken advantage of it parliamentary majority to implement the reforms during the GNU and now it is abandoning the parliamentary route altogether in favour of street protests, nagging SADC leaders to pressure Mugabe to change.

In all these years MDC leaders have failed to come up with any details of democratic changes the country needs showing that they have not being paying attention. The ordinary Zimbabweans themselves too have not been any wiser; if they were then they would have seen to it that Tsvangirai and company implemented the reforms during the GNU, for example.

By telling Zimbabweans to fight our own battles President Geingob is being cruel to be kind because like it or not it for us Zimbabweans, not SADC or anyone else, to implement the democratic reforms. It is for each nation to determine its own destiny; we are stuck with a corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship but who can ever deny that it is what we rightly deserve!