MUGABE'S GUN VS OPPOSITION'S "X"

Just as we began to think that the old man was being driven to unstoppable violence by the forces that he himself unleashed in 2000, he confirms what we have long suspected: he really is, always has been, a violent, cruel and mentally unbalanced tyrant who will kill his own people rather than give up power. The words have come out of his own mouth in the week before the critical election that could seal his fate or that of the majority of the Zimbabwe people. His collaborators in crime are now seeing the punishment they must endure if he is defeated or he dies. They hope - they plan - to escape retribution if they can achieve everlasting rule by the gun.

There is not much more to be said, but here is a little history: a review of the words spoken by one of his own former guerrilla commanders speaks loudly, decades later of the perceptions of the liberation fighters about the negative features of rule by the gun.

"Recalling his transfer from the military into the political arena of the Party (ZANU PF) Robson [Manyika] says: `We were aware that politics comes first; the military is born from politics. After the war, we reform. The Party CONTROLS the gun [his emphasis], the gun does not control the party' ".
(interviewed by me, Diana Mitchell, for "African Nationalist Leaders in Zimbabwe Whos Who” 1980"

That surely might be how the cunning Mugabe got to rule the gun. A number of former military men, good men, have died `in suspicious circumstances’ throughout Mugabe’s rule. Clearly Manyika’s words needed closer attention. Could he have known that Mugabe, formerly ZANLA’s Commander-in-Chief, although never holding the gun himself, would continue to direct the gun while pretending to have transferred himself - transformed himself rather - to lead the triumphant ZANU (PF) party?

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell