I bought a copy of The Guardian newspaper today because the front page blared out "Exclusive:secret film reveals how Mugabe stole an election". I followed this up on the internet. The video was brief but plausible. Brave Shepherd Yuda seems to have done his best to give his testimony to history before he escaped to a safer place.
Mr Yuda went along with a despicable regime for a long time. Thank God he got away. I know dozens of Zimbabweans who at various times "saw the light" and either left the country, changed their careers or made an effort to support one of several political parties opposed to the ZANU PF regime. Until the MDC arrived nothing changed, except for the worse. Things changed with the MDC all right, but now they are worse than ever.
What I find so galling is that Mugabe's elections have been stolen over and over again and by attrition - nobody beyond the country's borders with any influence has ever made any but token efforts to stop him - his demonic rule has prospered while the country has slipped over the precipice.
Can it be that the oft repeated call to Zimbabweans to solve their own problems is, in the final analysis, going to be the only way back? Morgan Tsvangirai has given a lead and has earned himself huge respect for his refusal to be goaded into a civil war where a military machine would face unarmed peasants and townspeople in a dreadful bloodbath, a fight to the finish. For now, there is a stalemate with a lot of secret maneuvering going on.
A defiant Robert Mugabe spits his venom at enemies manufactured entirely in his deranged imaginings. Pity the crowds who scream with delight as they watch him caper before them. Their screams, will echo through the blackest darkness as their children die of malnutrition, their young perish with AIDS and almost every able bodied adult who is unable to escape across the borders scrabbles for food. I hope I am wrong in my own worst imaginings.
I lived 70 years in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia where I was born). Like the majority of Zimbabweans today, I find it hard to believe that a nation with so much going for it could be destroyed by one man. Admittedly his military cronies will hold him up because they are even more corrupt than he is.
I foresaw that the camps set up to forcibly indoctrinate young, innocent school-leavers would seriously damage if not destroy the peaceloving nature of Zimbabwe's people. Those "green bombers" doing the bidding of their Zanu PF masters would set in motion unstoppable waves of violence throughout the country.
Today we are seeing the consequences of a great historical error: we were duped in 1980 into believing we would be well led by Robert Mugabe. I was among the believers until he slaughtered those 20 000 in Matabeleland. We allowed a mentally unstable, liberation leader to destroy hopes of a peaceful and prosperous future in a beautiful country for us all - black, white - everybody, including those in the feeding trough, the destroyer's allies and their progeny. Zimbabwe was a potentially great country. The craven collaborators of SADC are as blameworthy as his party aparachiks for the Robert Gabriel Mugabe catastrophe which will affect all Africa.
Until "Chinja"becomes more than a word, I will write only of the past. There is nothing more to say about the future.
(I have been making a feeble start at mastering links
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
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