The day Mugabe bowed out

Luke-ing the Beast in the Eye:

The day Mugabe bowed out

By Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka

Exactly seven years ago today, a strongman called Robert Gabriel Mugabe bowed out in humiliation after 37 years in power. The man had bestrode our political terrain like a colossus in a tempestuous tenure largely dominated by solitary national moments of blood, mourning and tears.

And it had to happen while I was right in the place of my birth.

The time was exactly 6pm and, as if of any significance, the day was Tuesday, 21 November 2017, exactly 10 days after the 52nd anniversary of the unilateral declaration of independence by Ian Douglas Smith.

I had just parked my car at Chirodzero business centre in Domboshava, popularly known as _pa_ Showground, when Mugabe’s departure from the helm was announced.
The car radio suddenly blurted it out: “President Mugabe has resigned!”

The otherwise sleepy growth point in this area of my birth suddenly burst into life—-cars hooting, people shouting, touts whistling and vendors leaving their wares unattended.

I just went numb, silently savouring the eerie scene around me with typical journalistic wonderment, consigning every minute detail of the ordinary people’s response into the dark crevices of my memory for history and record.

Upon hearing the news, one vendor selling cucumbers developed a sudden bout of generosity and started moving around the growth point, handing out the freshly fruits for free.

That is how the news was received at this growth point in my rural home area, a mere 32 km north-east of the capital city.

Barely two hours earlier, I had accompanied President Morgan Tsvangirai to a rally at Africa Unity Square, just outside parliament building in the capital city of Harare. The former premier, to whom I was spokesperson, had just been invited by the war veterans to address the burgeoning crowd itching for change, reflecting the national convergence that had inadvertently developed in the country on the eve of Mugabe’s departure.

The euphoria and wild scenes of celebration that rippled through all the country’s cities and rural growth points at the news of Mugabe’s resignation had a loud ring of irony attached. For it meant Mugabe had finally achieved with his departure what he had failed to achieve in 37 years of incumbency—-he had united a divided nation.

If nation-building was supposed to be the immediate task of a newly installed political leadership in Africa post-independence, then Mugabe ironically united the nation on the day he left office.

The kaleidoscopic sight of people of all political colours charging into the streets and celebrating in unison was an unprecedented national marvel. It was an uplifting sight that gave life to the otherwise innocent print in the preamble to our Constitution: “We, the people of Zimbabwe, united in our diversity …..”

For a nation torn by hatred, intolerance and exclusivity, the unity and togetherness that suddenly emerged in the country on the day Mugabe left office was a soothing sight.

But if only the incoming administration had taken advantage of this inadvertent national convergence to poise the country on an uninterrupted path to legitimacy, peace and inclusive national development.

The inclusive atmosphere had been building up in the last hours of Mugabe’s tenure, starting with the massive demonstration attended and addressed by both ruling party and opposition party leaders on Saturday, 18 November 2017 at the Zimbabwe grounds.

For Mugabe, it ended where it all started. It ended at the Zimbabwe Grounds in Highfield, that ceremonial home of people power where huge crowds had gathered in 1980 to welcome the then popular nationalist leaders led by the same Robert Mugabe.

But the people of all political colours gathered at the same place on 18 November, 2017 to demand his resignation.

Never again, we falsely hoped on 21 November 2017, would a leader and his family be allowed to capture the State, in the process fertilizing their profligate disposition.

The former First Lady Grace Mugabe had carved out quite a reputation for herself—- buying plush homes around the world while the ordinary people were suffering.

The Mugabe sons were known for their wild binges and it was no wonder that Bellarmine Chatunga, the President’s younger son, had splurged US$60 000 in scarce foreign currency buying a trendy wrist watch at a time whole families in the country were surviving on less than US$1 a day.

At this stage of benign innocence, or perhaps naivety, on 21 November 2017, the nation, including those in Zanu PF, never knew the incoming man, his family and his acolytes would spawn a worse dispensation than the one presided over by Mugabe.

Barely two days after Mugabe resigned and as the nation wallowed in its misplaced excitement, I publicly warned the nation in this column about placing any form of hope in Mnagagwa.

I wrote that I did not wish to dampen the prevailing carnival atmosphere in the country but the reality check was somehow dispiriting because the incoming man did not inspire any confidence, given his bloody and murderous record.

I publicly warned that there was no reason for celebration unless ED and his lot were bold enough to take advantage of the political daybreak granted them to break free from their dark past.

I told the nation then that mine could be a dim and unpopular view in a country blindly drunk with hope, yet November 2017 was supposed to be a moment for sober reflection on the future of the country.

On the day Mugabe left office, suddenly—and surprisingly—everyone appeared to have been against him all the past years as the man found himself with very few sympathizers.

In what should be a cardinal lesson for Mnangagwa about the realities of sunset politics, Mugabe cut a forlorn, pitiful figure in his last hours in office.

All his purported friends in the country, in the region and abroad as well as those who had directly benefitted during his 37 years in power were nowhere to be seen in their benefactor’s last hours of political sunshine.

For a man who claimed to have won elections with millions of votes and whose rallies, including one held only twelve days before he bowed out, were always teeming with mammoth crowds, it was a great puzzle how all those people suddenly went underground at the moment when Mugabe probably most needed their support and sympathy.

Where were all those people at the crucial hour? I asked myself as I reflected on all these harsh political realities while parked at the Showgrounds in my rural hood on that ominous November day in 2017.

If everyone appeared to have been in the opposition all these years; as they did on 21 November 2017, just where had Mugabe’s purported millions of followers disappeared to when everyone appeared to be celebrating his departure?

It was a chilling indictment that humanity is replete with hypocrites, who abandon friends in their dark hour of need.

Why had all those chants of “Gushungo chete chete” suddenly turned into a high pitched national chorus of “Gushungo kwete kwete?”

Where, in his hour of reckoning, was this man’s much-vaunted following if the whole nation was now in celebration over his departure?

In one fell swoop, Mugabe’s mammoth following had suddenly ebbed into a shocking nothingness by 21 November 2017.

However, in the gleeful but misplaced euphoria of the moment, it appears the nation—particularly the incoming administration—lost sight of what needed to be done.

At a time the entire nation across the political spectrum appeared to be giving him the benefit of the doubt even in what was palpably a coup, Mnangagwa lost a golden opportunity to unite the nation and to irreversibly poise Zimbabwe for growth and prosperity. He lost the chance to give every Zimbabwean a reason to hope again.

As the nation reflects on this historic day when Mugabe bowed out, let us not forget that the momentous day provided a huge opportunity but one that was lost.

Yes, a grand opportunity to unite and develop the nation which Emmerson Mnangagwa has all but squandered in a mere seven years of grand theft and corruption, most of it fronted by himself, his family and his close associates.

The so-called new dispensation birthed in a coup has turned out to have been a gothic palace take-over by an indigenous criminal mafia led by ED himself.

In a mere seven years, we have morphed as a country from an era of criminals around the President to this sordid era of a criminal President who is himself surrounding and providing succour and sanatorium to a retinue of fellow criminals!

Cry, the beloved country!

Luke Tamborinyoka is a citizen from Domboshava. He is a journalist and a political scientist by profession. You can interact with him on his Facebook page or via the twitter handle @ luke_tambo.