Killer Heads to Cairo

Waiting is a way of life in Zimbabwe.

I’ve been watching and waiting for over 36 hours for the official announcement of Zimbabwe’s just-ended one-horse-race – the Run-off of the Presidential election. I don’t normally watch zanu-pf’s brand of national television programming, but have had to do so in order to see the official Election results. It is a cross between good AIDS-awareness adverts/programs and bad pro-zanu-pf propaganda. Of it all, what sticks in my mind are the words of the one advert “Imagine the possibility of an AIDS-free generation – it starts with you!”.

So what is that to the world? Nothing on the face of it, but if we look deeper at the situation in Zimbabwe, the latest tragedy unfolds. Outplayed, out-manouevered or just plain outclassed in the game of political genocide, the peaceful people of Zimbabwe stand stunned by the sheer brazenness of their murderous President-to-be. The majority of the populace has just ‘lost’ the latest round of manipulated and rigged elections to him and his political minority.

With the ability to shed political skins like a snake – one minute a venomous cobra sending waves of paid thugs to kill and mutilate defenceless villagers, the next a concerned and devoted family man and icon for the nation – he strides defiantly from the jaws of defeat once more.

One would expect him to rest – to recouperate from an election campaign in which he had to dig to the bottom of his dirty tricks bag for the most horrific forms of murder, shamelessly brutal violence and ballot-rigging to snatch a bloody victory from the people.

No – not our President-elect to-be will not rest! He is to be enthroned within 48 hours of the close of polling, then he is off to a Summit of the African Union in Cairo.

What of that? Having been publicly criticised by some members of the AU, he is now wearing his anti-colonial, anti-western, chameleon-skin cloak, to strut his stuff in front of his African peers. This cloak is well-known in Africa. It can make a mass-murderer look like a choir-boy. That - together with his legendary eloquence which allows him to turn mesmerising lies into the “truth” – he will be attempting to persuade his peers that not only does he speak for the people of Zimbabwe (by right of conquest) but that he should be allowed to pervert the course of Africa’s re-birth as a continent of self-reliant sovereign states. His stance is that he is leading the people of the continent in the struggle to free them from colonialist and capitalist western oppression and exploitation.

What he won’t be telling them is how he equates murdering the people of Zimbabwe - and stealing the wealth of the nation - with giving the people of Africa freedom from anything! What he won’t be explaining is how an oppressive African dictator is better than an honest, patriotic, democratic African leader!

Will he succeed in this crusade? Will men of high political stature – astute and well-seasoned African politicians – allow themselves to be manipulated, mesmerised, bullied and cajoled into uniting behind the one-way walls of dictatorship? Will they stand by their principles and the rights of the people of the people of Africa?

We have hope! We have recently seen and heard African leaders of integrity refusing to accept the actions of Mugabe and his supporters.

Stand fast and pray, people of Africa! Imagine the possibility of a dictator-free generation. It starts with you!

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