Mugabe Reduced to a Pitiful Beggar

by T. Tut Tsanga; 11th January 2008

So, it is official, is it not? ZANU-PF’s Look-East Policy is dead. As Robert Gabriel Mugabe heads to Russia, begging bowl in hand, no one can doubt that it is a tacit acceptance that the foolish Look-East Policy has failed. That awful policy was doomed to fall flat on its face right from inception. As I have stated in a previous op-ed, the Chinese are not only über patriotic and ultra paranoid, they are also congenitally selfish and treacherous. Anyone in control of his or her mental faculties would have known that the Chinese are never to be trusted. Only lunatics would trust a nation that feeds its own children milk deliberately laced with poison. That is exactly what Mugabe and his collection of sycophants and psychopaths did, trust the Chinese. Folks, it is unvarnished lunacy.

The circle of lunatics surrounding Mugabe should have known that the Chinese would throw them out of the boat. When he tried to go to Beijing for the Olympics, Mugabe was told not to show up. He was as welcome as a skunk at that gathering. It is clear that the Chinese are tired of Mugabe and his syndicate. If the Chinese have intelligence officers in their Zimbabwean colony, the brazen public appearance of Chinese military officers at Gwanzura Stadium on the 18th April of 2008 tells us they have, it is possible that they have relayed the message to Beijing to let our Chinese communist colonial masters that they are betting on a dead horse.

The Chinese must know the extent of the internal rot that is eating away at the core of ZANU-PF. Yes, they may want the platinum, iron ore, precious metals replete in Zimbabwe and the newly discovered diamonds but they are also smart enough to know that Mugabe is now more of an unwanted burden than the tolerable nuisance they have brooked for years. He may not even be worth protecting anymore. Whatever Mugabe has to offer them, the Chinese have probably figured out the rewards are not worth a bucket of warm saliva. Even the pitilessly exploitative Chinese have their limits, you know. They can always cut new deals with governments with cleaner hands. There is no gain in propping up a regime in a terminal state.

To the Chinese, Mugabe and ZANU-PF were always as disposal as baby diapers – you use them once and discard them. With the Beijing Olympics over, China does not need to kowtow before an aging Third World tin-pot tyrant to get metals required for the construction industry. The Chinese demand for metals has plummeted since the end of the Olympics. This has been followed by a concomitant fall in the market value of metals.

That the Chinese have all but abandoned Mugabe is now quite apparent. With Zimbabwe desperate for help to fight cholera, our Beijing colonial masters donated a whooping U$5000 000! Yep, you got that right, China donated a grand total of half a million US dollars. Given the magnitude of the cholera crisis, the Chinese donation was not only an insult but the final nail into the coffin containing the carcass of the Look-East Policy.

Mugabe is in direr political straits than faced by the late despot and election-rigger, Lansana Conte, of the Republic of Guinea. Just as Conte’s terrible regime faced one mutiny after another from disgruntled army grunts, so has Mugabe’s miserable regime. When young Guinean soldiers faced starvation, they went on riot. Conte’s regime was in denial. The rioting soldiers were dismissed as malcontents. Instead of presiding over a government, in his last years, Conte was reduced to running a crime cartel under the pretext of being president. This is repeating itself in Zimbabwe where soldiers have gone on rampage only to be dismissed as unruly elements. Feeding them elephant meat does not help. The soldiers are not chained to their jobs and, sooner or later, will tire of the whole mess and leave.

Nothing lasts forever, as the Bible says. To everything there is a beginning and there is an end. There is no ubiquity in time for mortals or their hold on power or wealth. Formerly powerful empires have been created and crumbled. What luck would pathetic African dictatorships have? As soon as an opportunity to get rid of the criminal gang offered, Guinea's mafia was booted out. The foolish generals who had propped Conte were fired; probably the sickening kind that slavishly vows to salute only their benefactor. Aboubacar Sompare, among Conte's belligerent noise makers, of which ZANU-PF has many like Comrade Chinamasa, suddenly tucked his tail and started addressing the leader of the "malcontents" as Mr President and praising the young man for his wisdom.

Mugabe's regime is as doomed as Conte's cartel and, in light of that, the trip to Russia is a waste of time. It is nothing but a desperate flailing of the arms. As Hatirabwi Nathaniel Masikati has noted, ZANU-PF is very desperate. I do not see anything that Russia stands to gain from giving Mugabe U$2 – U$5 billion. Putin is more interested in finding investors for Russia rather than engaging in a worthless wild-goose chase in a far-flung decaying Southern African country. Mugabe may have mistaken Russian’s seemingly pro-Mugabe votes in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for support of what he is doing. Since he is badly advised by idiots like Brighton Matonga, Mugabe has drawn such a conclusion. It is erroneous. Spiking America for its encirclement of Russia with missiles is the primary, and most likely, the only motive of the Russian votes in the UNSC.

Russia does not need natural resources, contrary to Mugabe’s belief. It is a huge country and has just about every natural resource in great abundance. Right now the Russians are trying to make sure the price of crude oil is U$70 per barrel. If the price is lower than this, a huge gapping hole is left in the Russian budget, which would entail cutting funding for social but politically sensitive programmes. Every winter Russia closes its natural gas spigots to get money it is owed. Moreover, the fact that the ruble is in a freefall does not help Mugabe’s cause. Russia needs every ruble and may not have any spare change to throw into a beggar’s bowl.

If the hope is to use the Chiadzwa diamond fields as an incentive to attract Russian investors, someone needs to tell Mugabe not to waste his time begging for Russian aid. Any idiot with access to a computer and the internet will tell you that Russia is now the largest producer of diamonds ahead of Botswana. Mugabe’s advisors need to familiarize themselves with such minutiae but then, between running flower farms and selling diesel on the blackmarket, they do not have enough time for such trivialities. The trouble with Mugabe is that he always likes to surround himself with a cocoon of idiots, most of whom would not be able to tell the difference between a hole in the ground and the hole in their posterior.

Mugabe is a hostage to his own self-generated misfortunes. He is surrounded by functionally illiterate lunatics and crooks, none of whom really cares for the welfare of Mugabe and his family. They will not tell Mugabe the truth otherwise someone would have told him that running around the world to beg for help brings with it the putrid smell of mortification. A beggar has no dignity.

It is the younger members in ZANU-PF that have reduced Mugabe to a pitiful beggar. They are only too happy to see him humiliate himself before the eyes of the world because they think of Mugabe as a human shield against the righteous anger of the nation that seeks retribution for their transgressions. Mugabe needs to stop begging but the devious elements within ZANU-PF will not let it happen.

Clearly, Mugabe is at his wits’ end. Lewis Lapham saw this coming way back in 2001 and dismissed Mugabe’s rhetoric since it was completely divorced from reality. Mugabe had just given a firebrand speech at the United Nations Millennial Conference in which he characteristically denounced the hegemonic flexing of economic and military muscle by western governments and vowed to resist as a matter of principle. “Principles unsupported by the energies of a sustainable economy stand only at the whim of somebody else’ politics or money,” dismissively said Lapham in his book, Theater of War, Cleopatra’s Nose chapter. Running around to look for money vindicates Lewis Lapham’s pointed dismissal of Mugabe’s speech and grandstanding. It seems that no country wants to underwrite Mugabe's principles anymore.

Be that as it may, all this pitiful and ultimately futile begging is not necessary. Instead of wasting time launching bromides touting the ill-defined African Solutions for African Problems policy or the poorly formulated Look-East Policy, Mugabe ought to realize that there is only one clear and only viable alternative to his begging trips. He needs enough courage and manliness to cede power to Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC as mandated by the Zimbabwean electorate. It is the Zimbabwean Solution to the Zimbabwean Problem.

A transfer of power, however belated, will give Mugabe some degree of honour. Almost one year may have elapsed since the Zimbabwean poeple declared their quest to transfer the custodianship of the country into the hands of Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC but it is never too late to do the right and honourable thing. It is far better than begging. It does not take a n’anga to realize that.

I will conclude by reminding Gushungo that our forbearers left, for posterity, two admonishments instructive for this critical moment in our nation’s history, id est, kutonga madzoro – leadership is not a personal monopoly, it has to be relayed to others when the time comes – and, kumuzinda hakuna weko – the seat of power is nobody’s permanent residence. Members of your own family know this hence the reported attempt by your nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, to topple you from power. Some will tell you otherwise but these are the same people who have reduced you to a pitiful beggar and used, and are still using, you as a human shield for their selfish reasons.