Long-Time Rival Is Unlikely To Stage An Upset Of Mugabe
I suspect I am not alone in being surprised at the backbone and hitherto invisible reservoir of political principle Simba Makoni has discovered as he tries to unseat Zimbabwe’s malevolent old dictator Robert Mugabe.
For some months the spotlights of hope have focused on Makoni as the most attractive potential candidate from within the ruling ZANU PF party to unseat Mugabe, now 83 years old, in power since 1980 and bucking to remain president for the rest of his life.
The fracturing of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, under the relentless assault of Mugabe’s secret police and political militias has left many to conclude the only hope for salvation in Zimbabwe is if Mugabe is ousted by a challenger from within ZANU PF.
So far Mugabe has arranged the political castration of all ZANU PF grandees who have hinted they are candidates for the succession.
But with yet another renewal of Mugabe’s tenure in what in Zimbabwe are laughingly called “elections” due next month, Makoni, 57, a former finance minister forced out of office in 2002 when he tried to devalue the Zimbabwean currency, took the courageous step this week of announcing he will run for the presidency.
The response of Mugabe’s coterie of razor-toothed catamites to Makoni’s announcement has been swift and violent. The entire machinery of Mugabe’s putrid regime has been set in motion against Makoni, starting with his expulsion from ZANU PF.
Makoni has been a sometimes overly loyal member of ZANU PF since the 1970s when, as a student in Britain, he was its representative in Europe in the war to end white minority rule in Zimbabwe.
State-controlled media have been all over Makoni in a style that makes Britney Spears’ relationship with the paparazzi look calm and courteous.
The Harare Herald newspaper poured contemptuous scorn on the attention given the Makoni candidacy by independent and international media. In reality, the Herald suggested, Makoni is a political embarrassment and his candidacy for president “the loud fart all silently agree never happened.”
More threatening was the reaction of the so-called veterans of Zimbabwe’s war against the white regime of Ian Smith in the 1970s. Most of these thugs are too young to have fought in the war and are in reality a murderous political militia used by Mugabe against his opponents.
The “veterans” have branded Makoni a traitor in line with propaganda on state-controlled radio insinuating that he is an agent of the British government. Mugabe claims Zimbabwe’s problems (inflation is at 150,000 per cent and unemployment over 70 per cent) stem from a secret British government campaign to make Zimbabwe a colony again.
I first came across Makoni about 20 years ago when he was one of the chosen elite riding the gravy train of foreign donor money aimed at undermining apartheid in South Africa.
It could be a lucrative business, fighting apartheid.
Makoni’s corner of this windfall was as the executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), an alliance of the nine so-called “frontline states” adjacent to South Africa and dedicated to overthrowing the apartheid regime there.
(Source)
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February 8th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
The herald called Makoni a ‘loud fart’ that everyone agreed never happened.
Makoni is the only laxative that will treat Zimbabwe’s constipation by helping us defeacate Mugabe from our system