You are at the top, you want to glorify yourself,” said Mugabe speaking of his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa, according to Jealousy Mawarire, National Patriotic Front (NPF) spokesperson.
“You are not God. Today you are at the top, tomorrow you will be at the bottom, know that. God has His own way of punishing rogues and cruel people.
“I am telling you in your face. I don’t care what will happen to me. People should love their army, they should not fear the army.”
Mugabe reportedly said this at his 95th birthday party. Mugabe’s birthdays used to be a grand occasion, costing millions of dollars. No expense was spared even basic services such as the supply of clean water, health care, and education had all but collapse, starved of funds. Ever since November 2017 when he was booted out of power following the military coup, his birthday parties have been a family and friends affair and not a national one.
Still, this year’s birthday party must have been a very happy occasion happening just a few days after some of the worst street protest and violence that the country had seen in the last decades. The protests were triggered by the shortage of foreign currency, fuel, cash, bread, etc. The final straw that broke the camel’s back was the nearly 200% increase in the price of fuel!
Mugabe stayed in power for 37 years by rigging his own Zanu PF party elections and then let none other than Mnangagwa rig the national elections to keep him and the party in power. He has insisted that he has never handed power to someone else because there was no one competent to lead.
So reports of Zanu PF being accused of rigging the July 2018 elections (Mugabe had avoided such embarrassment by making sure no observers from the democratic nations were accredited) made good reading for Mugabe. But better still, the news of the Zimbabwe economy sinking even deeper into the abyss.
If Mnangagwa’s “Zimbabwe is open for business!” had been a resounding success and Zimbabwe’s economy was on a firm footing and well on its way to economic recovery; Mugabe would be died spiritually, at the least. It was bad enough for him to be booted out of office but to have Mnangagwa validated as more competent than himself would have been more than he could bear!
Nothing would have brought Mugabe more pleasure than to see the Zimbabwe economic meltdown get even worse than when he was in power and Zimbabweans rioting and demanding the removal of Mnangagwa. Absolutely Nothing!
“You are not God! God has His own way of punishing rogues and cruel people!” If Mugabe said this once he must have said it a thousand times. No doubt Mugabe will never consider himself a rogue let alone that the military coup was God’s punishment.
By Jeff Kurai Chakanyuka
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