There is one thing we can say with absolute certainty; President Mnangagwa and his fellow Joint Operation Command (JOC) junta members, comprising the top brass in the country’s security services and a select Zanu PF party leaders, have no intention of giving up absolute power. They risked their looted wealth, life and limb, everything in the all-or-nothing November 2017 military coup to wrestle power from their erstwhile JOC colleagues and leader Robert Mugabe. They clearly have no intention of losing all that now.
Zimbabwe’s worsening economic situation is putting Mnangagwa and his regime under ever increasing pressure; their continued hold on power is now dependent on the regime reviving the “dead economy”, as Mnangagwa himself admitted the other day.
It is no surprise then that President Mnangagwa has taken concrete steps to try replicate what President Paul Kagame has done in Rwanda; revive the economic fortune and still keep an iron grip on power!
“PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa is trying to emulate his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame's economic development model, which blends authoritarian practices and homegrown solutions with international best practices, as he hired yet another public relations (PR) firm in a desperate bid to spruce up the country's battered international image,” reported the Independent.
This model is, at best, a short term solution in that it will deliver economic success but for a short period. We can be 100% certain that authoritarian monster will awaken and reassert itself with disastrous consequence. The awakening may happen during Paul Kagame’s time, no one can be certain when exactly; the point is the monster is there already.
If anyone still doubts that Rwanda’s economic success is doomed to fail, they need only look at China. The country descended into new depths of depravity, poverty and despair under Chair Mao. His successors had the wisdom to open up China and, for the last four decades, China has enjoyed unparalleled economic and social transformation. But other than introduce the fixed ten year term for the presidency, they have retained the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) authoritarian system.
China’s authoritarian dragon was reared it ugly head once again. President Xi Jinping, China’s current president, has since scrapped the fixed ten year presidential term; has carolled millions of China’s Muslim minority into detention camps, euphemistically calling them “education camp”; he is clawing back the democratic rights of the people in Hong Kong, they are putting up a fight to stop him; etc.
If China’s economic boom was to falter, for whatever reasons, the CCP will revert back to its default setting of using brute force to retain its iron grip on power.
A country’s economic success under an authoritarian system will not last; it is a house built on clay, it will stand as long as the ground remains dry. The foundation will sink in the wet and soft clay causing in innumerable and irreparable structural problems.
As much as Mnangagwa would wish to emulate Paul Kagame’s success, he will never do so. First and foremost, Mnangagwa is a seasoned corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous tyrant forsaking these dirty habits has already proven mission impossible. After the November 2017 military coup, he promised to end corruption, hold free elections, etc. but has failed to deliver or blatantly broke his promises.
“BTP, the PR company hired by Mnangagwa successfully led a campaign to exonerate Kagame from the 1994 genocide. A 2009 report from the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative acknowledged that the BTP's "excellent public relations machinery" had succeeded in hiding "the exclusionary and repressive nature of the regime" in Kigali,” said the Independent.
BTP had its work cut-out trying to hide Mnangagwa’s role in the corruption, vote-rigging and murderous tyranny during Mugabe’s days given he was the dictator’s chief enforcer throughout the 37 years. Even if the company did succeed; how is it going to hide the reality of the continuing corruption, vote rigging, killings, economic collapse, etc. of the last two years and going on as we speak!
How can BTP sell Mnangagwa as a changed man when everything confirms that Zimbabwe is still a pariah state and he has not change one bit!
As long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state, there will be no meaningful economic recovery. It is impossible to do business is a pariah state given all the economic chaos and lawlessness.
BTP will never make a Paul Kagame out of Emmerson, it will be making a silk purse out of a sower’s ear. Mnangagwa is just wasting the nation’s money and time.
Mnangagwa and his illegitimate Zanu PF regime; they rigged the elections, they have never had the legal mandate to govern; must step down. Zimbabwe needs the political space to implement the democratic reforms and lay the foundation, on sold rock, for a democratic system of government.
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