Personal Account by Tsungayi Hatitye
LAST week on 17th of November marked two years after the bloodless military intervention that saw the ouster of the late Robert Mugabe.
After weeks of watching the late Robert Mugabe’s unelected wife Grace using the microphone to tell harsh pieces of her mind to ZANU-PF officials and elected ministers who would be sitting with her in the VIP marquee live on TV at rallies making herself and her husband look invincible.
It looked like it was going to happen but still it was a surprise to wake up and see a relatively unknown senior army officer announcing – I had to see the ZBC news on someone’s android phone (because mine was fully discharged for lack of power supplies by the national power supplier) announcing that that the situation has now developed to another level and that it was not a coup d’état and that Robert Mugabe was safe, and that the situation would return to normal after the army had dealt with the “criminals” around Mugabe responsible for Zimbabwe’s collapse.
But let’s put that aside. Mugabe had embedded himself into the Zimbabwean and the regional DNA to such an extent that newsreaders would still make the mistake of mentioning his name with the word Zimbabwe president every time they read his name in the news even after he had been removed. So I really did not believe that Mugabe was gone till in the morning when the commuter omnibus I was in drove past the Zimbabwe Broadcast Corporation Mbare Radio Studios.
I saw army tanks of a type I had never seen in public before, surrounded by soldiers busy texting on android phones that I really began to believe something was happening.
On that particular day I was going for a hustle installing electricity wiring at a particular ZANU-PF Party functionary’s house so my business partner decided it was too dangerous to go on and do a job at a place like that because we could be assumed to be part of the ZANU-PF machine and we were broke so we went back to the neighborhood and Lo and behold the neighborhood was on fire. Everyone was celebrating, free beer was flowing, people were buying beer for total strangers all in the belief that Robert Mugabe was gone and everything is supposed to get better and I have not forgotten the statement by then Major General Sibusiso Moyo (now Minister Of Foreign Affairs) “…the situation will return to normal after the army had dealt with the “criminals” surrounding Mugabe responsible for Zimbabwe’s collapse.”
But then I still have to see the criminal behind bars and the situation continues to deteriorate and the situation is now being blamed on United States and other western powers. Doctors are on strike, there is no fuel and the Minister of Finance recently announced plans to send a satellite into space.
I will not waste much time and space scribbling what we all know, writing is on the wall in far as the achievements or (lack thereof) of the new dispensation.