By Pearson Mbendera.
(News Of The South) – With the exception of state owned media, almost every other media house reports stories blaming Mugabe and his ZANU PF party for messing this great country of ours to the point that we are not sure where we are headed. People have given up hope that one day things will change and that Zimbabwe will once again rise to be the great country that it once was. But my question is why the people of Zimbabwe let one person and his friends create so much of an economic mess that not only don’t we see a way out; we don’t even have hope of coming out of.
The people of Zimbabwe celebrated in 1980 when the country regained independence from the white colonial rule, but all the joy and jubilation would one day fold into cries as the beloved man, Robert Mugabe who had led the struggle to independence and winning the elections I 1980 would one day turn to be the monster many people who get to hate but still let him stay in power.
34 years after independence and other than Zimbabwe being in the hands of the blacks (just a handful of them) we are worse off than what we were. But who is to blame for all this? It may sound harsh, but the general population of Zimbabwe is to blame for this mess. We have played a part in letting things slide and not taking corrective action. We haven’t yelled stop, to ZANU PF.
Over the years, the ZANU PF government has proved not to have any ideas of turning the economic crisis we are having around, and I don’t even think that they want to. Our blame is letting them dilly-dally with our future. We have given them so much power that right now we are afraid of claiming it back.
At the end of the day, Mugabe chides the west that Zimbabwe will never be a colony again (which is a good thing) while the women ululate and the men whistle in jubilation to the words of a man whose among the few to stand against the Europeans and say anything he wants.
But what we as the Zimbabweans have never understood is the true concept of independence. We have loosely defined independence as the freedom from colonial rule whereas all we did was just transfer power from the white government into the hands of a ruthless black government and yet we rejoice over such a trivial achievement, which as it turns out isn’t an achievement at all seeing that Zimbabwe is not free.
We live in so much fear that the thoughts of rising up against Mugabe are so scary while we watch him intimidate everyone who tried to do so. Power belongs to the people, why did we give it away so easily. And right now, Mugabe is getting even more powerful while we watch the news of ZANU PF booting people out of their positions with amusement. We will regret it, we already are.
We have seen poor policy after poor policy being made, and every chance they get, they blame the sanctions for some things we could have solved ourselves. Hey, we even created most of the problems we are facing. Last week the minister of finance and economic development Patrick Chinamasa delivered his ridiculous Finance Budget for 2015, which to criticize it would be a waste of my time. But in the end, we watch in peace, laugh at his ridiculous accent, post jokes on social media platforms, go home and watch ZBC news to see who received the vote of no confidence in ZANU PF like we are watching some reality show forgetting that we are knee deep in crisis.
Our greatest problem is that we don’t know the power that we have as the members of the public. That in our millions, the future of Zimbabwe lies in our hands, that by letting ZANU PF and all its poor policies continue to run this country, we will have nothing, we have nothing already. No jobs, no food, the economy is a mess, people don’t get paid enough, we are using borrowed currency. There are just too many problems we are facing right now, and no one coming forward with a solution.
Albert Einstein once said, “The significant problems we face, can only be solved at the level higher than we were, when we created them.” We have created a situation where we have placed the future of 14 million people in the hands of one person and he can’t seem to know what to do with all that power that is to the benefit of the general population.
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and I said that we as the members of the public have the power, we just don’t know it yet, to which he argued against me. Marianne Williamson wrote in a poem and said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” Let’s reclaim our power and begin the work of rebuilding Zimbabwe, if we don’t, and this crisis exacerbates, we will only have ourselves to blame. Our playing it small is not serving Zimbabwe, it is hurting it. When will we rise up, and take back what belongs to us.
Comments
About Author
