ONE of the greatest philosophers, Aristotle, said virtue lies between two extremes. By this he implied that an excess of good or bad becomes a vice. A pro-people government should not remain rooted in the imaginary world, expecting miracles when those responsible of making things happen watch from the terraces, while the tobacco barn is burning.
For Zimbabwe, the self-proclaimed second republic has blinkered its focus to suffice the whims of the ruling elite, relegating national interests to the political dumpsite. The extreme position involving, inter alia, the curtailment of freedom of expression, colossal oppression and “deceptive governance”, adopted since the removal of late former President Robert Mugabe from power, is persistently frogmarching the suffering citizens into dungeons of welfare oblivion.
The ruling Zanu PF party is waging both a psychological and physical war against its people — an extreme end that has constantly seen civil servants striking, companies closing (without hope of reopening in sight), hospitals becoming death traps, schools turning into brothels for sex orgies and economic resuscitation hitting the rock bottom.
In addition, the swift move to capture critical institutions of justice, expected to make checks and balances on the executive, is perilously conferring the country with a “failed state knighthood”.
Detached from the mammoth pauperisation of the majority, including the decimation of the middle-class, as well as looking from a distant far the economy gruesomely sink, President Emmerson Mnangagwa is left with no choice but to resort to extremes of oppression, using coercive state apparatuses, the legislature and judiciary.
Enacting laws and pampering judges with freebies is not an economic policy — such pathetic decisions will not herald a chapter of progressive development in the history of Zimbabwe. On the contrary, the sad hymn, “Loot More if You Can”, that dominated the status quo during Mugabe’s regime, is ringing louder and shattering recovery expectations. The vast mineral resources the nation is endowed with continue to find their way into the hands of few smugglers with strong connections to the cartel of the “blessed ones”, who mercilessly plunder the country’s riches and still dine with legal watchdogs.
Without a radical paradigm shift that forces top officials to adopt a government of the people, by the people and for the people mindset, the ordinary citizen will endlessly struggle to make ends meet. If the professors and technocrats surrounding Mnangagwa are erroneously advising him to relentlessly pursue disastrous policies, his administration is doomed to perennially score zeros on all fronts.
