|
|
|
Grace Mugabe a wolf in sheep’s clothing
By Rose Maindiseka
Monday, May 5, 2008
ZIMBABWE ’S vanquished head of state, Robert Mugabe, has taken the Nazi tactic of attributing to others the retributive post-election atrocities he is perpetrating against the populace to new levels of perversity in his bid to deflect criticism and capitalize on the anguish of the victims for political gain.
During the era of Nazism in Germany, it was common for Adolf Hitler’s regime to attribute to others what it was doing as a way to distract attention from its brutal misdeeds and abuses. Aping this tactic after his unleashing of violence in the countryside as punishment against rural voters who rejected him the March 29 elections which has been roundly condemned by all reasonable people throughout the world, Mugabe has now deployed his wife, Grace, to the affected areas to pose as an angel of mercy bringing relief and comfort to the victims of her husband’s brutality.
The state-controlled Herald issue of May 2 carried a report detailing Grace Mugabe’s foray into the besieged Manicaland province to donate funds to enable those whose homesteads have been burnt down to rebuild. The state daily reported that Mugabe, who was accompanied by her sister, donated $10 billion to each of the 10 families that were targeted by state agents and militias in the Mayo resettlement area of Manicaland. She wife was reported to have also donated blankets, clothes, shoes, sugar, mealie meal and other foodstuffs to the victims.
Mugabe’s feigned attempts to pose as a paragon of tolerance and compassion were however exposed the moment she opened her mouth and added insult to injury by trying to deceive the people about the hand behind the atrocities. She cold-heartedly tried to peddle the illogical and tired mantra that the Movement for Democratic Change had reacted to its victory on March 29 by embarking on a campaign of violence against those who voted overwhelmingly for it.
This claim does not make sense generally but particularly in Manicaland where the MDC recorded some of the most stunning upsets against Zanu-PF. Voters in Manicaland booted out the highest number of ministers and voted for MDC candidates. What earthly reason would there be for the winning party to descend on a province that supported it overwhelmingly to punish voters?
Said the outgoing First Lady to her grim-faced audience; “Through violence and destruction, no one can become a president. Violence is foreign to Zimbabwe and Africa, but a propaganda of the West” (sic). In an apparent reference to Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa and the president of the ruling ANC in South Africa, Jacob Zuma, who have condemned post election violence and the withholding of presidential poll results, Mugabe blasted regional leaders she accused of betraying the goals of liberation movements.
Although Manicaland provincial governor, Tinaye Chigudu urged the people to be grateful to “Amai Mugabe’s gesture of love that did not take into account political differences” it is clear she is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, capitalizing on the suffering of the people to campaign for her detested husband ahead of the presidential election run-off. Having become addicted to the trappings of power and the resultant limitless opportunities to plunder, she obviously cannot imagine someone else’s husband becoming president and ending her opulent lifestyle as First Lady.
Someone in the position of First Lady genuinely moved only by compassion and empathy would have visited any area hit by state violence as unobtrusively as possible and would have been careful not to offend the still raw sensibilities of the embattled people. But for Grace Mugabe to prance before people traumatized by the brutal violence unleashed by her husband resplendent in Zanu-PF regalia bearing the menacing portrait of Robert Mugabe and claiming to be there out of the goodness of her heart is to underscore the moral bankruptcy and inhumanity of the greedy clique holding Zimbabweans to ramsom.
No one would have believed Mugabe’s wife even if she had not resorted to reciting her husband’s tired lines against the West. It was preposterous for her to tell victims of atrocities perpetrated at the behest of a man incapable of accepting defeat that Zimbabweans were playing into the hands of the West by resorting to violence when she knew fully well that the brute force being used against innocent people was the handiwork of her husband.
This was not the first time Mugabe and Zanu-PF have tried to put the people of Zimbabwe off the scent after committing unspeakable atrocities. The incident that stands out most prominently in the memories of most Zimbabweans is the murder of Cain Nkala in 2002 after which a badly stage-managed attempt was made to attribute the callous act to the opposition. In a disgusting attempt to mask their culpability the Mugabe regime and Zanu-PF spun out elaborate tales replete with false allegations against innocent people. Nkala was even declared a national hero and buried amid feigned expressions of grief at the national shrine in Harare.
Since then many more people have died mysteriously when their loyalty to the party was under suspicion and been accorded “hero” status. Grace Mugabe has been unpopular in Zimbabwe until now for her involvement in scandals such as the looting of the VIP housing scheme under which she built a mansion dubbed “Gracelands”. She is also notorious for her extravagant shopping sprees.
Her latest fraudulent antics however show that she has become her husband’s active accomplice in the brutalizing and subjugation of the people of Zimbabwe. She has taken to behaving like Elena the wife of former Romanian despot, Nicolae Ceausescu who actively supported her husband’s tyrannical rule. She paid the ultimate price for her collusion when they were both summarily executed after being found guilty of genocide, crimes against the state, undermining the national economy and illegal accumulation of wealth.
Grace Mugabe does not seem to realise that the people of Zimbabwe are not fools and they can see through her deceptive antics. She does not seem to have considered that a time of reckoning could come when she will have to answer questions about the source of the billions she is flaunting in a bid to pull the wool over the eyes of Zimbabweans regarding her husband’s brutal campaign of retribution against the electorate that rejected him on March 29.
|
|
© Copyright The Zimbabwe Times