Only God Can Remove Me from Power

"Only God Can Remove Me from Power"

-Robert Mugabe June 2008

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the situation in Zimbabwe, here’s a brief summary.

Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since pretty much the beginning of its ‘democratic’ history (This was around 1980). Mugabe is an electoral genius. He has won every single election he has participated in. Although, it must be said that the whole process becomes a lot easier when you ‘kill’ the opposition. Every four-five years Zimbabwe has elections’ and Mugabe wins. Every one of these elections is tainted as ‘rigged’ by the international community. In fact, the very first election he won was said to have been rigged, and he only retained his power because he threatened to continue the civil war that had ravaged the country.

Mugabe’s policies hold a very unique place in history as being racist against ‘whites’. He actually took over farms owned by white folks and asked them to leave. I have to admit, at this point he was pretty endearing. But then this guy actually went out and printed trillians of Zimbabwe dollars. So really, we shouldn’t be complaining about the price of onions. Saying that there is inflation in their economy is absurd, because ‘economy’ itself is a very bold term to use to describe anything in Zimbabwe at present.

Now, fast forward to this year. Again, there were elections, and again they were rigged. Authorities announced the first results of the election showing that the opposition had won, and one month later suddenly, that was not the case and there was to be a ‘run off’ or a one-on-one US type presidential battle because of course ‘actually’ when the votes were ‘properly counted, the opposition had not won. The opposition, as a last resort actually agreed to the ‘run off’. But during the campaign, Mugabe had all their supporters killed (and that’s not a metaphor). The opposition leader Mr. Tsvingorai had to eventually back out of the run off. Despite being the sole candidate in the election, the authorities declared the results, and announced that Mugabe had somehow ‘actually’ won. So, finally Mugabe was sworn in as Prime Minister. In fact, Mugabe was so confident of his victory that he sent out invites for the swearing in ceremony long before the actual results were announced.

On Monday, Mugabe attended an African Union Summit as the legitimate president of Zimbabwe. What is the African Union worth if they do nothing? How can they be committed to peace, democracy and human rights and at the same time accept Mugabe as President?

More importantly, how can we (whoever ‘we’ is) tolerate this today? A people, clearly struggling for peace and democracy is stifled for decades without any way of reaching out, and ‘we’ just watch. There are numerous examples of dictators, and oppression, but when a people come out and cast their vote in fear of death, ‘we’ allow their vote to be dismissed as entirely meaningless. Doesn’t seem right.