In August 2017, I wrote in my blog about the history of violence in Zimbabwe. Towards 1985 general election my family stayed at Amaveni Police where my father was working as a police officer. One morning on my way to school, I saw on the tarred road leading from the main gate to the charge office there was so much blood on the road. I asked my mum about it and she told me that it was blood of perceived supporters of then Joshua Nkomo’s led PF-ZAPU. Kwekwe has a sizable number of Ndebele speakers. These supporters would run to the police but we all know that the police is powerless when it comes to matters to do with ZANU-PF.
Our member of parliament for Kwekwe then was none other than the current president Emmerson Mnangagwa. We had always discussed and believed anyone who takes over from Robert Mugabe would not do any worse. So on Saturday 18 November 2017 when protests to force Robert Mugabe to resign during the coup were announced, I flew from Johannesburg to Harare that morning in order to join the march. Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans of all races marched to state house and we demanded that Robert Mugabe should resign.
After the coup we were shocked when instead of putting together a government of national unity to sort out the economy, ZANU-PF called for an election in 8 months time. Towards the elections the economy became worse and the same middle class and working class that had supported the coup became disillusioned with Mnangagwa’s government and voted MDC Alliance. When I travelled to Harare for the 30th of July elections, I had also planned to vote for MDC Alliance that was until the evening of 29 July when we got back into Harare from Mutoko where we had gone to monitor our tobacco seedlings and caught up with news that Mugabe had endorsed Nelson Chamisa. I was not happy with that because since 1997 we had demanded that Mugabe must go and the reason why some of us were now foreigners was due to Mugabe’s policies. That level of political prostitution is nauseating.
On Election Day I voted for ZANU PF for the first time since 2000. After elections, we saw the heavy handed ness of soldiers on 1 August 2018. The president appointed Professor Mthuli Ncube as Finance Minister and I cheered this move and I even wrote a blog about it that time. Things got worse and after spending thousands of dollars to prepare for the tobacco farming, we decided to cut our losses and stop tobacco farming due to the currency issues.
Ever since the coup the economy has been on downwards spiral. I am sorry about my part in supporting, defending and even voting for this regime. It seems to me that Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa is cursed, he had so much goodwill from millions of citizens in Zimbabwe, those in the diaspora as well as the international community and he has squandered that. Who thought that anyone could be worse than Mugabe🤷🏿♂️
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