Mugabe’s statements worrying

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AT his inauguration last Thursday, President Robert Mugabe spoke passionately about the urgency needed to revive Zimbabwe’s dying cities

AT his inauguration last Thursday, President Robert Mugabe spoke passionately about the urgency needed to revive Zimbabwe’s dying cities, especially Bulawayo.

The question we posed then was when did he realise that Bulawayo was now a sorry scrapyard as he described the city that was once the industrial hub of this country?

Mugabe gave an emphatic, yet chilling answer on Sunday at the burial of National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) general manager Mike Karakadzai at the Heroes’ Acre when he launched an unrestrained attack on Harare and Bulawayo voters.

The Zanu PF leader appears to be bitter about his continued rejection by the people of Bulawayo and Harare, which started with the formation of the MDC in 1990.

On Sunday, he told the Bulawayo and Harare voters to go to the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC-T for service delivery and jobs, not his government.

Mugabe wondered why people would vote for what he described as ignoramuses instead of his Zanu PF party, which ironically has presided over the collapse of this country’s economy for the past 33 years.

However, what is more disconcerting is that Mugabe is already going back on his pledge to be a President for everyone, including those that did not vote for him only a few days after his inauguration.

It is the same Mugabe who has been very vocal about Tsvangirai’s reluctance to accept defeat, yet he cannot forgive the people of Bulawayo and Harare for rejecting Zanu PF.

This is the same kind of vindictiveness that brought about civil strife in our early years of independence and forced one of Zimbabwe’s founding fathers, the late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo into exile.

Civilians were also massacred in Matabeleland and the Midlands.

Residents of Bulawayo and Harare now have reason to believe that their suffering of the past decade, characterised by deadly cholera outbreaks and massive shortages of water, was deliberate.

Mugabe also dismissed critics who have questioned the deployment of soldiers to run parastatals such as NRZ.

We wonder if NRZ workers, who have gone for months without salaries, will share his opinion.

As long as we have such vindictive leadership, which also can’t accept genuine criticism, this country will not have any hopes for recovery.