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Chris Mutsvangwa Zanu PF Spokesperson
AT 84, (former Nigerian president Olusegun) Obasanjo is in “sour grapes” mode after his clandestine attempt to play kingmaker in Zimbabwe in 2017 failed dismally.
His attempts to install (name withheld) as leader of Zimbabwe in 2017 came to nought after all the people of Zimbabwe turned en masse to the streets in a show of massive support for their Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF), the Revolutionary army.
It is a starkly historical fact that the events between the army and then President Robert Mugabe played out while President Mnangagwa was already out of Zimbabwe in forced exile through Mozambique to South Africa.
The ZDF is a professional army that owes its roots to the revolutionary armed national liberation movement ZANU-ZAPU of the United Patriotic Front.
These were amalgamated with the willing and patriotic rump of the regular armed forces of the Rhodesian Army.
For a refresh, none other than the US Army similarly intervened as recently as 2020 to save the American Democracy from “election outcome denialists” led by a sulking and election-losing Donald Trump. The world watched in trepidation as the august Congress was attacked by a Trumpist mob.
The US Army was acting according to the tenets of its 1773 umbilical cord of founding fathers led by the revolutionary George Washington.
The ZANLA and ZIPRA armies ushered in a new novel political order of guerrilla formations laying down arms, marching to assembly points, there, to patiently await the outcome of an internationally supervised election.
They upended the dictum of bush and bullet to office. Instead they embraced “ballot to office” in the 1980 epochal birth of a nation.
Akin to the US army, the ZDF is a home-grown African professional military force devoid of any post-colonial umbilical cords that connect many coup prone African armies to London and Paris.
This obeisance to post-imperial tutelage and command is invariably the hallmark of most armies that were recruited and set up by ex-colonising powers France and Britain. The two planted seeds of treason in the successor African armies as they hurriedly retrenched in the face of post WWII rising African Nationalism.
None other than Obasanjo owes his political prominence to a military coup he executed in 1976.
To take a cue from current obnoxious remarks on Zimbabwe that aim to besmirch, a one-time coup leader remains a coup leader for all his long life no matter the political “dry cleaning” the coup leader may assiduously pre-occupy himself with in subsequent years.
Yes, Olusegun Obasanjo may have done some good work on the Ethiopia-Tigray ceasefire, but it is churlish of him to ride on this and spin an anti-Zimbabwe yarn in his self-centred triumphalist chest-pumping.
Lastly, Olusegun Obasanjo is the epicentre of the long forgotten “Elders Group” that is a cover for neo-liberal post-colonial political projects in Africa.
From this pedestal, he unilaterally appoints himself a “Power Buccaneer of Africa” in the mould of arch-imperialist Cecil John Rhodes of the infamous Pioneer Column and his dream of a Cape to Cairo imperial enterprise.
Zimbabweans just wish that a miffed Obasanjo, after his failure to install his puppet as the successor ruler to Robert Mugabe, would keep his snide remarks about our beautiful, peaceful and purposeful country to his bosom and keep his blabbermouth firmly shut on Zimbabwe.
After all, President Mnangagwa won elections in 2018. President Mnangagwa is on course to win a landslide election come 2023.
He is on a winning streak as his Second Republic, energised by his reformist and pro-business policies, is finally delivering on the long desired goal of prosperity.
The prospect of Middle Income Status Nation by 2030 beckons with all palpability.
Chris Mutsvangwa is Zanu PF spokesperson and chairman of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association.
Online Reporter