🚀 go-pugleaf

What if everybody gave up?

Zim Standard

   IN the 1980s, there were two bloody incidents in
two countries thousands of kilometres apart, but with a common 
ideology:
Marxism-Leninism.

In Zimbabwe, more than 20 000 citizens, including women and children,
were killed in a massacre now notoriously known as Gukurahundi.

In 1989, in the People�s Republic of China, whose communist party had
mentored Zanu in the liberatioin war, 7 000 were mowed down by soldiers 
and 20 000 wounded in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

Students and workers were demanding democratic reforms.

In Zimbabwe, the slaughter sent shivers down the spines of all
citizens contemplating the same challenge as that of the people whose 
action led to the bloodshed.

The violence in the two countries had one objective: to show people
the government would not tolerate opposition and dissension.

Today, in Zimbabwe more than in China, citizens still thumb their
noses at the government.

By 1999, opposition to the government had blossomed into a thriving
political party, galvanising the workers� and students� union 
movements, 
and
the intelligentsia into a cohesive group.

In China, some of the shackles with which the Communist Party had
imprisoned free enterprise, freedom of speech, assembly and association 
were loosened.

China has mushroomed into a formidable economic powerhouse. The
prediction, even by the United States, is that the world�s most 
populous
nation might end up as its No. 1 economic power.

Not many have proclaimed with prophetic doom "And God help us all if
that happens!" But privately fears are being expressed of a world 
dominated by an economic giant with an equally robust appetite for 
world 
conquest under the banner of the Communist Party.

China is under a new leadership so unlike the mandarins under Mao the
Great Helmsman himself must be in a permanent state of apoplexy � 
wherever
he is.

Neither the people of China nor those of Zimbabwe have given up trying
to expand the frontiers of freedom in their countries. Even the 
restrictions on the Internet may not be enough to eliminate the 
champions of a new, freer China, as dynamic economically and 
politically 
as their old archenemy, Japan.

In Zimbabwe, there is now no going back: the days of the one-party
state of the period immediately after independence are long gone, never 
to return.

This is not to treat lightly Zanu PF�s determination to make the price
of challenging the regime as deadly as it was in the 1980s. March 11 
2007 in Highfield provided massive evidence that Zanu PF and the 
government were not about to let opposition elements settle comfortably 
into their routine.

They would be reminded constantly and with their own blood that the
price was going to be high � all the time.

For that reason, there are elements in society wondering if it is at
all worth it to keep the opposition fires burning. Zanu PF, these 
elements seem convinced, will never cede power voluntarily.

In a twisted way, only over its dead body would the party give up
power. How this might actually happen must be left to the imagination.

Zanu PF will, one day, lose power � just as UNIP in Zambia and the
Malawi Congress Party did in Malawi. Robert Mugabe will one day retire 
from politics � whether in disgrace will depend on how he prefers to 
make his exit, but retire he must. The man is mortal, contrary to what 
some of his supporters seem to believe.

If more people are of a mind to give up the campaign to change things,
they have to be reminded that there won�t be a picnic at the end of 
that.

Life could be even more horrid than it is today. None of the solutions
implemented by the government so far have ameliorated our economic
situation: the prospects look distinctly bleak from all fronts.

Take the election, for a start. It is one which Zanu PF cannot
conceivably win on its immediate past record. But some people have 
already given up, and not because of the division in the opposition, 
but 
because Zanu PF has rigged the polls already � a fait accompli.

What might turn out to be the catalyst could be the grassroots
reaction, not only to how much they feel betrayed by the political 
parties, but to how the elite has trashed them. They are the worst 
victims of the cash crisis. For that trauma, they might seek an outlet 
for their pent-up emotions.

You could have Kenya all over again.