Guest Column

NigerianNews

Sesan Bello
Journalist/Critical thinker
/Volunteer-Watchdog
London, GB

Whichever case may apply to Robert Mugabe, if I were him, I will quietly ease out myself into the exile where I can look after myself and then start to enjoy my loot with my family for the rest of my life. Sick or tired, it’s high time we plunged Mugabe out of power before he succeeded in plunging another land once vibrant with life and economy into another civil war. Delay is dangerous. Let his veterans get prepared. They are taking on the world and the world can no longer wait to take them on.  ‘Enough is enough,’ that is the new world’s massage to Mugabe.  And I add this: A word to the wise is sufficient.

It’s high time we plunged Mugabe out
by Sesan Bello

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In decades of my existence as a human being, my proximity to tyranny, especially that one relating to governance has only been fictional. As a Nigerian, I know the question that is most likely to be asked by my reader in this regard is whether I was alive during Abacha regime or not. Of course, I was, and in fact, directly victimised by that regime. But the scale of tyranny in that regime seemed to be far less amazing than what we are seeing today in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe that one may be tempted to want to demean Abacha regime as being far less tyrannical. And indeed, it was.

Truth is bitter but I will always say it. As an enthusiast of Pan-Africanism, I had once struggled to close my mind to all news, articles, commentaries, radio or TV talks and even street-talks that were ever negative about Mugabe, particularly those coming from the Western media, because I (then) held the belief that Mugabe was trying to stand on his feet and this, I used to argue, was by no known means an easy task. 

I even argued it that all African leaders should get involved in that fight already championed by Mugabe. I argued further with my friends that what we were seeing at that time was nothing but mere embellished news reports from the western world’s media to forestall the Chinese efforts dislodging the West’s traditional influence on African states after decades of nothing tangible to show for our loyal post colonial followership other than being set against one another and stage-managed into (second) modern slavery.

Well, I am sorry I got it all wrong. Mugabe is in fact a true tyrant; a bully and our own time Nebuchadnezzar of Africa. He doesn’t deserve to live among human beings. Like the Biblical king in whose spectre Mugabe seems to reincarnate, his deserved home is the woods. History informs us that the Biblical King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, before being afflicted, lost his mind and went totally gaga about power to lead, and indeed, led his empire to its peak and greatest glory; killing people, destroying treasures and treating people awfully.

Mugabe’s temerity in power is quite similar to the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar’s in all aspects with the exceptions that Mugabe’s wickedness was conversely induced and his own empire (Zimbabwe), instead of growing and expanding was remarkably nose-diving and shrinking fast.

Zimbabwe today exists only in the name, geography and perhaps, her head-line making embarrassing politics. Economy has totally crumbled. Government is in the shadow of itself, has totally lost focus and direction. Inflation in Zimbabwe is the highest here on earth and there in heaven (if such exists there). Public infrastructures and services have been run aground. Basic staple foods that help people in time of lack are not just within the reach. Even those who dared to bear the brunt of Mr Mugabe’s government’s insensitivity now risk dying of cholera, if they ever escaped death by hunger and state’s sponsored brutality.

That leads me to the question of how sovereign is the so-called sovereignty of a nation – that the world will have to wait and watch first that a particular class of people of a country are getting closer to being exterminated before making moves to rescue them.

It also inspires me to begin to inquire the whereabouts of the self-proclaimed giants of Africa – in the West and in the South, the world powers that removed Saddam Hussein, and of course, the American august contingent that visited Nigeria’s MKO (now late) while in the custody of Nigerian Government. The situation in Zimbabwe now is catastrophic, we need their help very urgently to safe the souls of the innocent children, the helpless aged, and the struggling young Zimbabweans who are now dying in tens and scores because they are unfortunate to be living at the same time with one despotic ruler.

Perhaps he’s never been told. Mugabe’s genre of nationalism is long obsolete; it is no longer fashionable today for a president, truly democratic or not, to adapt the garb and face of militancy in the name of nationalism. That has been confined to the battle field of ethnic and religious fights. The style is no longer relevant today that the world nations are competing for economic relevance, good international relations and technological breakthrough and advancement.

Even the so-called world powers have long realised this and are all at all it takes to ensure that their country is in the good book of the less powerful nations because they too cannot thrive solo. Robert Mugabe should have learnt a great deal of lesson from Bush administration which affronted the whole world and unilaterally went to war against Iraq.  He has not finished the war. And it’s certain that he can’t finish it before his tenure ends. Mugabe’s style of nationalism is insulting to Africa and the entire world of democracies.

I am overwhelmingly convinced that the old man is either still living in the past or no longer of a sound mind, in which case he may be in need of help rather than condemnation.

My observation of the old man and the state of his mental health is not based on my judgement of his faltering appearances on the screen of the television or based on his uncoordinated utterances. Neither is it based on his temper tantrums in public places nor his alibi, often cholerically presented to the world. It is based on what I simplify as a possible brain fatigue due to long service overburden as his obvious nonchalant attitude to the plight of his people depicts in recent times. After twenty eight years as President, he must surely begin to deplete and exhibit the traits as we’re witnessing it now.

Whichever case may apply to Robert Mugabe, if I were him, I will quietly ease out myself into the exile where I can look after myself and then start to enjoy my loot with my family for the rest of my life. Sick or tired, it’s high time we plunged Mugabe out of power before he succeeded in plunging another land once vibrant with life and economy into another civil war. Delay is dangerous. Let his veterans get prepared. They are taking on the world and the world can no longer wait to take them on.  ‘Enough is enough,’ that is the new world’s massage to Mugabe.  And I add this: A word to the wise is sufficient.