Dear Robert Mugabe, (From Prof Stan Mukasa!)

November 27, 2006

In today's Letter from America Dr. Stan Mukasa writes an open
no-holds-bared letter to Mugabe urging him to seek mental and spiritual
counseling for a possible redemption for his soul, as the 83-year-old
geriatric dictator approaches the inevitable political and physical exit
doors from this world.

An Open Letter to Robert Gabriel Mugabe President, ZANU-PF

Robert Mugabe:
Jongwe House
Harare

If you close your eyes and imagine what the mood in the country would
be like on the news of your death you may or may not be surprised to learn
about all-day, all- night exuberant celebrations and riotous festivities and
yes, pungwes that will most likely take place along the length and breadth
of this country.
Your ears would almost be deafened by the unending horn blasts from
all those cars.
Or, try what Idi Amin Dada, Uganda's former dictator, did one time. He
spread rumours that he had died. His security chiefs took him on a
helicopter ride and he personally witnessed the ecstatic jubilation that
spread around Uganda.
Lest you think this is an unjustified accusation coming from a
disgruntled Zimbabwean living outside Zimbabwe your very own security chiefs
have advised you that you are the most hated man in Zimbabwe today. They
have also told you that if the leadership of the opposition movement was
organized and united Zimbabweans are ready, willing and able to storm the
State House and hang you upside down by a meat hook like what Italians did
to your fellow dictator, Benito Mussolini, in 1945.
Maybe that explains why you have moved from the State House to your
multimillion-dollar ultra luxurious mansion that you built on the backs of
the struggling masses. And maybe that also explains why you are now busy
militarily fortifying your mansion. You are a fast learner! You are probably
more aware than any of us the degree and extent of resentment, contempt and
hatred that is leveled against you. But all those underground bunkers and
all those missile defenses and radar will not save you or guarantee you a
permanent peace of mind.
You are now 83 years old and way in the sunset of your life. In
African tradition people of your age are regarded with great respect as
sources of wisdom who should teach younger generations the virtues of life.
My grandparents were honorable and well respected. When they died hundreds
of people gathered to pay their respects.
In contrast, when you die thousands of people will come to your
graveside not to pay respect but to make sure it's you being lowered into
the grave so they can pour contempt and ridicule. They will do this
notwithstanding the tradition of not speaking ill about the dead. You will
definitely be an exception to that tradition. Take my word for it.
Zimbabweans are circling like vultures waiting for the day they will hear
the news.
I do not harbor any wish for death for you. I would hope you live long
enough to be brought, like Liberia's Charles Taylor, to trial at The Hague
for crimes against humanity. I would, however, prefer you were tried in Kezi
at the VERY same spot where on one fateful day back in 1983 your Fifth
Brigade soldiers gathered villagers and told them they were "serious about
hunting dissidents." And to prove their point they lined up scores of
civilians and massacred them in cold blood.
This was one of the thousands of acts of genocide committed under your
watch and which resulted in the murder of over 20,000 innocent civilians. At
that spot in Kezi I would hope that each of the surviving relatives of the
innocent civilians you butchered will come and stare at you in the face and
tell you what they think of you. And, after you are found guilty, I would
hope you are saved from the people's rage and the gallows so you can serve
the rest of your miserable life in Chikurubi maximum prison.
While in Chikurubi you will be compelled to listen AGAIN to video
recordings of testimonies from every Zimbabwean who was affected by your
Fascist dictatorship.
The walls around your solitary confinement in Chikurubi prison should
contain a complete record of how you brought death, misery, destruction and
a Stone Age existence to millions of Zimbabweans.
When God at His time should decide to take your life I would hope you
are buried with all your sins so they can be your documented record in the
other world.
In 1980 Zimbabweans gave you an overwhelming vote of confidence when
they voted you in office. Millions converged at the airport to meet you from
exile. Their expectation was that you would bring them out of the settler
colonialism of Ian Smith where they had no political rights.
You betrayed this hope and trust when you started behaving like Ian
Smith immediately after independence. You did not dismantle the colonial
laws that oppressed blacks. You used them to your advantage. Whatever
economic gains Zimbabwe made in the first ten years of its so-called
independence they were a smokescreen for your real motives. These were spelt
out by the late Edison Zvobgo when he said your single ambition in life was
to stay in power indefinitely and at all costs.
Incidentally, Zvobgo may have been in your political party but he
spoke very contemptuously about you.
I remember one day he said people were mischievously misled into
thinking you were very educated by the virtue of all those degrees you
gained through distance education. He said you boasted about having more
degrees than a thermometer. The reality, according to Zvobgo, was, as he put
it, "A B.A .plus a B.A. plus B.A. is still a B.A."
Zvobgo also ridiculed the so-called ZANUPF women's league who wore
dresses emblazoned with your picture and became a characteristic circus and
spectacle at the airport to welcome you from your endless trips abroad.
Congratulations, you probably beat the late Kamuzu Banda of Malawi's record
on this! Zvobgo used to openly scorn those women whom he said were other
people's wives yet they had unashamedly Mugabe's picture almost tattooed on
their butts and other parts of their bodies!
Zvobgo was apocalyptically right when he said you have a schizophrenic
obsession in clinging to power even when you know very well that you have
lost the respect, let alone political support, of the majority of
Zimbabweans. He derisively called you the madman from Ngomahuru - that
hospital for mental patients in Masvingo! He said you had been given a baton
in a relay race to pass it on to the next person. Instead, you fled with
that baton into the mountains where you are still running wildly today!
The fact that Zimbabwe is being ruled by a madman from Ngomahuru
accurately explains the crisis situation in the country today.
Today, everything that can possibly go wrong in Zimbabwe has happened.
Zimbabwe is not at war yet it has all the symptoms of a war ravaged country.
You thirst for blood, to quote a statement from one of your fanatical
supporters Joyce Chiwengwa in reference to another occasion in her turbulent
life of unearned luxury, has been a permanent feature of your despotic rule.
You mobilized unemployed youths and trained them into a militia of thugs
numbering 50000 - more than the size of the army! Then you set them off to
kill, torture, rape, abduct members of the opposition movement. The past six
years have been pure hell on earth for Zimbabweans. Human rights
organizations have documented over 400 members of the opposition movement
who were killed, hundreds of women raped some of whom have now contracted
the deadly HIV/AIDS disease. Your militia thugs also gang -raped women and
we have the riveting testimony about this.
Your disastrous seizure of commercial farms, ostensibly to give blacks
what you called the stolen land, ended up replacing half a million blacks.
It is amazing that you realized that land had been stolen and needed to be
retrieved 20 years after you had been in power and just when you also
discovered you were about to lose the 2000 elections! And now you have
discovered that the same blacks, except your cronies and relatives, you gave
back the stolen land do not deserve it.
As if that was not enough you launched the so called Operation
Murambatsvina which left millions of already destitute Zimbabweans homeless.
You were an odd sort of Robin Hood. You robbed from the rich but you did not
give to the poor because you also robbed from the poor!
The results of your disastrous policies are everywhere around you. You
only need to roll down the windows in your bulletproof imported Mercedes
Benz to see how thousands of Zimbabweans are toiling and scavenging just to
survive from one day to the next.
Zimbabwe's economy, which ironically was vibrant during the settler
colonial regime despite the imposition of sanctions, now lies in tatters. It
has been in recession for the seventh year in a row and has contracted by 40
percent. No other country in the SADC region has experienced this phenomenal
free fall in its economy. Eight out of ten Zimbabweans are unemployed.
Inflation which stands at over 1,000 percent is the highest in the world.
Just to show how high the inflation is , if we exclude Zimbabwe, the range
of inflation rates in the developing countries is between 5 and 100 percent!
Corruption is now endemic and pandemic. You have created out of state
resources and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe a gravy train for your cronies
who are living a life of unbridled luxury in a country where the vast
majority are starving and homeless. And now the pigs in the feeding trough
are stumbling on each other as the trough runs empty. In your desperation to
refill this trough you are gallivanting around the world selling Zimbabwean
resources to the highest bidder.
This has got to be a scandal of monumental proportions. It is more
than a justification for your dismissal from office. Yet you have rigged all
elections because you knew very well that you would lose miserably. You have
also manipulated efforts to seek redress through the courts because the
judiciary system is now stuffed with your cronies.
You have turned down, like a spoilt child, all genuine efforts at
mediating the crisis of governance that you have precipitated. You have, in
what can be termed as act of a madman from Ngomahuru, turned down efforts to
give food and shelter to victims of your disastrous policies. Do you
remember saying Zimbabweans do not need outside food otherwise they will
choke? What can be more insane than this cruel hoax of a statement made in a
country where all indications are that over two million Zimbabweans are in
urgent need of food aid? Even your militia thugs and rank and file soldiers
upon whom, by your very admission, you rely to stay in power have been
reduced to beggars and scavengers.
If there was any chance at all that you are still capable of listening
to reason and sense this letter would demand that you step down immediately
as you have neither a constitutional nor legitimate right to rule Zimbabwe.
This would pave way for a transitional government made up of representatives
of the opposition movements in the country and under the protection of the
United Nations peace keeping forces who will facilitate a democratic
transition to free and fair and internationally supervised elections,
democratic rule, the rule of law and economic recovery.
The crisis in Zimbabwe is 90 percent a direct result of your misguided
policies and insatiable and ruthless determination to stay in power
indefinitely. You will be fully responsible and will be held fully
accountable for BOTH the causes and the consequences of acts of civil
disobedience by the Zimbabweans who are clearly fed up with you.
At the age of 83, you should seek , even at this late hour, spiritual
and mental counselling . You are coming to the end of your life. There is no
redemption for your soul. The future generations and including your own
offspring will spit and curse at your grave. You have brought shame and
disrepute not only to yourself but all those who once trusted you and gave
you the mandate to rule the country.
God may forgive you. But Zimbabweans cannot forgive you because the
blood and the spirits of thousands of innocent civilians that you butchered
in cold blood and thousands others whom you tortured demand justice.

Yours sincerely,

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