Zimbabwe: My objective opinion concerning the current affairs in the country.

I have been asked by some international respectable person whom I promised not to name to give my objective opinion concerning the current happennings in Zimbabwe and I did so. He was interested in knowing why I wasn't giving the Ray Bennet case as much space on my blog as other Zimbabwean online media and bloggers are doing. Here is a summary of what I said.

While every other journalist and blogger was reporting about the arrest of Roy Bennet
on the day that he was supposed to be sworn as the deputy minister of agriculture I chose to be different and instead dwell on Zimbabwean development issues. It's not that I am not concerned about the plight of Roy Bennet, Jestina Mukoko and all those other MDC activists who are in jail but I refuse to be part to calls to free these people just because everyone is saying so when I have no proof that the charges being laid against them do not hold water in a court of law. I am not well-versed in matters of the law and so I prefer to leave such issues to policemen, lawyers and judges who are trained to deal with such issues. It's not for me to act the judge and the jury and come up with my own verdict and then splash it all over my blog as the truth of the matter. I prefer to write about the real truth not what I think is the truth or what I want to be the truth and I am no prophet so I will not write about any predictions I make up in my head. I am also against the obstruction of justice and if Mugabe or Tsvangirai or any politician intervene by giving a command that these activists be released without being tried for whatever charges laid against them I will interpret that as obstruction of justice which is the worst form of corruption which I condemn and besides it would set a bad precedent in the coalition government. I long to see a Zimbabwe where justice is applied to everyone irrespective of whether he/she is a member of MDC or ZANU PF echelons of power. I am however against the inhuman treatment these MDC activists are being subjected to whilst they are in jail, especially the fact that they are being denied the medical treatment that they crucially need and would want to see Tsvangirai, MDC supporters and all human rights activisits making a lot of noise about that issue. I hope Tsvangirai is going to speed up ensuring judicial independence in the country's justice system so that MDC activists can be tried fairly without any hidden political agendas swaying the course of justice.

I personally think it will be wrong for the MDC to pull out of the coalition government because of the cases of the MDC activists who are in jail because they are such a very small percentage of the population compared to the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans who are languishing in poverty caused by the political and economic instability in the country and are depending on this coalition government to save them from drowning in the poverty and dying. There are some who are of the opinion that the MDC should have totally refused to form a marriage with Zanu PF and waited out patiently for Zanu PF to concede to democracy. I love democracy and actually think it is a heaven sent political ideology whose goodness knows no bounds and I long to see it properly applied in Zimbabwe but the suffering in Zimbabwe had reached a critical point and it would have been inhuman for the MDC to continue running after democracy endlessly without coming up with an immediate solution to eliminate the suffering in the country. I applaud them for putting the pursuit of democracy on hold for now as they form a coalition government which gives them room to provide a solution for the suffering masses in Zimbabwe who were in danger of dying either from cholera, hunger or lack of hospital treatment. How can you tell a sick person who has death knocking on his door that he has to wait for an unspecified time period for democracy to come and heal him? How can you tell a child crying because of hunger that she has to wait for democracy to come and end her hunger? She will obviously ask you if democracy is something she can eat. This goes to explain why I think it was a good idea to put democracy aside for now and concentrate on solving the problems of the suffering Zimbabweans through the coalition government. I am sure you will all agree with me that humanity is more important than any political ideology.

There are many different groups of people who who are not happy with this coalition government and would want to see it fail not because it is bad as such but because its success will completely mess up their comfort zones. Yes, you read right, I wrote comfort zone there because there are many who were taking advantage of the chaos in Zimbabwe and using it for their own personal gain. Allow me to talk about these different groups of people.
1.) Some Zimbabweans who had applied for political or economic asylum in foreign lands and had become established in those lands and now run the risk of being send back home if the governments of those foreign lands get convinced that the coaltion government has brought political and economic stability into Zimbabwe.
2.) The corrupt, unethical and unprofessional people who were making money through the loopholes that the chaos in the country had created. Let me give examples.
i) Business people who had gone into the habit of exploting customers with unjustified and abnormally high prices of their goods and services.
ii) Bankers and foregn currency dealers who had gotten into the habit of conning people off their hard currency by luring them with abnormally high bank transfer foreign currency exchange rates of money that the conned would fail to access from their bank accounts once it's deposited there because of the very low bank maximum withdrawal per person per day.
iii) Fuel sellers who had gotten into the habit of raising the cost of fuel willy-nilly without regard of whether the price of petrol had fallen the world over or not.
3.) All those people the world over who hate Mugabe with a passion. The man created so many enemies through his dictatorship tendencies and his human rights abuses, his land grabbing exercise that saw farms being taken away from white farmers and being given to blacks. True the way the land was grabbed without any compensation was bad but Tony Blair is as much to blame for that as Mugabe is. The media the world over chose to ignore Tony Blair's part in the whole mess and set out on an intensive campaign to demonise Mugabe. So now there is a large group of people who don't understand how a democratic leader like Tsvangirai can decide to form a coalition government with such a demon.
4.)Members of Zimbabwean parties that are not part of the coalition government. MDC's agreement to form a coalition government with Zanu PF has increased his popularity among Zimbabweans because they interpret it as putting their needs above his own need for unshared power. It is this popularity that opposition parties are trying to counter by talking and wrting bad things about the coalition government.
I am not a supporter of any of the three parties in the coalition government but I choose to be objective and write about true facts as they happen and not what I think or wish would happen to the coalition government so that the party I support can then come into the lime light.
5.) The security service chiefs who head the army, airforce, police and the intelligence organisation have been reported to be against the coalition government. It has been reported that instead of doing their duty to the country without aligning themselves to any leader like what every civil servant should do they had long back come out in the open that they would not salute Tsvangirai and so now with Tsvangirai as the Prime Minister they are feeling very uncomfortable.

This is my objective opinion of what is happenning in Zimbabwe at the moment. I am irritated with the way Ray Bennet's arrest is hindering the start of working torwards the rebuilding of our country. By now the sworn ministers should have covered ground in analysing the situations in their different minstries, brainstorming and galvanising ideas so that they come up with strategies to cause paradigm shifts that result in sustainable development in this country.