NewsDay (Zimbabwe)

Leadership crisis looming in the country

- Leonard koni

CRUSHING the people’s voices is not the answer. No nation has ever risen by crushing the voice of justice.

Zimbabwean citizens from all walks of life have been fighting for change at a personal cost, including human life. Every move has been thwarted with brutality and counter-violence or by the use of captured courts and State security agents.

The leadership today is preocupied with the opposition rather than improve people’s welfare.

There is a leadership disaster looming in the country. Our leaders have suddenly forgotten what their mandate is. There is a lot of selfishnes­s and leadership deficienci­es.

Instead of fixing the ailing economy and attending to the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic, our leaders have resorted to arresting whoever tweets about what is happening in society.

Our government has reduced itself to a social media monitor.

This inept, corrupt, clueless and cruel government continues on the overdrive in arresting MDC Alliance leadership and pro-democracy activists who interrogat­es its conduct. To be precise, they lack the intelligen­ce to govern.

Today, we continue to see the persecutio­n and harassment of opposition leaders and civil society activists.

This is actually tarnishing the image of the country, not the opposition.

One wonders why the government spends taxpayers’ money to hire United States and British public relations companies to spruce up the image of the country yet it is destroying it.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has forgotten and must be reminded to revisit his inaugural speech at the National Sports Stadium in Harare where he told the world that he was different from the late former President Robert Mugabe and that he would break from the ruinous past.

Today, we no longer have a sound Judiciary system, competent police force, profession­al military, non-partisan intelligen­ce team, among others because they are all captured. Our courts should be citadels of justice, but the opposite is obtaining on the ground.

All these have been eroded and fallen by the way side. The Zanu PF-led government has defiled and captured all these institutio­ns and we are left with a leadership void.

Last year, we saw the arrest of journalist Hopewell Chin’ono and in 2021 the story replays itself with the arrest of Zengeza West MP Job Sikhala, Chin’ono and lately MDC Alliance spokespers­on Fadzayi Mahere on spurious charges.

The question are: Will these arrests improve the country’s ailing economy or reduce the spiralling inflation? Are the trio holding back the success of the country?

It is unfortunat­e that we still have many blind Bartimaeus, who think that this government will take us to a promised land.

There is no justice in Zimbabwe as we speak. What is the rationale of bringing people to court in leg irons in the 21st Century as if they are dangerous criminal? All hope is not lost. The struggle continues.

 ?? President Emmerson Mnangagwa ??
President Emmerson Mnangagwa

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