Sad harbinger for democracy in 2024
ACCORDING to Chinese culture, 2024 is the Year of the Dragon: A year of “new beginnings”. In Chinese culture the dragon symbolises power, nobleness, honour, luck and success. However, if what someone believed to be government spokesperson George Charamba reportedly posted on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) is the official government stance, then woe to the country’s democracy because it faces little to no luck and success in 2024.
On the eve of this year, disturbing suggestions emanated from government corridors that the country’s main opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) is to face a torrid time and possibly be annihilated if it decides to take to the streets for whatever reason.
The threats were made last week by someone using the pseudonym @dhonzamusoro007, a moniker we are told belongs to Charamba who has effectively turned upside down the Chinese’s wishes for good tidings in 2024 when he said: “…we are ready to push the final nail in (the) CCC coffin when foolhardiness gets in to try it luck on the street action in early January … We must aim to make Zimbabwe political soil inhospitable to such politics.”
This is indeed a sad start to 2024 for the opposition as well as democracy and the country’s constitutionalism, if government has decided to “ban” all forms of street protests, albeit Section 58 of the Constitution giving “everyone … the right to freedom of assembly”, while Section 59, affords “everyone … the right to demonstrate and to present petitions”in a peaceful manner.
What makes the Zimbabwean political situation particulary depressing is that we have a government which appears to be more than ready to silence its critics, who we believe are critical in helping it perform better.
Ironically, our government is duplicating the exact template used by the colonialists during the struggle for independence whereby all political activism by indigenous people was outlawed. Now our very own government is outlawing protests from fellow citizens accusing them of lacking the capacity to think for themselves and always depending on foreigners to shape and influence their political thinking.
By dictatorially shutting out the opposition, for whatever reason, government is destroying democracy as the world knows it. Making “Zimbabwe political soil inhospitable” to the opposition, as suggested by @dhonzamusoro007, is the last thing the country needs, especially having been globally isolated for more than two decades for rights abuses.
We would have thought that 2024, being a year of nobleness and honour, according to our all-weather friends, the Chinese, our government would seek to completely shake off the pariah State tag.
Unfortunately, there appears to be no such fat luck on the horizon for Zimbabwe, which we believe will effectively condemn the country into the global political dustbin. This ultimately means that the so-called “re-engagement” is nothing but a red herring to pull wool over the international community’s eyes.
We pray that providence visits our government in 2024, so that it starts to respect citizens’ views even if it is uncomfortable with some of their ideas. Accepting opposing views is a sign of a maturing State.