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President Robert Mugabe told the media fraternity last week that he would stand in the next presidential election if his party Zanu PF asks him to.
Two things, which confirm our greatest fears, emerge from this assertion: He wants to be president for life and his party, without a doubt, will field him for his umpteenth term.
And when Mugabe has been nominated, the election will go his way, by hook or by crook.
But the point that has got to be made about all this is that Mugabe has become a liability, if not to his party — obviously Zanu PF would like to ignore this fact — but to the nation. We know the state Zanu PF is in now. It is fractious and through his political gamesmanship Mugabe has ensured it remains that way to fulfil his long-held desire to be life president.
Zanu PF will endorse him as their candidate not because they are not aware of the foolishness of that decision but because the party lacks depth in the leadership department. It is the characteristic of all revolutionary parties that eventually all potential leaders are squeezed out over the years and, sadly, replaced by buffoons who do not have the nation at heart but are only bent on self-aggrandisement.
All the factionalism that has riddled Zanu PF can be traced to the vaulting ambitions of its members.
Membership of the party has turned into a passport to self-enrichment instead of as a way to continue to fulfil the ideals of the anti-colonial struggle.
The nation is in grave danger.
Mugabe, at 86, is hardly the sprightly fellow who emerged from the bush in 1980 to take over the helm of the country. Anecdotal evidence suggests that he is ailing and, there is nothing unnatural about this.
The law of diminishing returns which all purveyors of knowledge know like the back of their hands, says that a mere mortal cannot continue to excel even in his own field over three decades.
Although many voices, notably that of Didymus Mutasa, have made attempts at transforming him into a deity, this apotheosis has been disingenuous. We know Mugabe has made some decisions that question his aptitude as a leader.
The latest of these is the Indigenisation Act but signs of bad decision-making began to emerge in the late 1990s with the payout to war veterans of hefty pensions that the fiscus could not afford.
Economists believe it was that decision that propelled the country into the downward spiral that almost completely destroyed it.
With Mugabe almost obviously going to run in the next election the nation has every reason to be gripped with fear. He lost a free and fair election in 2008 and is unlikely to win any similarly well-organised election.
But because if he stands he will have to win at any cost, Zanu PF will naturally dig up all the tactics that have won them elections in the past.
Elsewhere in this issue we publish the story that the party is printing 1,5 million party membership cards.
This wouldn’t scare anyone if we didn’t know that the party has lost support. What we are going to see is Zanu PF going into full gear to coerce people to buy the membership cards especially in the rural areas.
This coercion will obviously come in the form of outright violence spearheaded by the notorious Youth Brigades or in the use of food distribution as a recruitment method.
When the election comes it will be outright war as happened in the run-up to the June 2008 presidential run-off between Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Two worries stand out: The immediate fear of a resurgence of political violence, and the prospect of being ruled for another eon by someone we already know is bereft of sound policies.
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