Why calls for demonstrations will not be heeded

Obituaries
Unfortunately, the calls for the suffering people of Zimbabwe to come together to march in protest to the mismanagement of the country will come to naught.

Unfortunately, the calls for the suffering people of Zimbabwe to come together to march in protest to the mismanagement of the country will come to naught.

Sunday View with Chipo Masara

It will be a complete flop because the bulk of those people that have a gripe about the haphazard manner in which the country is being run, will not come out into the streets to join in the march.

Not because they do not want to, but because they are very much privy to the manner in which the ruling party responds to dissent.

They would rather silently suffer under the leadership of Zanu PF, than risk their lives.

Only recently, a group of youths that had taken to the streets to call for the Zanu PF-led government to make good on its promise in its 2013 election manifesto to provide 2,2 million jobs were given a thorough beating, and a journalist that was there to cover the event was not spared.

Using maximum force to thwart any opposition is probably one of the main reasons why Zanu PF is still in power, and it doesn’t look like it is a tactic they will be doing away with anytime soon, seeing as it has so far served them so well.

The violent manner in which Zanu PF has chosen to deal with the opposition has earned Zimbabwe a place among the world’s most repressive states.

While the ruling Zanu PF continuously dismisses human rights abuses as “the work of our detractors” and an attempt at regime change, those of us who have witnessed the party’s brutality know better.

It is no secret that Zimbabwe’s armed forces are at the beck and call of the ruling party and will not hesitate to undertake any assigned task, no matter how gruesome, just as long as it helps extend Zanu PF’s hegemony.

In the past, whenever there was any sort of demonstration, people fell at the mercy of the ruthless armed forces and ended up either badly injured or behind bars. In most cases, after all the trouble they would have gone through, the demonstrations failed to achieve the desired effect as more often than not, nothing improved.

That is the reason why the MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai’s calls for mass demonstrations to push the government to act on improving the general population’s welfare will not be heeded by many.

Yes, the people are suffering and are waiting for the government to put in place responsible policies that will bring in foreign direct investment and with it jobs for many.

Many jobless graduates want nothing more than to see the years of hard work they put in at school being handsomely rewarded.

People want to see service delivery improving and money collected at tollgates going towards fixing the roads. The list of things Zimbabweans wish for is endless.

Considering all this, it may, to someone reading this, only make sense that Zimbabweans take to the streets and protest the incessant mismanagement of the country. But then they will not!

Some may call it cowardly, but I call it wise. I for one will not be one of those few that will take to the streets because I know how the story would end if I did.

I know that even before we would have started marching (peaceful as it may be), police details would descend on us in their numbers, baton sticks in hands!

The fact that it is Tsvangirai that plans to be at the forefront does nothing but makes it worse as it will make it all seem like an MDC project — and we all know how the President Robert Mugabe-led government has responded to Tsvangirai and his party in the past.

In 2007 Tsvangirai, other opposition officials and civic leaders were thoroughly bashed when they tried to organise a peace rally in Highfield, Harare. Seven years later and President Mugabe is still at the throne, with Tsvangirai now a pale shadow of his former self.

Just like Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, I see President Mugabe fighting opposition to the bitter end and anyone that dares take him on better be equal to the task, otherwise the guaranteed attack by the armed forces will in the end, all be for nothing.

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