At the MPOI event on Thursday, 24 Nov 2011. Four speakers on “2011 in Retrospect And A Prognosis For 2012”. Lots of interesting stuff, and they all droned on and on as they will do!

But what got me sitting upright was the Zanu PF speaker – Goodson Nguni. He did not speak as a Zanu PF spokesman, but as a staunch Zanu PFer. And what he said held my interest.

“We love democracy, but we love Zimbabwe more than we love democracy.”

Now what does this mean? He explained, and I understood, that democracy is all well and good but Zanu PF intends to retain a grip on Zimbabwe even if democracy – that is, the will of the people (of Zimbabwe) – tells them to let go. So democracy cannot unseat them. They will retain power … just because. They believe they know what Zimbabwe wants better than Zimbabweans. They believe they know what is better for Zimbabwe than Zimbabweans do. They believe they own Zimbabwe. They believe Zimbabwe is them.

Which basically means they are not democrats. They do not believe in democracy.

All the people who died for the right to vote were actually dying to put Zanu PF in power. Not for democracy.

He further stated “the war vets did not fight for elections, they fought for the end of Rhodesia.”

So, help me. Is my understanding of what he said correct?

And is this not what Gbagbo is being tried in The Hague for a this time? He lost the elections, and instead of stepping down (bowing to democracy), he unleashed a wave of violence, which resulted in many people being killed.

He loved Cote D’Ivoire more than he loved democracy.

This entry was posted on December 2nd, 2011 at 9:41 am by Michael Laban and is filed under Governance, Reflections, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.