An Open Letter To Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe

Robert Mugabe Comrade, hello.
I am a loyal citizen of Zimbabwe. On your disastrous Presidency, I write this letter to you, asking you to resign from the Presidency. I make this request, out of consideration for the peoples cause, for the country and the nation’s future, and out of consideration for you and your family’s personal safety.

Comrade, you personally served as the leader of the ZANU PF since I was not yet born during the liberation struggle and went on to be the leader of a country which was the jewel of Africa on 18 April 1980. You have played your role and it is an open secret that everything has to come to an end at some point and that point has long passed for you.

Our country is in shambles, ranked 2nd from the bottom as the poorest country in the world and it is not a secret that the quality of life of millions of ordinary Zimbabweans has deteriorated under your poor leadership. Confidence in our country, and its economic and political system, is at an all-time low.

I am convinced that ordinary Zimbabweans have no trust in your integrity as a leader, or in your ability to lead and guide a modern constitutional democracy that we aspire to become. It is an open secret that you are highly incapacitated and intellectually bankrupt to lead a country like Zimbabwe and you should be resting especially considering that you will soon be turning 93.

It is clear, at the very least, that as the President, you must have the means and the inclination to promote and defend the Constitution, and uphold the well-being of all Zimbabweans which you have failed to do miserably. Corruption has been rampant within your administration grounding the country to its knees leaving the countries coffers empty. Your invited friends from the East have looted our diamonds worth well over US$15 billion while you were busy snoring.

I have reason to believe that, notwithstanding the “confidence” that your thieving family and sticky-fingered friends surrounding you have placed on you, you have demonstrated that you no longer qualify for this high office on the many counts stated above.

As President and Head of State you should take responsibility for the deplorable state in which our society finds itself. This predicament we find ourselves in must surely have something to do with the manner in which you have been unashamedly forcing yourself into office, by trampling down on all semblance of the rule of law, and corrupting agencies of state.

You have shamelessly worsened the situation by exploiting the high office for personal gain and benefit, using state resources to buy loyalty and to elevate your ZANU PF and family above the public good. The personal attributes (excellence in virtue, truth, trust, wisdom, insight, discernment, and sound judgment) of a leader are an important assurance that our democracy is in good hands. As for you, you lack any of such attributes.
Besides the social and moral breakdown that engulfs our society, the economic woes for ordinary Zimbabweans are not abating. Social inequality has widened since you took over the reins of power and that is something to be ashamed of for an overgrown adult like you. The extent of unemployment in our country is surely nothing to be proud of, and poverty that has become endemic, almost irreversible, that haunts our every being cannot be gainsaid.

You have literally turned every Zimbabwean into a vendor Mr I Know It All. The gaping disparities between your friends in ZANU PF and rest of us the citizens is a sad indictment on a party that has been in government for 36 years. The inadequacy of policy is attested to by the failure of your government to address critical issues including the current cash crisis which you are obviously unable to solve.

Zimbabweans are angry, and they have every reason to be so. There is evidence that your party and government no longer have the intelligence, ideas or initiative to take bold, radical and necessary steps to arrest this slide into oblivion. Besides just being bankrupt on the intelligence to change the course of history, evidently you’re party and government do not even have the inclination preoccupied as it is by a relentless programme of self-enrichment.

You, your family and friends have dishonestly laid your hands in the cookies jar in the full glare of everyone with impunity just because you have elevated yourselves above the Constitution. You have shamelessly intruded into the operations of various organisations that should be holding you to account for your pathetic deeds.

It is now public knowledge that everything that you touch quickly turns into a wreckage or ruins regardless how beautiful or lucrative it is. You are one such a unique individual who has enjoyed mediocrity which you have always celebrated by continuously appointing and recycling monumental failures as cabinet ministers.

Most of those who you have entrusted with public office have failed to successfully run personal tuck-shops funded from stolen public resources. Your ZIMASSET which promised to usher 2 million jobs has achieved negative results but you still have the audacity to continue talking about this apparition. You have presided over gradual erosion of the independence of significant institutions like the judiciary by blatant political interference. These are nothing but an insult to the intelligence of Zimbabweans.

Notwithstanding all this, there is a sense that this country is without an imaginative, transformative chief executive. Instead, we have a shameless old-man who is pre-occupied with a self-aggrandising agenda at the detriment of the ordinary citizen.

At the centre of our problems is you a self-appointed President who lacks the basic intelligence (I do not mean school knowledge or certificates), who is without the means to inspire Zimbabweans to feats of passion for their country and to appeal to their best humanity. I mean being smart and imaginative, and being endowed with ideas and principles on which quality leadership is based. In fact, it has become so difficult for anyone to try and list your failures as failure has been your core business.

As a critical observer of government and ZANU PF under your leadership, I note that your government and party has fast drifted sooner than expected into an authoritarian, reactionary organization, presiding over a kleptocratic state; and that is intolerant of Zimbabweans expressing themselves. Because you openly know that you are no longer ruling with the consent of the ruled including those in your own party, and without our participation, you are now afraid of your own shadows.

You have taken on the persona of a playground bullyboy because you are now unable to answer some pretty sharp critical questions about the conduct of yourself and your government, and about the prevalence of corruption in Zimbabwe, and about false promises. Your ZANU PF has long taken on a semblance of a mafia organization, a Big Brother that syndicates hard dealings against others, isolates and silences critical voices, and uses state patronage to neutralize and marginalize others. One can observe the elements of a totalitarian, fascist regime.

I can go on and on pointing on your misdemeanours, deliquesces and transgressions until Jesus comes back, but please the bottom line is spare us further harm Mr Destructionist under your destructive, ruinous and catastrophic leadership.

Spare yourself any further embarrassment of ineffectual leadership. You will be judged harshly by future generations because of the harm you have caused. This judgement will also be carried to your own children, grandchildren and their own grandchildren. It is only your resignation now that will ensure your own safety and that of your descendants.

I ask you solemnly, resign!.

Yours sincerely
Livingstone Masamba