Posted on 05/12/2003 5:46:20 AM PDT by Clive
A WORKMAN whose only tool is a hammer, is counter-productive; he sees every task as requiring some hammering.
He cannot make even a simple table because it is practically impossible to hammer a table into existence.
One has to have other requisite tools for measuring, cutting, planning and chiselling for a table to be made.
President Robert Mugabe compares well to a workman whose tool kit contains only one tool.
All problems that continue to afflict the country have not been attended to because in his entire workshop, there is only one tool - violence.
Yet despite its continued use by the government, violence has proved beyond any grain of doubt to be a non-effective panacea for our problems.
The country has sunk into the morass because the diversity of problems could not be solved by the violent application of fear, pain, injury or death to opponents.
Many a time Mugabe has clenched his fist and violently punched the air, but the problems, like cancer, continue to sap the once vibrant economy.
He also has on numerous times tightened his face and sworn by his late mother, sadly though, to no improvement in the degradation of the socio-economic standards.
State-sanctioned violence has been applied so much that it is an open secret that the government no longer has any conscience. Its conscience went away without official leave a long time ago and none in the so-called "war cabinet", including Mugabe himself, ever bothered to trace it.
It was flushed away together with bath water.
With the slogan, "Zanu ndeye ropa" (Zanu is a bloody party), the Zanu PF government has made every effort to live true to its slogan.
The bombing of The Daily News printing press and offices, and that of the privately-owned radio station, Voice of the People, confirm that even non-personae are not immune from the violence.
Dialogue is as far removed from the government as olive oil is from the devil.
Violence is the government's second nature as evidenced by its continued use of the term "Chimurenga" (uprising).
During the dark era of the chaotic land grab, all the government-controlled media was awash with "Chave Chimurenga" (It's now time for war) advertisements, clearly conveying the message that to all intents and purposes, violence is its trump card.
That the government thrives on violence is a myth only to the very cynical - what with High Court judges and many other lower-ranking judicial officers quitting the Bench, teachers, mainly those based in the communal lands, seeking transfers or resigning, and political opponents gone scary? Violence is as close to the Zanu PF government's heart a Romeo is to Juliet's.
The mediatory role being played by Presidents Thabo Mbeki, Bakili Muluzi and Olusegun Obasanjo can easily be a wild goose chase if they do not take into consideration the government's adoration for violence.
It is crucial for the honourable presidents to understand that beneath the designer suits worn by government representatives at the talks, lie hearts and minds of architects of many gruesome injuries and deaths whose victims' only crime was holding divergent political views.
A breakthrough can only be realised by urging (sorry, urging is an inappropriate term), by compelling the government to desist from its practice of violence.
Given the brutality with which the government treats its opponents, the only reason why Mugabe trails Ugandan former President Idi Amin on the list of dictators is that the former has not yet added cannibalism to his resume.
As members of the Commonwealth troika, Mbeki and Obasanjo reduced themselves to caricatures of an ancient African tribesman by embarrassingly siding with their counterpart amid his daylight deviancy.
It was surprising to see them mistaking the hound for the hare.
Their blind loyalty cost them several kilogrammes of respect and confidence.
Hopefully, this time around they are wise enough to know that a long-handled spoon is a prerequisite when one has a date for lunch with the devil.
With Zimbabwe on the verge of total collapse, the glossing of Mugabe's intransigence is a dire threat the three presidents have to confront and tackle head-on.
It is high time Mugabe was put on the leash and made to toe the line of good governance.
The global village we now live in has no room for one who wants to "keep his Zimbabwe" for his own inflated ego.
The writer is a social and political commentator
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