AS a Bible scholar, I understand the role of grace in our lives. In simple terms, grace is unmerited favour or assistance.
Ever since the attainment of Independence in 1980, Zimbabwe has precariously and perennially lurched from one crisis to another. However, in this era, Zimbabwe is grappling with a plethora of multi-pronged challenges. It is certainly a defining moment.
Zimbabwe’s challenges at a glancea
Zimbabwe’s unprecedented economic doldrums are an apt accentuation of Zanu PF’s leadership failure and profligacy. All economic indicators point towards a state that is on a life support system.
After introducing a useless pseudo currency in November last year, Mugabe’s mafia government has virtually failed to contain the economic catastrophe they created. Cash shortages remain prevalent. The state spends 97% of its income on wages. Company closures have become the order of the day and the industrial utilisation capacity is below 15%.
Poverty levels in Zimbabwe are alarming. The unemployment rate is above 95% and 96% of villagers across the country live on less than one dollar a day. 72% of the population live below the nation’s poverty line. Zimbabwe imports 80% of its food needs because of a haphazard land reform programme which was presided over by Mugabe. About 5 million Zimbabweans are in need of food aid. It is estimated that over a million of kids go to school hungry.
Zimbabwe’s life expectancy, 46 for men and 45 for women, is one of the lowest in the world. Social service delivery has become a thing of the past. Thousands are dying daily of curable diseases of a bygone era such as typhoid.
Statistically, Zimbabwe is classified as a little better than a war zone. In reality, Zimbabwe belongs to the Highly Impoverished Poor Country (HIPC) status. All key performance indicators of an economy in regression are flashing red.
On top of all that, Zimbabwe is crippled with a serious leadership deficiency crisis. In fact, the threshold of Zimbabwe’s problems is not nature but leadership failure. At the epicentre of this leadership crisis is the name and frail image of Robert Mugabe. Undoubtedly now in his natural and political twilight, Mugabe has lost his marbles and efficacy. Therein lies the formula to the leadership crisis bedeveling Zimbabwe.
Why Zimbabwe needs Grace?
Despite the aforementioned stark vicissitudes, Zimbabwe has surprisingly managed to glide through and weather some stubborn storms. Robert Mugabe has denied Zimbabwe a chance to rebirth and progress by clinging onto to power well past his sell by date.
This leads me to safely conclude that indeed Zimbabwe needs grace. I am not talking about God’s grace but our own special class kind of grace in the form of First Lady, Grace Mugabe.
She is an answered prayer.
Grace Mugabe strikes me as some sort of unmerited favour and assistance we have been yearning for. I think she is the right person to help us out of our quagmire and she really seems to be doing just fine in her quest to help us.
That she is a motor mouth who suffers from severe mental constipation is incontestable. How she has managed to assume and maintain the position of first lady in a country of people who pride themselves as being learned defies even kindergarten logic.
This power-intoxicated woman never misses an opportunity to assert who she is thereby exposing her mental challenges and political ineptitude. In her short political career she has become a tsunami, a trouble maker, a rabble-rouser launching wandering missiles like some sort of North Korea.
Her pathetically suffocated character becomes apparent the moment she opens her mouth. If anyone really cared about Grace, they would never allow her near the microphone. Whenever she gets hold of the microphone, all hell breaks loose. She becomes a comedian in front of a bunch of clearly comedy starved minions who clap and ululate at anything, even when she is taking a dump on them.
Of course, I am never at all surprised by Grace’s foolish uncensored utterances. It is now a public secret that the twin qualities of common sense and wisdom are foreign to Grace. Her mind seems to have vegetated into a moribund state.
However and in spite of that, her utterances must not be perceived from the standpoint of her challenged mental condition alone but what they are accomplishing or can accomplish for us.
With her miserable 94 year old husband lost in his own world of physical incapacitation and senile day dreaming, Grace has enough room to free flow in the world of stupidity. Mugabe no longer has a firm grip on anything, age has taken its toll on him. His insatiable love for power has led him to erode his own legacy and his wife is working overtime to drive the final nails on the coffin of whatever he had as legacy.
It is clear that to Grace and her husband, Zimbabweans are mere objects at their disposal. How she scornfully undresses grown men and women in front of their delinquent minions is a shocking attestation of that.
I have so much respect for women but I honestly detest Grace Mugabe and everything she represents especially her decayed brain which is buried in a mortuary of a ridiculously inflamed self-concept.
After all is said and done, I can’t fail to locate the opportunity presented by and in Grace’s madness. We need Grace Mugabe and the way she behaves like a drunken monkey. Indeed, from within, through her brave acts of stupidity, she is giving us unmerited favour and assistance in our quest towards a better Zimbabwe.
It is ostensibly clear that Grace Mugabe is meticulously positioning herself to take over from her husband or to knight the successor. In fact, she is already running the show, taking advantage of Mugabe’s old age. Her utterances reveal how she has positioned herself to take over from Mugabe or to be a kingmaker who will determine the successor.
For Grace there are no limits. Not only is she a motor mouth, she has a shocking propensity for power despite her impoverished mental stamina. As it stands, Grace wields more power than Mugabe’s two deputies. She undresses them publicly. The possibility of her taking over or determining who takes over from her frail husband is not far-fetched.
Either possibilities work for our good. Anything that has Grace’s involvement will ultimately work for our good. She is an embodiment of destruction.
Keep moving Grace and thank you for your assistance.
Munhu wese kuna amai.
Patson Dzamara is a leadership coach, author and political activist and analyst based in Zimbabwe.