Pic Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa isconvinced Mugabe must be forced out of office if he refuses to resign.
Egypt has a rich biblical history. For the religious converts the Bible is the word of God creator of the universe. For the unconverted biblical stories are folklore that was used to teach societal values, ethics and beliefs of generations of the Jews many of which transcend several other cultures
The similarities between crises dogging Mugabe and Zanu PF and the 10 plagues that visited The Pharaoh of Egypt narrated in Exodus 7 verses 12-32 is ominous for Mugabe whichever belief one has about the biblical scriptures.
The Egyptians had enslaved the Israelites and trivialised their human rights in similar fashion to what Mugabe and Zanu PF are doing to humanity of ordinary Zimbabweans who sought refuge in the Party after being vandalised and savaged by colonial rule.
The scriptures narrate that God heard the prayers of the subjugated Israelites in Pharaoh’s captivity and sent a frightened Moses to deliver them out of the bondage of slavery.
The Egyptian leader trashed Moses’ demands for the restoration of the Israelites’ humanity and dignity in ways akin to how Mugabe trashed Tsvangirai’s demands for democratic rule in Zimbabwe.
God was infuriated by the Pharaoh’s brutality and Odin status over the Israelites and decided to call time on Pharaoh and make him submit to Israelites demands for freedom.
He equipped Moses with supernatural powers to cause miraculous occurrences throughout the Egyptian empire in the hope the king would see that he had come up against a superior force and free the slaves.
These were irritants that were supposed to push the Egyptian king into concession about Israelites’ right to freedom but the power deluded and well catered for king had become so accustomed to benefits of free labour from the slaves would not concede without putting a brave fight.
The first plague was water was turned into blood but the king would not yield.
This was to be followed by the plague of Frogs, Gnats, Flies, Disease in Livestock, Boils, Hail, Locusts, Darkness and finally Death of Firstborns which forced the king to yield
It took deaths of Egyptian firstborns for the king to let go. That calamity could have been avoided if the despotic king had not stubbornly refused to yield to the 9 precedent plagues which were for many shocking but not the powerful king.
Mugabe is equally playing Odin in Zimbabwe. Using the military might of a rag tag Liberation Army he has heavily funded from Zimbabwean taxpayers’ funds Mugabe has entrenched himself as the king of Zimbabwe.
The swell of rage building under his self imposed stewardship of the country is oblivious to him despite the abundance of plagues in the country.
The country has for more than a decade experienced erratic rainfall patterns Mugabe’s successive regimes of oppression have blamed for poor agricultural outputs.
His opponents blame failed agricultural performance on poor economic management policies of Mugabe’s successive regimes.
Chief among them is the chaotic land reforms he undertook which resulted in productive land he reposed from mainly White Commercial farmers and parcelled out to Zanu PF adherents who in turn left the land derelict and forlorn because they neither have the knowhow to make the farms productive nor do they have the capacity to sustain commercial agriculture.
The plague of poor rains in Zimbabwe is strikingly similar to the plague of water shortage in king Pharaoh’s Egypt when water was transformed into blood.
Could it be that water is a key natural resource only God has power to give as he feels and thus a tool he uses to warn those in power that they have exceeded tolerable limits?
There will always be geographic and scientific explanations about why the rains have become erratic but such explanations though widely accepted do not explain why the proponents cannot devise mitigatory interventions to ensure rains are never erratic.
The second Egyptian plague was that of frogs.
Well it appears the plague has repeated itself in Zimbabwe as Mugabe labelled Dr Simba Makoni a frog after he “broke ranks” from Zanu PF and challenged Mugabe for the Presidency in March 2008.
Each time the Egyptian king was faced with a plague he would relent, promise immediate Israelites freedom and either Moses and/or Aaron would pray for the cessation of the plague only for Pharaoh to go back on his promise when the plague ended.
In the first two plagues the king refused to live by his word after his magicians replicated the miracles.
The reliance on magicians by besieged despots has been repeated in Zimbabwe with astonishing similarity when Mugabe and his entire Government have encouraged rainmaking ceremonies and consulted a Rotina Mavhunga, a N’ganga to make diesel ooze from rocks in the Chinhoyi Caves.
Equally striking is the manner in which Mugabe makes similar concessions when pressed with a crisis only to abandon the concession when the crisis relents.
The Egyptian magicians failed in attempts to repeat the third plague of turning dust into gnats in similar fashion to how Mavhunga failed to turn the Chinhoyi rocks into oozing diesel.
There is no evidence that Mugabe has been tested with the equivalent of the Egyptian Gnats and Flies plagues but the fifth plague of disease of the animals has been very much evident in Zimbabwe.
Anthrax and Foot and Mouth diseases have decimated livestock in the country and reduced the lucrative beef industry of the country to ignominy.
The plague of Cholera and HIV in today’s Zimbabwe closely approximates the plague of boils suffered by the Egyptians at the sixth occurrence of a plague over the king’s failure to free Israelites.
Still Mugabe like the indignant Pharaoh will not let go even when it is evident that the situation is out of his control.
Instead he has reluctantly classified the Cholera epidemic a national emergency and allowed international aid to be rendered the country.
Zimbabwe was rocked by an earthquake in early 2007. This natural disaster is in the category of the plague of hailstorm witnessed by Egyptians over the slavery of Israelites.
The plague of locusts in Egypt has repeated itself in Zimbabwe as the red locust invasion compounded by the Kwela Birds and Army Worm invasions which hitherto have been contained by imported the country no longer has capacity to import after squandering its foreign currency reserves on worthless wars, political repression equipment and corrupting the Military to support Zanu PF.
In Egypt the second last plague in a battery to break the king’s resistance was darkness. Three solid days of darkness enveloped Egypt other than in the land of Gessen where the oppressed Israelites were condemned to live.
In all instance the frightened king would call in Moses and Aaron and undertake to free the Israeli slaves and as soon as the plague was stopped he would become obstinate and trash his undertaking.
Zimbabwe was plunged into political mayhem since 2000 when Zanu PF rigged parliamentary elections it had lost to the MDC and since then the country has not known peace.
A poorly thought out political strategy to pacify restless and impoverished Zimbabweans through a chaotic land reform programme boomeranged with disastrous consequences on the political fortunes of Zanu PF and Mugabe in particular.
The rule of law was suspended to effect the vicious land grab initiative. The grabbed land’s productivity plummeted to subsistence output levels and hunger and starvation set in among the poor and has now engulfed the majority of the populace.
Once the electoral fraud had succeeded in retaining Mugabe and Zanu PF hegemony it became an integral part of Zanu PF electioneering in 2002 and 2005.
Protection of Human rights took a heavy knock from offshoots of the noble land reform project that had become a Party political tool than a National empowerment and development strategy.
The Mugabe regime was slapped with targeted sanctions to which it responded with its own sanctions against proponents of sanctions against failed Zanu PF leadership of the country.
Regime change, a natural key objective of political competition was criminalised and proponents thereof labelled all sorts of names as conduits for the re-establishment of colonists supremacy.
The once strongest economy south of the equator mellowed under pressure from the global village for Mugabe and Zanu PF to uphold democracy and the rule of law.
Mugabe and Zanu PF responded with the obstinacy of the Egyptian Pharaoh over the enslavement of Israelites.
While the country’s economy was plunging into a dark era, regional neighbour economies were on the ascend after regime changes and or end of civil strife.
For many destitute Zimbabweans the regional neighbours have now become like the land of Gessen during the Egyptian plague period in relation to their being plague free.
Questions are now being loudly asked about Mugabe’s legitimacy and leadership styles in Zimbabwe.
His role in mutilating the Zimbabwe economy is being questioned with greater frequency.
Even more telling are suggestions about his continued stay in power.
There are echoes of discontent with Mugabe’s legitimacy from Zimbabwe to Kenya, South Africa to Nigeria, Senegal to Canada, Botswana to Australia, the Bahamas to the United States of America, Liberia to France, Lesotho to Britain and Zambia to Japan throughout Europe and Asia.
This latest plague on Mugabe’s government and Zimbabweans is building up to the plague of death. Not of Zimbabwean firstborns but of Mugabe Zanu PF hegemony in Zimbabwe.
Calls for Mugabe’s voluntary resignation or for him to fight forced ejection are on the increase and sooner rather than later Zimbabweans will take heed and follow the cue.
Already cash disgruntled Soldiers have rampaged streets and the arrested are waiting to appear before a Court Martial where if they are convicted they are likely to be executed.
Military executions are not uncommon in Mugabe’s military establishments but these would be the first publicly witnessed military mutineers to be executed and in their blood will the resolve of their colleagues be emboldened.
The dilemma is if they are not executed for mutiny, they will lead further mutiny against the establishment with potential to stage a coup and yet if they are executed Mugabe will have acknowledged that his rule is severely threatened within the Army that has propped his illegitimate rule over the past decade after his political popularity waned.
There will obviously be conspiracies that Mugabe is stage managing a military insurrection to achieve his objective of staying in power till his predicted 2010 exit but those predictions are wide off the mark.
The truth is there is a military insurrection build-up in Zimbabwe that will circumvent current political dialogue and whatever government will emerge from the military insurrection Mugabe will not be part to it.
Behold the plague of death is with the Mugabe and Zanu PF junta and there is not much capacity left in them to resist the implosion.
Something has to give in and pretty fast to halt the crusade against Mugabe.
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