Chin’ono tells Togarepi where to get off

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..as Smith was better than ED debate hoots up

Dear Pupurai Togarepi

You cannot get angry about being compared to Ian Smith and then respond by behaving exactly as Ian Smith would have, by creating draconian laws.
You would only be proving your critics right!

Some of us are merely opposed to Smith being called a great leader when he was a racist murderer, just like what your party has been to thousands of Black people in Zimbabwe, not to the comparison of the systems.
Even Robert Mugabe compared himself and ZANUPF to Ian Smith and his racist regime when things were still okay in Zimbabwe.

Your focus should be on improving the lives of your people by providing public services and reflecting on what went so wrong that some of your people now praise a murderous racist dictator like Ian Smith.
It is a sign of how low you have fallen as a political party and government.

The fact that you are now proposing a law to criminalise that comparison only proves that even you are aware of how embarrassing it is.
More importantly, you are proving that you are indeed the same as Ian Smith, the only difference being your skin pigmentation and your total failure to provide basic public services.

Smith was no great leader, he merely maintained the public services he inherited from previous colonial leaders, something you have deliberately failed to do due to corruption.
That is what has led your people to be nostalgic of a racist murderer.

Your colleague @nickmangwana tweeted today about people taking responsibility, do you take responsibility for failing to govern to a point where some of your people start remembering a racist murderer fondly?

We need laws requiring any elected public official to use public hospitals and send their children to public schools as a condition for holding public office.
Your party will oppose that because you know you have destroyed public institutions through corruption, that is why you fly abroad for treatment using taxpayers money.

You have done so badly such that your own member of parliament for Murewa West Nyikadzino Sewera demanded that the state should provide money for government officials (MPs) to be treated abroad because the public hospitals have collapsed.

We need laws mandating prison sentences for public officials who steal public money and goods.
You will oppose that because your party is corrupt to the core, and that corruption is responsible for the state of affairs.

You do not need draconian laws to make people like you.
You simply need to govern in the interests of your people so that they never again praise a racist murderer who used draconian laws to suppress legitimate dissent.

Today, hospitals have no medication, there is no clean drinking water, public transport has been destroyed, unemployment stands at 95%, we have the highest inflation in the world, schools have no books, your regime arrests and jails journalists and political critics, you tax citizens excessively and then steal that money.
These are the reasons some people now reminisce about an equally terrible time during colonial rule.
It is a clear sign of how much you have failed to govern the country in the interests of your people.

Leadership requires taking responsibility for both your failures and successes.
Sadly, you refuse to take responsibility for your failures.
You cannot criminalise discussions about the past or the use of that past to measure where we are today.
If you truly want to introduce new laws, start with one that addresses the Ndebele genocide and criminalises the denial of its existence.

I have also participated in this debate, and my argument remains that Ian Smith was not a great leader.
However, the fact that you have done worse than him is a damning indictment of ZANUPF rule.
This is what you need to address by providing public services and removing the draconian laws you copied from Ian Smith and perfected to the detriment of Zimbabweans.

You have copied Smith by finding his instruments of repression convenient to suppress dissension.

By Hopewell

Chin’ono