Mugabe's Pomp & Ceremony Disguises Real Agenda

For the past thirty years we have seen Mugabe opening Parliament in Zimbabwe. And for someone who rejects the influence of the West, he really does take the biscuit. The ceremony is done with as much colonial pomp and circumstance as possible.

Mugabe and his wife, Amazing (Dis)Grace, arrive in an antique motor vehicle used by the colonial powers many years ago, and there are soldiers and policemen on parade. I do believe that it was last year that the policemen in horseback were all sporting uniforms of the British South Africa Company, a precursor to the Rhodesian law and order enforcement agency, the British South Africa Police.

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If Mugabe hates the colonial history of Zimbabwe so much, we would he entertain the thought of his policemen wearing the old uniform professing loyalty to the crown?

"President Robert Mugabe will officially open Zimbabwe's Parliament tomorrow, with the veteran leader expected to use the occasion to outline the agenda for the agenda for his coalition government with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

The third session pf the seventh Parliament comes at a time when Harare coalition is in the midst of consulting the public on the draft of a new constitution that should pave the way for fresh elections to choose a new government."

The coalition government is not 'his' - it is a coalition formed between the two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change and Mugabe's ZANU PF. The coalition was formed at the behest of the MDC, when it was apparent that even though the MDC had won the general election, they would be hard pushed to form a government without ZANU PF.

To repeat... the coalition is not Mugabe's...

"His excellency the President, Robert Mugabe, will officially open the Third Session of the Seventh Parliament on Tuesday," Parliament said in a statement at the weekend.

Under the power sharing deal, a new constitution was supposed to be completed this years, but lack of funding and squabbling between Mugabe's ZANU PF party and Tsvangirai's MDC over what form constitutional reforms should take has delayed the process by over six months."

Mugabe’s speech may indicate a good deal about his plans, his motivation and his intentions, but we, who have heard it all before, know that what he really means is that nothing he suggests is a ‘good deal’ for anyone except Mugabe…

The article goes on to say that the current constitution was drafted by Britain at the Lancaster House talks way back in the late 1970s, but it doesn't actually say that Mugabe has continually changed, rewritten and amended the legislation to the point that it is now almost unrecognisable from the document that he began with in April 1980.

"The Lancaster House Constitution has been amended 19 times with critics saying most of the changes have been to entrench Mugabe's three-decade grip on power.

The Constitution was last amended before controversial elections in 1980 which saw ZANU PF losing its parliamentary majority for the first time since independence, while Mugabe lost a parallel presidential ballot to Tsvangirai."

Interestingly, whilst changing various parts of the constitution to suit his rule, Mugabe has left untouched some regulations which he used to ridicule the previous Rhodesian government for having in place – the Public Order and Security Amendment Act (POSA) and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act (AIPPA) are just two examples of this.

Mugabe has no intention of playing the political game with fairness or transparency… and to prove the point, he carries on as if the playing fields of Zimbabwe politics have not changed one iota.

Robb WJ Ellis

The Bearded Man