Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s decision to promote his wife Grace to the top rank of the Zanu-Pf party has all the ingredients to drag his country further into the dark ages.
Mugabe wants to cement a legacy of sorts, despite having proved to be a disastrous administrator and leader and his recent decision is the final straw.
The absence of deputies being named in the recent reshuffle is further indictment of his lack of vision for the people of his country who pay homage to him out of fear instead of respect.
The fact that his wife is quietly engineering the permutations and combinations within the party in a bid to evict seasoned politicians, on charges that at best could be described as contrived, and create a space for hardliners, illustrates that hope for the future has ebbed. A fractured economy and social disintegration in a country of 13 million are hardly appropriate advertisements for an optimistic future. It is a recipe for serious political instability — a hole that Zimbabwe may find impossible to emerge from. Hard times call for hard measures.
