Alliance for People’s Agenda (APA) leader, Dr Nkosana Moyo, says President Emmerson Mnangagwa has so far performed dismally as head of state and even far worse than his predecessor, Robert Mugabe, who ruled the country with an iron fist for over three decades.
Mnangagwa, who came into power through a military coup that deposed Mugabe in November 2017 was elected president in the controversial 2018 polls.
The former vice president’s ascendancy to the highest office in the land has been characterised by gross human rights violations, collapse of the rule of law and further deterioration of the economy and collapse of the local currency.
In an interview with Know Your Right Programme hosted by CITE Tuesday, Dr Moyo said he had correctly predicted that Mnangagwa would run Zimbabwe differently and had done so becoming the worst president the country has ever seen.
“I said Mnangagwa would run this country differently from Mugabe. If I believed he was capable of doing the right things, I would have joined him but as a fact I contested against him. I never believed Mnangagwa could run this country as well as I could but people never listened,” he said.
The APA president said Zimbabwe was sliding further backwards with Mnangagwa at the helm instead of going forward as expected after Mugabe’s dethronement.
“Mnangagwa knows how Mugabe ran this country, because he was part of that team, that’s why we should not be surprised to see what he’s doing. My prediction that he would run the country differently was right because he’s actually worse, not better, not the same, but worse. We are going backwards very fast,” he said.
Dr Moyo said in order to progress, Zimbabweans now have to pick lessons from the 2017 coup and apply them going forward.
“But to be fair to Zimbabweans I think I kind of understand or justify that they thought Mnangagwa would run the country better because he should have learnt what happened from Mugabe’s time. But in fact what we see now is because he was part of that (old) team,” he noted.
Hailed as a technocrat, Dr Moyo advised Zimbabweans to vote capable people into office starting from the lowest positions going up.
“If we are serious about developing Zimbabwe, certain things have to be done away with such as corruption and appointing of incapable people. If you put people with no track record or nothing that gives you confidence and fail to deliver, don’t be surprised if they are incapable,” he said.
“If you don’t do those things, we cannot expect to run a successful country or have a functional society. We always said people should have known what was coming by simply looking at the background of the people they were giving jobs to.”
He noted that now was the time to be mature, move on and not blame one another for a collective mistake (supporting the removal of Mugabe by military in 2017).
“I don’t think we must be blaming ourselves for what happened… We collectively made a mistake and the critical bit is what lessons are we extracting in order to apply them next time around people that have an opportunity to choose a leader.
“The key issue in all our conversations is what lessons to extract. My view is having Mnangagwa actually may not be a bad thing, that’s if we are prepared to learn and apply lessons next time we have an opportunity to choose a leader,” said the technocrat.
“I wake up to the fact that a lot of us were not fighting to change the system but fighting to be ones controlling it in order to be the Smith of day, it’s what we wanted and what we are doing.”
