The more things change, the more they remain the same.
When he came into power in 2017, President Emmerson Mnangagwa promised to do better than his predecessor, the late Robert Mugabe.
But recently, he has clearly shown he is no different from his late mentor, the man he looked up to as a father and a role model in politics.
During his days, Mugabe never missed a chance to attend regional and world gatherings and on most occasions his wife Grace would also travel, even though she was not in government. Not only that, Mugabe was known to always have a large entourage, especially when travelling to the West where these people would shop till they dropped.
Mugabe’s delegation was known for spending cash in Europe, a habit which earned the former first lady the name Gucci Grace as she always made sure to shop in high end stores during such trips.
Recently, Mnangagwa’s visit to Scotland made headlines locally and beyond borders when he decided to travel with more than 100 people for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.
His entourage included family members, friends, relatives and party youths who all travelled courtesy of the government and also no doubt received huge sums of money as allowances judging from how they reportedly partied all night in Scotland.
This kind of behaviour, of tagging along friends and relatives on government official trips shows that Mnangagwa surely learnt a lot from his political godfather.
And again, the President hired a private plane for his people which did not come cheap as close to a million dollars was spent on that alone.
Opposition parties and other interested groups used to make noise about Mugabe’s habit of spending a lot of money on his trips but he would literally give them the middle finger and continue to travel as much as he could with his cronies.
That’s exactly what our current President is doing as he seems unperturbed about spending big bucks while blaming sanctions for the country’s economic problems, just like Mugabe did.
And by the way, President Mnangagwa and his handlers believe they scored big from this trip as he got a chance to meet and greet with the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.
Mnangagwa’s trip was the first to the UK and the only one by a Zimbabwean sitting President in more than 20 years as a result of strained relations due to the chaotic land reform programme in the early 2000s.
Because of this chance to be in the same space with world leaders, we are now constantly being reminded that our President is ‘THE’ man.
