President Robert Mugabe's 2015 State of the Nation Address

President Robert Gabriel Mugabe. The Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces.

The story is told of the (improbable) encounter between five blind men and an elephant (possibly sedated). Whatever part of the elephant each person came across became his view of what an elephant was really like. The one who held the trunk thought it was a like a thick rubbery hose, the one who held the leg thought it was like a tree trunk or pillar, while the one who held the tail thought it was like a rope. 

The story does not explicitly say this but I assume they all agreed that it was an animal. I hope they did. It is the same with our recently delivered State of the Nation Address. We must all agree that the state of affairs in Zimbabwe are not ideal at all. But, beyond this agreement, we can become like the 5 blind men and highlight different things in the address owing to our 'contact,' prejudices, world views, and levels of understanding. Thus, I beg to differ with anyone who has ever uttered, written or thought that the State of the Nation address was a pointless exercise.

What President Mugabe mentioned almost in passing in this speech, is for me the fundamental issue. He mentioned the fact that the security services have ensured that there is peace and security in the most trying of circumstances. Everything must build on this foundation of security. A passage by John Stuart Mill is instructive as to how impossible it is to achieve anything where there is no security. I am well aware that security has since been broadened to include economic, climatic, personal and political security in the 21st Century, but still, all these aspects of Human Security depend on there being peace in a given territory.