EDITORIAL COMMENT: Time Zanu-PF offloads excess baggage

ZANU-PF_Youth_LeagueTHE New Year is two days away. As everyone takes stock of the highs and lows of 2014, it is incumbent upon the ruling Zanu-PF party to do some serious soul-searching and ensure they put a closure to outstanding issues.

The revolutionary party cannot afford to enter 2015 with the excess baggage it is currently carrying. For the sake of the people who are the custodians of the revolution they waged since the 1890s, Zanu-PF has to off-load excess baggage and begin to move on with speed and earnestness.

If the problems in the ruling party successfully placed the MDC formations into the dustbin of obscurity, why can’t sanity and order prevail in the party? Why can’t the ruling party put a closure to the issues that should now be history after its 6th National People’s Congress?

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A new leadership was put in place, but that new leadership in both the party and Government is not being given the opportunity to work for the people. Reading between the lines you see that the controversies continue. Who is benefiting: the people or those in leadership positions?

Since July 31, 2013 when the people gave Zanu-PF an emphatic win — a two-thirds majority in Parliament — they have been patiently waiting and also taking stock. They want life breathed into the economic blueprint — the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset), and not the incessant squabbles. They want Zanu-PF to deliver on its promises, and the ruling party should realise that it has lost one and half years of productive work for the electorate.

Every leader was voted into power by the people under the banner of Zanu-PF, a Zanu-PF whose President and First Secretary is Cde Mugabe.

On a number of occasions, President Mugabe has impressed upon his subordinates that these people do not belong to selective individuals in the party by virtue of their standing, be it financial and/or seniority, but that they are Zanu-PF party members. Simple and straightforward!

Where did some miss the plot to think and believe that they command so much power that they can be in Zanu-PF, but still call its members their own people, thereby creating a competing centre of power to the one that people have always voted for since 1980?

The notion of owning people should be deprogrammed from the party leadership’s psyche. People are not commodities and Zimbabwe is not a slave colony!

These are the undesirable elements that a vigilant revolutionary party has to look out for and deal with before they start destroying it from within as it was doing.

During the liberation struggle, it took time before the ZANLA armed wing realised that one of its cadres, Morrison Nyathi, was a double agent fighting in the struggle while feeding Rhodesians with information.

The results were catastrophic. These were the lessons that Zanu-PF learnt, lessons where they know that although they look like they share the same vision, some in their midst are no different from the sell-out Nyathi.

People chose on their own to become members of Zanu-PF, and not members aligned to individuals whose motives might be divisive, non-revolutionary and unpatriotic.

It is also important for Zanu-PF to put a closure to these lingering issues because the move will instil confidence locally, regionally and internationally. This is the confidence that local and international investors need to see in order to commit themselves to come and do business with Zimbabwe.

Thus it is up to Zanu-PF to do a quick introspection, identify deficiencies and design long-term solutions. It’s a tall order, but with willpower, unity and singleness of purpose, it is doable.

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