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Kudzai Chipanga

MY TURN WITH TICHAONA ZINDOGA
The ruling Zanu-PF National Youth League secretary Kudzai Chipanga is an excitable character. We would forgive him wholeheartedly if this were to appear in flickers and flashes, for youths the world over, especially where politics and similar contests are concerned, are identifiable with passion, power and belligerence.

They can also be ungovernable. In fact, the youth wings of political parties tend to be aggressive and vociferous and one may quickly call to model the ANC Youth League in South Africa that has given us one Julius Malema as the poster boy of the fiery passions of young people in political establishments whether in ruling or opposition parties.

Hence, the inclination for anyone is to forgive the youths and their words and actions. It is the best of their times. It is also the worst of their times, admittedly.

Kudzai Chipanga is having his best of time. He is also having the worst of his time. Being the leader of the youth wing of the ruling party that is facing a lot of challenges both internal and external, he has been called by circumstance to pronounce himself on many occasions, for better or worse.

As a leader of a vital ruling party wing he has not done too badly, and he deserves credit for a lot of good works such as mobilising for the Million-Man March in support for President Mugabe for which he won universal praise last May.

Some of us supported the initiative wholeheartedly and did the little that we could to make sure that the march was successful and would present a strong, roaring voice of support for President Mugabe at a time when foreign sponsored elements were on the ascendancy and threatening to crowd out the voice of reason and revolution.

Who, then, can forget that day, on Africa Day when thousands upon thousands converged at the open space adjacent to the Rainbow Towers in Harare?

Chipanga himself was the toast of the day and got a lot of plaudits, most importantly from President Mugabe himself, while some lesser mortals like us also tendered our humble, but sincere congratulations for the deafening feat.

There were some unsung heroes who did the logistics and resource mobilisation, and who to this day silently remain the real power and muscle behind the youth league, without whom the event would not have been such a success, but who would begrudge Chipanga as the face of the effort?

This singular effort, which many bona fide supporters believed was for President Mugabe and no other ulterior motives, represents one of the highs for Chipanga at the helm of the youth league.

However, Chipanga has his downside — or let’s say moments of madness. Take two specimens alone — and we cite this because we are an interested party.

Early this year he threatened to mobilise youths to demonstrate and threaten staff at this paper, accusing it of having “lost direction”. He was quoted as saying: “Yes, I was in that meeting where several resolutions were passed including mobilising for a massive demonstration against The Herald in front of Herald House.

“I am their leader and I support their decision to demonstrate against the paper for we feel that it has lost direction.”

He had earlier been out-ed as one of the Zanu-PF members leaking stories to the pro-opposition Press and had also threatened war on war veterans. For Chipanga to make the threat against The Herald was both abhorrent and spine-chilling. It also significantly revealed just how little he knew about how newspapers operate.

And it was also better that he wouldn’t pick up fights with a newspaper, especially so when he allegedly hobnobbed with the opposition Press by night which can now be located within the matrix of very messy scandals, not least of all involving him. But Chipanga seems not to have gotten over the public media for which he now has found another crime.

Following the loss of Zanu-PF’s candidate Ronald Chindedza to independent candidate Temba Mliswa in the Norton by-election at the weekend, Chipanga said: “Finally, the State media has won.”

One may need to situate this outburst. At the time of that crucial by-election, Chipanga and others of the ruling party were being implicated in damaging scandals relating to land and the alleged embezzlement of funds at Zimdef.

For the record, none of the two issues were investigated and broken/reported on and exclusively by the so-called State media; the one coming from a statement by President Mugabe at the party’s Politburo and the other emanating from events at the Politburo again.

There was no genius on the part of the public media at all and it will be recalled that on the day all the papers splashed their front pages with news of an alleged attempted arrest of a Minister at the latter Politburo meeting, only The Herald among top dailies didn’t carry the story which was still sketchy and had no solid official side.

But the story unravelled henceforth. It was all over the show and the so-called State media did not have monopoly over the story, and everyone was talking about it including on social media.

It can be safely concluded that people of Norton were unhappy, duly, a fact that would not be helped by the arrogance shown by certain individuals who appeared to give the middle finger to those disgusted by reports of sleaze and the apparent inveiglement by apparent criminals.

Let us take Chipanga himself and the key mobilising role he played as youth leader. During the campaign he showed maps of the land that would be dished to youths, without a sense of irony that he had been implicated in a case of illegal land grab.

Would it take much imagination to think that maybe he could as well give out a few, if any, of the flaunted stands and retain the rest for himself and his cronies?

That was absolute chutzpah. One fears that we have not heard the last of Chipanga’s foibles. It is also critical to note that, as has been enumerated elsewhere during the various post mortems, the problems that led to the fall of the Zanu-PF candidate had nothing to do with the so-called State media as the said media would conceivably have no power to impose a weak candidate; alienate key constituencies and focus on issuing petty personal attacks rather than deliver strong electoral messages.

That is purely an organisational brief, which we could not take part in. Need we also add that Mliswa was heard contemptuously pointing out that he could not be outsmarted by the likes of Chipanga whom he says he personally helped secure the youth chairmanship even when he had fewer provincial endorsements?

After all is said and done, politicians should leave journalists to do their work — most of whom are sufficiently tired of senseless petty fights internal to parties — and engage on nation building and bringing food on people’s tables.

Which we bet the people of Norton want. Chipanga, an otherwise likeable young man with a presumably promising future, should better take this to heart and desist from, or be goaded by narrow minded and vindictive individuals into picking unnecessary fights with institutions that are otherwise full of extreme goodwill for both the country and the revolutionary party, Zanu-PF. He should stop seeing shadows. There are none.