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WE are turning 34 years as a post-colonial independent country and we have over the years hailed in platitudinous terms the means that brought this end we proudly call independence today.Leone Trotsky argues that the means cannot be justified by its cause, but by the end it seeks to achieve, and for that to happen there must be something that justifies the end itself, especially after the end in question has been achieved.

We cannot justify the means that resulted in rivers of blood at Nyadzonia and at Chimoio by dishing out ceaseless accentuations of the evils of colonialism in general, or by enunciating specific villainous iniquities of Ian Smith and his disdainful Rhodesians. That alone cannot and does not justify the end. This country will not be built on the shortcomings of Ian Smith, or on the evils of the ideology he presided over.

Does our independence justify the means that brought it about? Are we proud of what independence has brought for us as a nation? Is our liberation legacy a celebrated or a betrayed cause?

These are pertinent questions we can neither avoid or fear and they need honest and frank answers. Perhaps this is the time for self-introspection.

We did not end up having so many of our people perishing in a heroic war that brought us independence because we just loved war. It was a war that was interested in our affairs, for only war could stop the torturous route of colonialism. We told the colonialist that if you are not interested in war then war itself is interested in you, and only the gun got him to understand what we were saying.

But more importantly the war we fought was premised on an all-encompassing noble end — the right to self-determination, itself perceived as our right to define the nature and context of our independence.

We have created for ourselves a State that has become synonymous with corruption and it is neither propaganda nor ill-intended vilification of our country’s administrators to assert that we are experiencing what could easily pass for a kleptocracy. From the known and openly corrupt police force to the detestable financial atrocities of the salarygate scandal, one can easily tell that the cause for which we brought down the colonial empire has been lost, if not grossly betrayed.

We have a Minister who openly lies before Parliament, gets exposed, admits his impishness, gives an infantile excuse for his roguery and all that does is make an interesting newspaper story for a nation so accustomed to the rule of malfeasance. No pressure for his quitting whatsoever!

The Manicaland Provincial Affairs Minister is obviously not a very good liar, but the startling aspect of his interview with the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on indigenisation is the compelling need to know what happened to money allegedly released by a diamond mining company in the name of the people of Manicaland. The Minister clearly failed to acquit himself on the matter, and he needs some serious pursuing if we are going anywhere in the direction of healing our ailing land.

We have on one hand a parliamentarian with the audacity to address a Press conference bragging about how he corruptly benefits from taking venal investors to his relatives and cronies in places of authority and our journalists fall over each other taking notes, and asking sheepish questions, as if they were listening to an announcement of an amazing graduate output from the country’s Education Minister.

Our resources, our people, and indeed our very livelihood have all been reduced to articles of sale and purchase, of egregious exploitation and robbery, and the principle of the sacredness of human life has been thrown out of the window. Emancipation has largely been reduced to a shameful lie uttered with the sole object of keeping the betrayed masses under the yoke.

Our opposition is no more than a shameless outfit of hopeless puppets under the strings of our yesteryear colonial masters and we have forced our people to choose between perpetrators of colonial privileges and treacherous revolutionaries that do business the shamelessly corrupt way described as “normal” by Temba Mliswa.

Instead of an alternative opposition party to the ruling Zanu-PF, we have had an opposition to the national interest, an opposition to the very essence of independence. So bad became the situation that at one time we had to watch haplessly as Tsvangirai openly called on his Western masters to impose murderous economic sanctions on the populace, even urging South Africa “to switch off Zimbabwe.” He was blatantly remorseless.

We cannot have our liberation struggle abused as a libation of sincerity by hypocritical politicians that freely feign patriotism, just so they can pose in great light against a despicable opposition so openly under the control of the country’s detractors.

How do we justify politicians that use Tsvangirai’s sanctions to justify their own shortcomings? How do we explain the effect of sanctions as a cause of the monster salaries enjoyed by our executives in parastatals and local authorities?

How do we blame sanctions for multi-million dollar deals meant to benefit practitioners of naked nepotism like Mliswa was doing with his unscrupulous consultancy ventures? And Mliswa himself is quite right in challenging super rich ministers to explain where they got their money from, as he should explain his own role in clandestinely parcelling out national resources to shady investors.

We have politicians that have more respect for the vote than they have for the voter and that is precisely why we are now stuck with unfulfilled reckless election promises — like the lofty promises showered to our rural populace in the name of Community Share Schemes.

Abuse of people is a legacy of slavery, humiliation and disrespect for human dignity — one’s own and that of others. This is why the abuse of desperate people by people pretending to be prophets of God must be seen for what it is — an ignominious gospel prostituting by greedy miscreants that are so shameless that even the Bible is not spared in their trail.

We cannot have politics and religion offering our people vainglorious hope so the vulnerable can be taken advantage of, and to have this state of affairs in a country boasting 34 years of independence is a great betrayal to the cause for which many young lives were lost.

We need to look at ourselves frankly and halt this disastrous system that is turning our country into a filthy and smelly corruption barrack. We have shameless politicians that lean upon the voters but serve the bourgeoisie. Such a people cannot and will not escape the waiting grave.

If Zanu-PF continues to avoid the demise of its corrupt politicians that can only be for a while, but surely the party will not be able to avoid its own demise in the end, even in the absence of a meaningful opposition.

Exciting the masses with some dramatic corruption exposes not synonymous with eradicating corruption, and soon we will know who among us are the true revolutionaries — the accountable lot whose calling is to create for our people a better country for today and for posterity.

Our bourgeoisie far surpasses our proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilability of its class-consciousness, and it is vitally interested in imposing its philosophical values on the exploited masses. Our political elites fool themselves in the belief that this trick is a guarantee for vote success.

The concrete norms of bourgeoisie catechism are always concealed under moral abstractions and that is why virtues like freedom, economic empowerment, democracy, liberty, or justice are favourites with vote-soliciting politicians. The appeal to abstract norms is a necessary element in the mechanics of mass deception and political elites from across the divide are always in unison when it comes to this philosophy.

This column is a mirror our politicians must not avoid. If one avoids looking at themselves in the mirror, it will be really hard for any reconstruction process to take place.
Our opposition loses elections and suddenly finds it fashionable to blame the winners for their loss, just like our governing party easily appeases itself by blaming the West and its sanctions for whatever shortcomings that may come the way of the ruling party.

We find in sanctions a good cover for our glaring iniquities, and we have abused the patriotism of our people to perpetuate meaningless power obsessions and self-aggrandisement.

That is not right.

There is no second-guessing about the ruin caused by the illegally imposed sanctions, and just about all progressive thinkers have highlighted the evil in the politics of economic sanctions.

But it is simply obscene for a sanctioned country to have people earning in hundreds of thousands of dollars per month when their direct subordinates are earning just a couple of hundred dollars and even going for months without salaries. For all their ruin economic sanctions do not destroy common sense.

It is just infuriating when sanctions are vigorously wielded as the excuse for such unethical conduct like unpaid salaries as experienced by many council workers, and also by workers at the ZBC.

Zimbabwe is so rich in resources and yet so poor materially. Our politicians think it is the fault of foreigners that we are stuck with unexploited minerals and fertile soils and they say so with straight faces.

As we celebrate 34 years of independence, it is time to take stock of where we are as a people. Independence celebrations must be about self-introspection, not just a platform to pump it up vigorously about our pre-independence achievements as freedom fighters, even declaring entitlement to power simply on the basis of credentials related to the liberation struggle.

We hear Temba Mliswa’s “leader of Manicaland” has explained that in Zanu-PF leaders are “retired by God.” That is very revealing, especially now that Zanu-PF finds it amusing that Tsvangirai is fighting down those calling for leadership renewal within the ranks of his treacherous party.

If only God is in the business of retiring leaders in Zanu-PF, it is only fair that he does the same for leaders in other parties as well, unless of course the Zanu-PF god is an exclusive one.

What Minister Mutasa was saying in Mutare is that he is a firm believer in power idolisation and he will not stand or allow those that believe power is contestable through the electoral process — especially within his Zanu-PF party. But we cannot be spectators of power idols at a time the country clearly needs a decisive leadership.

There is a huge problem with people who deify political power, and invoke divinity to their political ambition simply because they find themselves desperately lacking merit.

The comrades that died for this independence we cherish today did not envisage a country where only God can retire those occupying political office and it is a great betrayal to the legacy of our liberation struggle that such words are uttered and the nation does not erupt into raucous fury.
We are a democracy not a theocracy.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.