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Reason Wafawarova On Thursday
GIVEN our liberation struggle and its legacy, our present-day politics cannot be divorced from the tenets of its own foundations, and the upcoming December Congress must be conducted in a way aligned to the concrete demands of the liberation movement that bred this party we know as Zanu-PF today. These concrete demands must be synonymous with the demands of the people, because in essence the liberation movement must by definition be a people’s movement.

Power aspirations by individual politicians are a natural phenomenon in politics, but the importance of these aspirations must never be allowed to dictate the pace and direction of the movement.

It is not only serpentine but also malignant that the party finds itself in this predicament where political power is fought for by way of creating top-level factional synergies far divorced from any practical connection to the grass roots.

The spectacular fall of Nelson Chamisa is widely attributed to this superficial approach to politics, and more than likely Zanu-PF will have its own similar casualties at the coming Congress.

The experience of successful revolutions throughout the world demonstrates that true revolutionaries must be non-aligned to elitist power corridors, even if by necessity they may receive from these elites heavy material backing in attaining some of the revolution’s goals. True revolutionaries are armed with an ideology that essentially defines itself through the popular demands of the people on whose behalf the revolution is being carried out.

To this end whatever external support may come the way of Zanu-PF; that support must in essence identify with the demands of the masses of Zimbabwe.
All forms of support for Zanu-PF must respect and identify with policies like the land reform program and the Indigenisation Policy, resonating with the popular views of the people.

It is hard to believe that the struggle for which Zanu-PF was formed to pursue before and after independence is being waged correctly at the moment, or that there is still a monolithic ideology uniting all revolutionaries and comrades within the 51-year-old movement.

Today we see three dimensions within the politics of Zanu-PF, the anti-colonial, the anti-imperialist and the class struggle dimension. We obviously waged a war against colonialism and that way we achieved our political independence. We soon understood that our independence would not be real until we fought and won subsequent battles against neocolonialism and imperialism.

We soon realised that the world is a divided kingdom between the camp of exploiters and that of the exploited. We also discovered that any struggle that seeks to empower the masses belongs to the camp of the exploited.

We have sought alliances with countries and regimes that we believe are on the side of the people. But that too comes with its own responsibilities, cautions, and risks.

Politicians have risen among us who have chosen to forge alliances with the camp of the exploiters. These count as archaic the anti-colonial drive; they dismiss as irrelevant the anti-imperialist fight, and they uphold that class struggle that favours a bottle neck structured middle and upper class at the expense of a suffering majority base. These are found across the political divide, if we for once assume that there is still a political divide between Zanu-PF and the MDC. That means we have to pretend the MDC still exists.

The MDC introduced among a significant size of our youth population the politics of economic dependency, and there are many who doltishly believe that economic success is solely parented by Western aid, without which Zimbabwe will always suffer like an abandoned orphan.

The high levels of ineptness, corruption, and reckless governance by our ruling elites have all but eroded just about all the trust and faith our young people ever heard in the capacity of the African leader. The frustration is understandable, though not desirable.

The allegations of clandestine and illicit dealings with the West being levelled against Vice President Joice Mujuru come together with the more egregious assertions that she is corrupt, inept, lazy, and unprofessional.

She seems to deny all, or at least most of them.
We now have two camps of reactions to this scenario. On one hand we have a vociferous voice of Zanu-PF aligned activists bristling with unmitigated wrath and demanding the resignation of the Vice President, more for her alleged links with antagonist Western powers, and less for the other charges.

On the other hand we have MDC aligned journalists, political activists and ordinary supporters obstinately flocking to the defence of the embattled VP, more for their support of her alleged links with the West, and less for justifying her alleged other malfeasance.

With the irredeemably demising MDC firmly confirming its self-annihilation each day, the Zanu-PF aligned political activists see in the Vice President an emerging reincarnation of the dying MDC puppet politics, and naturally their wrath is understandable for anyone who follows the Zanu-PF ideology.

The stranded MDC supporters see in the VP a viable alternative replacement for the demising and hopeless Morgan Tsvangirai, and even the MDC-T Parliamentarians seem to have adopted the crenelated VP as their de-facto leader, perhaps without any express blessing from the VP herself.

The seething dream for Zimbabwe is economic independence. For us to achieve this, we, like any other nation will need to forge strategic alliances with other countries. But we must be able to look beyond these alliances and maintain the permanent struggle to meet only the interests of Zimbabweans.

We cannot develop this nation by giving in to the protection of Western interests within our borders, and this is for the simple reason that these interests often can only be protected at the expense of our own interests.

We must come to that point where as a nation we can receive help without being subjugated, where we can forge alliances and remain independent, and even non-aligned.

Zanu-PF must take as duty its obligation to remember the feeling of the ordinary woman, the youth, the ordinary man, and the Zimbabwean child.
We all had this euphoric feeling in 1980 that independence was in itself a force with which colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism and racism could be confronted and conquered. We thought in our daily night singing and jubilation that independence was a rumbling force akin to a ferocious volcano that would soon set the global political stage afire and create a new economic order for the country, almost to that proverbial stage where everyone would live happily ever after. That is one naivety we thoroughly enjoyed.

It is now 34 years on, and by that time this writer was only a 14-year-old, history placing me among the political writers of our nation today.
The feeling of the ordinary Zimbabwean today is that of disappointment, failure, frustration, and uncertainty. That old enthusiastic promise of victory has evaporated, and we are divided into camps; one blaming Zanu-PF for our predicament, and the other blaming the MDC for inviting torturous economic sanctions on the country.

There are intellectuals who call our predicament realism, and these dismiss our national dream as utopian and dangerous. There are those among us who say the dream to empower Zimbabweans will come to fruition, and they resolutely rally behind what I will call Mugabeism – that radical principled stance only synonymous with the veteran Zimbabwean leader.

It was this insane boldness that led to many of our youths leaving school and homes to join the armed struggle against the Rhodesian colonial regime, eventually felling it. It was this madness that enabled our people to rise against the barbarism of apartheid in South Africa.

It is this kind of unbridled conviction that has made some among us believe in victory, and this is how we triumphed with the madness of the land reform program, and with this insanity we will one day see a Zimbabwe run by indigenous industrialists.

The utopia of some, combined with pragmatic caution of others will always produce beneficial results for a revolution such as ours.
This is why the radicalism of Saviour Kasukuwere and the pragmatic caution of Gideon Gono must both be treated as essential ingredients in the pursuance of the Indigenisation Policy.

President Mugabe has proven to possess both radicalism and pragmatism, and it is important that Zanu-PF avoids this situation where it divides itself into two camps, one for radicals, and the other for pragmatists.

What our people seek is that economic relations must cease to be always unfavourable to us, and to achieve this we need both radicalism and pragmatism.
The bold dream we prefer is a Zimbabwe whose means of production are owned by Zimbabweans; a Zimbabwe whose natural resources primarily benefits the citizens of this country.
Zanu-PF cannot be allowed to reduce itself to a mere stage for political power struggles between ambitious people within its ranks.

This is a party on the shoulders of its leaders must rest the dream of the nation, the aspiration of our people, the legacy of our liberation struggle, and indeed the future of our post independence generations.

Now we all surprise ourselves crying out for Tongogara to rise from the dead, for Chitepo to come to life again, for Nkomo to erect himself from the grave, for Muzenda to be with us again. We want to cry to them to rise and deal with the circus of factionalism, to rise and deal with the scourge of indiscipline, to rise and bring the days of a monolithic Zanu-PF again.

Is it impossible for Zanu-PF to see itself beyond the individual aspirations of its leaders? Can we not see that the vote buying, the manipulation of party structures, the divisiveness of those tasked with commissariat duties, the corruption, and the lack of principle and ideological loyalty, will only help derail the already suffering revolution?

We cannot continue to pretend that the suffering of our people is part of a raging revolutionary spirit, because it is not. When we neglect duty at the expense of our people, and then expect them to tighten their belts and remain steadfastly in patriotic support of our treacherous actions, we frankly must be ashamed of our deplorable conduct.

We have a responsibility to ensure that Zimbabwe does not degenerate into a hell image, and our people have for long patiently waited for economic freedom. Who among the political aspirants in Zanu-PF is seeking nomination or election at the upcoming Congress on the basis of their commitment to make Zim-Asett work, and if there is such a person, what is their action plan to achieve this momentous goal?

The political crisis of the last decade elevated a sizeable number of dunces right into parliament, thanks to the MDC protest politics, and also to the culture of political violence. The mediocrity created in this period undermines the capacity to competently navigate the country’s way forward. Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

REASON WAFAWAROVA is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.