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Happison Muchechetere

Where political supremacy is a monopoly of a few powerful kleptomaniacs, opposition is the slow and painful starvation of the masses, and hard work no longer rewards as much as unquestioning obedience to power. Patronage politics create an environment where condescending politicians manipulate the behaviour of all to enlarge their power tentacles.

When it takes four years for a country like Zimbabwe to discover that a prominent taxpayer-funded organisation like the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation pays 12 percent of its total revenue to one person in salaries and allowances alone, one cannot avoid germane concerns over matters of accountability.

It is sad that the old adage that says he who does not work shall not eat has been replaced by a notorious new doctrine that says he who does not acquiesce to the diktats of power shall not eat.

There is little doubt the suspended ZBC CEO owes his luxurious four years of inconceivable profligacy more to perfidious obedience to power than to any imaginable measure of merit or logic.

It is hard to imagine that Government is as shocked with the salary of the ZBC CEO as the entire nation is, and at least very important people in Government are genuinely horrified.

Perhaps it is time all the lies flying around about the true status of our economy are exposed so that by comparing the lies we may at least come up with a semblance of the truth.

Someone must tell us how much the CEOs at NetOne, NRZ, Zesa and the GMB are paid, and against what revenue. That must be fair enough.

We hear Government is planning a salary regulation mechanism for the captains of these public-owned companies, and I am sure in our sorry circumstances we can only applaud the move instead of questioning where the same Government was when all this malfeasance was happening.

No doubt our outspoken opposition to the illegal and outrageous Western-imposed economic sanctions has been unfairly taken advantage of by ravenous vampires sucking the blood of the nation at the expense of everyone else.

The egregious sin of Zidera now stands like a pea next to the mountain compared to the scandalous conduct of some of our own leadership in industry and politics.

Wholesome looting from the nation and blaming it all on Western sanctions has reduced our solidarity as a revolutionary unit to a shameful insult to the essence of intelligence.

We expect the dedicated and well-meaning cadre to camouflage the stinking veniality of looters, and that is demeaning to the revolution.
That kind of betrayal to the revolution is worse than the treachery of a Western-sponsored puppet party, and cannot be tolerated.
President Mugabe just told us that the ZMDC is guilty of “doing nothing”, and we ask ourselves why it takes Cde Walter Chidhakwa to pick this in just about 100 days as Minister of Mines when another minister vociferously preached a gospel of revolutionary happenings within the mining sector in the past four-and-a-half years to see nothing of the sort.

We were even told that we were so minerally strong and viable that we did not need anyone from the Western markets.  Even ZBC was under a minister who gave the impression that the broadcaster was quite viable in the last four-and-a-half years.

So Muchechetere seems to have secured it all by simply obeying power in the narrowest of scopes, and he took home a cool US$40 000 a month for his outstanding loyalty.

Meanwhile, the rest of the workers at the national broadcaster went unpaid and unnoticed for half-a-year. There was a board comprising leading personalities presiding over this unquestionable insanity.

For as long as patronage and protection politics remain the modus operandi, exploitation and robbery will be the order of the day; and the principle of “people-oriented policies” will remain to many a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the masses enslaved in their untold poverty.

We cannot live in a country where our people consider it a miracle to merely have an understanding that life is beautiful — all because we harbour in our political structures monstrous brutes so obsessed with the demon of self-aggrandisement.

Let this generation cleanse Zimbabwe of all evil, oppression, corruption, abuse and violence. Simply put this generation must not allow the prevailing of the kind of nonsense as has been happening at ZBC and in many other sectors of our economy.

For the ends to justify the means there must be something to justify the end itself, and this is why failure to deliver with the land reform program and the indigenisation policy is not an option.

We cannot justify a land reform program that resettles poverty on our fertile lands simply because we want to see the colour black occupying that land.

That would be racial bigotry, and nations are not run on race emotions. We need a prosperous post-land acquisition agrarian regime.
Justice for Zimbabwe’s indigenous people is in the economic success of their own empowerment; not merely in the dispossession of the colonially privileged.

Clearly some politicians in Zanu-PF are not interested in the people; just like puppet politicians in the opposition are not.
But every politician must always be reminded that the people are interested in them, and that people are like war — they will have their way.

Any political party that leans on the people but serves the corrupt bourgeoisie cannot but sense the unmistakable smell coming from the waiting grave.

Yes Zanu-PF has successfully stopped MDC-T from turning Zimbabwe into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack, but that alone does not suffice in the running of a nation.

When a revolution breeds wrecking poverty, a stinking imperialist barrack might look like the glorious heavens for the smitten.
Zanu-PF must know that criticism of opponents with no solutions is just as ruinous as selling out the nation to whoever cares to exploit it.

When the crumbs from the imperialist table come along as more appealing than the rewards of nationalisation or indigenisation then one knows they are witnessing a revolution gone wrong — a revolution betrayed.

A revolution is not made more powerful by the use of abusive language or swearing. Such is the legacy of slave masters and brutal colonisers of our misery filled past.

These are the people who hailed humiliation and disrespect for human dignity, and there is no dignity or honour in us emulating such primitiveness.

Perhaps this is why Zim-Asset must of necessity be articulated in very sober terms, if only to give it a face of human dignity.
In any revolution learning is a pillar, and the reality of learning is that it carries the danger that one has, out of necessity, to learn from one’s own enemies.

We may declare whomever we may so wish an enemy of the state and often we do that on the basis of very justifiable reasons.
However, it is from the acts of these very enemies that we must derive our excellence.

The greatest lesson we can ever learn from the Western-imposed illegal sanctions is the busting of such sanctions.
Canvassing for sympathy while we are crumbling under the pressure of these sanctions is no heroic act — and our politicians must get this very clear.

Zideara is to some a sign of strength on the part of the United States, and even some Zimbabweans have very little trouble hailing America as the strongest power that ever has been on planet Earth.

True as this assertion may be, one sure thing is that the US is the most terrified state on this globe, and Zidera is in this context a sign of the terrified state of imperial America, so scared of independent nationalism on the part of lesser peoples.

Once we see Zidera as an expression of fear on the part of the US, our determination to make the land reform programme a success must be renewed.

But we have politicians who masquerade as champions of land reform and yet in Zidera all they see is an America that is the strongest power in the world.

These are the crybabies that go around bellyaching about the powerful ruin of sanctions – blaming even infertility among couples on the embargo.

Anyone that fawns before the precepts established by the enemy cannot dream of vanquishing the same enemy, and that is why Zanu-PF must never count the IMF as part of the revolution the party says it is engaged in, especially a revolution geared towards independent nationalism.

Some politicians in Zanu-PF do not get along with the mirror, and they avoid looking themselves in it simply because they are scared of the image they know they will see.

That is why they expect all of us to permanently occupy ourselves with scolding the puppets in MDC-T, that way perpetually avoiding showing the face of the mirror the way of Zanu-PF.

But time to speak truth to power is now, and speak we shall.  Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!!

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