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closer we get to election day the more we are going to have opinion polls, commentary and analysis; all taken from preferred political standpoints — many times badly betraying the decency of intellectual responsibility.

The two major political parties alongside the less prominent but influential MDC led by Professor Welshman Ncube are all facing odds one way or the other; more for the waning MDC-T led by Morgan Tsvangirai and far less for the resurgent revolutionary Zanu-PF.

MDC-T has for some time made loud wishes about how the party’s leadership wants the media to cover events and proceedings in the movement, especially when it comes to the party’s image during election time. The leadership is understandably aware that a single soundbite mocked or lauded and replayed, can irreparably damage the outlook of policy, changing minds and potentially overturning the ballot — in the process ruining hundreds of political careers.

Electioneering is the time when politicians embark on breathless marshalling of political acumen, pumping themselves through ferocious rhetoric often backed by massive financial muscle or improvisation where there is lack of money — and all this is to try and influence the vote. Often vacuous rhetoric is employed to amass sympathy and support for lofty promises that realistic action can never ever fulfil.

In any election the stakes are high and mistakes can be severely costly. Morgan Tsvangirai must be realising belatedly that a widower-political leader cannot afford the recklessness of common philanderers. His sensational sex scandals with a shocking series of women are fast proving to be fatalistically costly at a time the stakes are indisputably high for his ambition-obsessed youthful subordinates — all of them anxiously hinging their waning hopes on the ever-vanishing prospect of a Tsvangirai presidency. Many of Tsvangirai’s colleagues understandably wish they could instantly back a more appealing presidential candidate.

It is fast becoming a reality for those in MDC-T that the pointy end of democracy is that an election can be lost, and more importantly that the credibility of an election does not only lie in its freeness and fairness, but also in the cruel reality that losers are as much products of democracy as are winners — whoever they may happen to be.

Democracy is no longer a mere modus operandi by which the MDC-T leadership casually assumes they can win any election pitting their party against Zanu-PF — that demonised party we are told cannot win a free and fair election.

Democracy now means not only a democratised electoral process, but also a democratised national economy and a democratised ownership of the means of production — thanks to the Zanu-PF nationalistic policies.

There is no second-guessing that electioneering politics are inherently myopic, even guiltlessly so.

While President Robert Mugabe is often accused by his critics of arrogant consistency on matters of his unwavering principles, his main rival Morgan Tsvangirai has notoriously carved a reputation for himself as a serial flip-flopper with breathtaking reversals and U-turns.

From the time the MDC was formed in 1999 its leadership and its supporting media have chiefly focused on what is in front of their noses — removing President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF from power. There is no known long-term plan in place, apart from the excitable prediction by Morgan Tsvangirai that his party will give us a US$100 billion economy by 2040 — all through the hands of benevolent foreign investors who happen to be our “friends with money.”

Clearly, MDC-T is electioneering on a policy plan whose intended effect does not and cannot go beyond the African nose of Morgan Tsvangirai.

To say the plan is a short-term solution is in itself an overstatement. We are being promised Jobs, Upliftment, Investment, Capital and Environment (whatever that means), and this promise is glamorously packaged as JUICE.

It is a policy that freely assumes that foreign investment is as magical as creating a million jobs between this year and 2018, and the MDC-T has so far not bothered to explain where this kind of foreign investment will come from, apart from Morgan Tsvangirai telling the electorate that his party has “wealthy friends” from unnamed parts of this world.

At a time the United States’ economy is shrinking and Europe is having an acute economic crunch, it is plainly necessary for Tsvangirai to explain who his “wealthy friends” are and how they are going to create a million jobs for us. We also need to know why we must believe that our country will be the first one to be prosperously developed through the benevolence of foreigners.

Zanu-PF does not only want to democratise the national economy but has already started doing so through the massively popular indigenisation and empowerment policy.

It is irresistible that Zimbabweans must own the majority shares in the country’s production regime; and making majority shareholding for locals a mandatory necessity is as popular as was the land repossession policy of 2000, if not more.

President Robert Mugabe has been very clear that his party wants jobs that are created by land, resources and corporations that are in the hands of local people — the indigenous Zimbabweans. Anyone who thinks such a policy is racist must accuse democracy of racial inclinations — purely on the basis that indigenisation is no more than the democratisation of the economy.

The MDC-T’s Juice plan is a step into our colonial past — an era that taught us the nobility of labour and professionalism — creating in every young black mind the aspiration to become a teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, a nurse, a builder or an engineer.

We are stuck in that past and that is why MDC-T has a conviction that all an African will ever want is to secure a job created by a white investor.

We have a past that taught us to serve and never to create; to implement and never to plan, to make the dreams of others come true and never to have our own dreams.

Beyond our noses we only see opportunities of jobs and salaries. However, there is a long-term future well beyond the radius of our faces. We can have our own corporations, our own manufacturing industries and of course our own commercial agricultural sector — all run by ourselves.

In the last decade the economy of Zimbabwe was largely downed by the very foreign investors the MDC-T says are our redeemers, and we are all supposed to be blissfully unaware of this irony. In fact we are supposed to embrace our tormentors and laud them as our messiahs.

For long Africa has been plundered by the lengthy arm of imported investment, and for good measure the humiliation must come to an immediate stop. We are not going to allow imperialism to come to our doorstep in the name of democracy.

Our leadership in Africa has everything to do with our sorry economic predicament, and this is precisely why the AU stood akimbo while Nato was murdering Muammar Gaddafi in cold blood. President Jacob Zuma of South Africa even voted for it with no sign of shame. Gaddafi was the only African leader who had successfully built an African economy on independent nationalism, and he could even fund French politicians in order to advance Libya’s interests in Europe.

We were made to mock the Libyan leader as the definition of political confusion. Many of us complied with the diktats of this foreign propaganda. In the name of democracy Libya was instantly reduced to a troubled war zone, and it is the same democracy in whose name the Zimbabwean economy was totally ruined by Western-imposed illegal economic sanctions.

Calling foreigners to come and exploit our resources so they can employ us in the process is the laziest way of creating employment and someone must of necessity make this very clear to our African politicians.

Zanu-PF says it plans to create a value of US7,3 billion between this year and 2018 from the indigenisation of 1 138 foreign-owned companies across 14 key economic sectors.

That is a very impressive announcement whose meaning and intention one hopes will survive the aftermath of electioneering. Our answer is in the implementation of it all.

The party wants to transfer US$2 billion from foreign-owned mining companies through Community Empowerment Trusts. This if implemented effectively and transparently is about the best way to democratise the mining sector of Zimbabwe — for many years the cash cow of unscrupulous foreign investors who have made billions of dollars through our own natural resources.

The National Indigenisation Fund that Zanu-PF has introduced can be the best vehicle leading to the creation of indigenous entrepreneurs in the country, and as such must be supported by all patriotic Zimbabweans. The net effect of promoting a huge small-scale business sector in a country like Zimbabwe is the creation of well over a million jobs, as Zanu-PF predicts in its election manifesto.

We need a long-term plan that goes well beyond the acute risks associated with the ever-fleeing foreign capital which has become so unreliable as to disappear at the slightest rumour of higher profits elsewhere. The only way to arrest foreign capital is to allow it maximum profits at your own expense, and Morgan Tsvangirai is more than fine with it all.

We cannot bank our future on the benevolence of foreign profit seekers, just like we cannot allow ourselves to be aid-driven communities. There is no country on this planet that was developed by aid.

Those of us who believe that our future lies in the benevolence of aid givers and foreign investors must of necessity join civil society and leave our politics to people with a nationalistic vision.

We cannot take ourselves seriously as a people if we still have among us people who struggle to make a choice between an economy controlled by ourselves and another controlled by foreign investors.

Tendai Biti says the only economic game in town is the IMF. There is something supernatural about Tendai Biti. It is his confusion.

Let the successful tobacco farmers be our inspiration as a nation. May we take pride in the over 150 million kilograms of tobacco harvested in the country this year — celebrating this phenomenal achievement by making sure that through our vote we do not frustrate or spoil the unfolding successes of our determined indigenous farmers and entrepreneurs.

We need to simply forget about the IMF and its creations like Minister Tendai Biti. We are simply too busy democratising the economy to have time for what neo-liberals believe.

The money realised from our tobacco sales is not heading to foreign bank accounts held by a few white commercial farmers as was the case just over a decade ago.

Rather this money circulates in our own economy, and above all it is shared between members of a significantly bigger group of people than the few white commercial farmers that used to monopolise the tobacco industry.

Together we cannot fail.

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

l Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in Sydney, Australia.