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government is usually portrayed as evil incarnate — as the indisputable enemy of the people.
We must of political necessity brace ourselves yet again for the overuse of that awful “dictator” tag on the Zimbabwean President; more for the perceived political scores and less for the merit of it all.

Conversely incumbent governments will create in opposition parties an image of a disastrous evil force just about to gobble the country’s entire population if the people do not hastily vote away the draconian monsters, in our case the treacherous puppets.

In the West, governments create this unfathomable monster called terrorism, and one who can posture as the most uncompromising against terror stands the best chance of winning an election.

During the Cold War era it was communism that was the ultimate enemy, and even today the lowest one can ever get ideologically is to have a communist mind, or to be perceived to be one with a mind that is tolerant to communist values.

Colonialism has left for us Africans certain contradictions in our lives, and we have tried many ways in our bid to resolve our undesirable situation.
One such contradiction is that we occupy the richest part of this planet in terms of natural resources, and yet we indisputably provide the world with a practical definition of fatalistic poverty.

We are misery by definition and we accept it with unwitting humility.
Many of us strongly believe that our sorry predicament is an excusable fate — and we are convinced that the circumstances which have determined the tragic levels of development on our continent are well beyond our control.

We convince each other that our former colonisers are totally responsible for the situation we are in, and some of us even believe that only the countries that once were our esteemed colonial masters can solve our economic woes.

President Joyce Banda of Malawi has no illusions over where her country’s economic answer lies.
She firmly believes that the destiny of Malawians is the benevolence of foreign donors, and she makes no apologies about that.
She is most certainly very genuine in this Pollyanna view. She simply knows no better.

While it is reasonably true that colonialists bear responsibility over most of Africa’s failures and challenges, the assertion can sadly lead to psychological crippling among our people.

Some of our people have become hopelessly apathetic, they have given up; and they have resigned from life. We have given up trying and we have convinced ourselves we are powerless and inherently incapable of developmental initiative.

It is unfortunate that the resignation and apathy of too many of our people are part of the means by which the hegemonic white dominance of the post-colonial era has maintained itself.

We are ruled by fear — the fear of trusting and uniting with each other, the fear of coming together and solving our problems as a collective people.
We have among us politicians that lead us into believing that it is simply not in us to unite and solve our problems and overcome the dominance of white hegemony.

We were once despised by our own for daring to take arms against Rhodesian colonial settlers, and many of our own fought from the side of the Rhodesia Front.
These kinds of people scoffed at our people when we Zimbabweans decided to occupy white-held farmlands in 2000, and Morgan Tsvangirai mocked the land occupiers, labelling them “random mushrooms.”

Today Tsvangirai and his like-minded mock relentlessly the indigenisation and economic empowerment programme that seeks to give majority control of the economic means of production to locals — all in the name of defending the interests of foreign investors.

The post-colonial philosophy we adopted after independence largely defines for us that which we are supposed to achieve, and it has trained us to lower our aspirations so that we can squarely fit in the lesser place the global imperialist order has reserved for us, namely the labour bastion where we Africans must contend with the idea of being employed by powerful foreign investors from the West.

Zanu-PF has launched an election manifesto for Election 2013 and the aspiration is to indigenise the country’s economy and to develop and create jobs for our own people.
MDC-T is dead convinced that Zanu-PF’s aspiration is unachievable and grossly against the nature of the African — purely and specifically created as a labour provider in the sophisticated scheme of economic production, never as an employment creator.

Launching the MDC-T manifesto on July 7, Tsvangirai made it unequivocally clear that his government would focus on securing a million jobs for Zimbabweans by 2018, and he said this would be achieved by first “mobilising financial and technical support” from Western countries, and also by “convening an international conference to mobilise financial support for economic reconstruction.”

This would be funny if it was not pathetic.
In order to appeal to the electorate, and to cover up for the shameful failure to stand up to foreign domination and the injustice of perpetuating colonial hegemony, some of us try to inflate our achievements and our personalities.

We sanitise our docility by claiming all manner of nobilities, and this is why our friends in MDC-T call themselves democrats.
We have listened to our political leaders bragging loudly about their “international friends” and during the Marondera launch of the MDC-T manifesto we were lectured by Mr Tsvangirai on the importance of having “friends with money.”

He bragged a great deal about his ability to mobilise funds from international donors, about his unfettering commitment to “create a friendly environment for attracting Foreign Direct Investment,” and he really pumped himself up over the small achievements of the indisputably underperforming 2009 to 2013 inclusive Government.
When we magnify our tiny achievements in order to create a means not to confront the reality of our failures all we are doing is to perpetuate our misery.

We are trying to indigenise our economy and to empower our people, and surely this cannot by any means be an easy task — certainly not as easy as looking for a job.
Yet we have some among us who are blatantly avoiding to confront the massive challenge ahead of us by clinging to a historicism that builds a disturbing sense of false pride, pumping themselves up about achievements of our history — being very boastful, and egocentrically bragging a great deal about the role they played in our heroic liberation history, yet at all times failing to face the perils of our current reality and avoiding helping prepare our people for a great sovereign future.

We cannot continue on this path of tragedy.
The MDC-T’s Juice plan is a shameless proposal for a return to the past — a past of colonial hegemony where the greatest achievement for the African is to be awarded the worker of the year trophy.

Tsvangirai needs to evolve from a mentality of working for Trojan Mine to that of owning the mine.
Zanu-PF says it aims to “Indigenise, Empower, Develop and Create Employment.”
This if implemented well is certainly a pointer to a promising future.

As the party’s Director for Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment, Kurai Masenyama, recently wrote, the Zanu-PF manifesto is designed to “take an irreversible leap into the future with guaranteed political sovereignty and unfettered economic freedom.”

Independence came with the indigenisation of the political system, the Judiciary and the Legislature.
However, the economy remains foreign-controlled after three decades and that cannot be allowed to continue.
This is precisely why we reclaimed our land in 2000, according to our needs and according to the diktats of justice.

Our aspiration to shape our own destiny through land utilisation continues to be vindicated as proven by this year’s historic tobacco output of well over 150 million kilogrammes.

The whole idea of indigenisation is essentially to put the destiny of our country in our own hands, as is supposed to be the case by every decent standard on this planet.
This is why the idea of Community Share Ownership Schemes must be hailed, if only for the noble principle behind their establishment.

It is very easy for Morgan Tsvangirai to pitch up at a rally and promise a million jobs in five years, a hundred-day economic turnaround programme, or a US$40 billion economy by 2040.

It is equally easy to fervently preach about the benevolence of foreign donors and investors, and how these can be the anaesthetic to our poverty woes.
Tsvangirai fondly made similar promises in his 2008 pre-election campaign message, and he repeated the promises at the beginning of the inclusive Government in 2009, even promising to mobilise some US$10 billion for the economy.

Hardly was there any job created by the direct efforts of the inclusive Government, and the 100-day economic turnaround programme announced by Tsvangirai in 2009 largely became a hundred days of luxurious workshops that provided an excellent dating platform for the then wife-hunting Prime Minister.
Of course not even a single cent ever came as part of the promised US$10 billion windfall.

Through Finance Minister Tendai Biti, the nation was promised a supernatural economic turnaround programme.
As it turned out the only supernatural thing that happened during the lifespan of the inclusive Government was the womanising prowess of Tendai Biti’s boss, apart from the spectacular corruption within MDC-T local councils.

It is not convincing to allow the MDC-T stewardship of Zimbabwe’s economic future, and this is simply because the party has no credible plan in place for such a responsibility.
MDC-T has never thrived on policy, and there is no indication of any willingness to do so.

The party started on the basis of a crisis, and ever since it has thrived on crisis, and precisely because of this legacy Tsvangirai had to carry a bundle of Zim dollars to the Marondera rally in a bid to revive crisis memories of the hyper-inflation era.

Without a semblance of crisis the man cannot impress.
Without preaching doom and despair the MDC cannot talk politics.
The party has always thrived on doom votes, and that is why a crisis badly needs to be manufactured before July 31.

We have a party that cherishes dearly the prospect of being voted into power by tormented souls, and this is why our people were made to endure 10 years of murderous illegal Western sanctions mobilised by the MDC-T in a very proud and arrogant manner.

It is very important that MDC-T pushes Zimbabwe into a crisis mode, and this is precisely why we are hearing all this mantra about the election crisis.
From the election date to the voters’ roll everything is a crisis in the eyes of the MDC.

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

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