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THE darkest secret in Zanu-PF politics is that too many of its membership and leadership imagine that they lead a revolutionary life based on the pertinacious concept of the liberation legacy.
The revolutionary life does not have to be practiced; imagining it is good enough, if only for the achieving of the goals of political expediency – itself a huge obsession only stoppable by people power, as those defeated by Jonathan Samkange and Munyaradzi Kereke will grudgingly and bitterly confess. Not that the two rebel winners are exactly revolutionaries themselves; far from it, but that is a matter for another day.
It is important that we treat history with caution, whether told by ourselves or narrated by our foes.

After all is history not simply the lies and exaggerations of victors on one end, and the delusions and exaggerations of the defeated on the other? True and factual history has very little capacity to excite anyone.

It is sad that often the defeated do not live to tell their own side of the story. Until the lion can tell stories the hunter will always have the best part of the story.

The state of mind of our average politician allows him to lie, cheat and steal from the rest of us, and to demand from us unbridled loyalty huge enough to blind our eyes from the plunder we are suffering, massive enough to mute us into absolute silence should our loyal eyes see anything resembling some kind of untowardness. But loyalty is to a country, only given to a politician when he deserves it.

What do politicians care about the cost of corruption, if by grabbing a few millions of dollars one can transform their own lifestyle unabated?

Ask Morgan Tsvangirai if there is anything wrong with retiring taking with you a state house for keeps?
In 1999 the man would have barked all sorts of insulting superlatives condemning the insensitivity of such behaviour. But now the prospect of exiting the country’s premiership with a house that could otherwise shelter other senior government officials in the future is so noble that it transcends even the sin of “rigging” an election.

Only for the purpose of securing this house does Tsvangirai acknowledge the legitimacy of President Robert Mugabe – the man who larruped him to insignificance in the July 31 election he vaingloriously claims was a “monumental fraud.” If only the fraud could grant its victim a mansion, then all is acceptable.

In the land reform program and the indigenisation policy we see a genuine revolution, but we see this breath-taking lack of modesty by some among us advantaged by the occupation of strategic positions in this revolution.

We sincerely believe that in these two key policies we could heroically represent the whole of Africa, including Jacob Zuma’s non-African Johannesburg, even his non-African South Africa, and perhaps we could in the process tame Zuma’s foreign-powered mind into thinking like an African in Africa, generally.

But why are we seeing this apparent lack of interest among some of our leaders, this wait-and-see attitude that left only a few in Zanu-PF to vigorously campaign for the vote in the last election? Yet so many stood ready to have their names read out when it came to the appointment of Cabinet Ministers. Talk of a revolution infested with hijackers and pretenders.

If not for a completely clueless and hopeless political opponent, it is hard to see why the 2008 voting patterns were not repeated. In the run up to the election we saw next to nothing by way of effort from all others, apart from the massively attended star rallies addressed by President Mugabe countrywide – doubtlessly the only man who commands a single-handed capacity to sway public opinion in Zimbabwe.
It is quite curious that those who before election 2013 cried aloud for President Mugabe to publicly call for the stopping of any form of political violence can proudly tell us today that they were right, judging by the violence-free election that followed such public pronouncements; and yet the same people find it impossible to believe that the same man can tell people to vote for his policies and they will do so.

There are many within this revolution who have made genuine personal sacrifices like some musicians did to boost morale at the height of the land reform revolution. At the time such cadres face the harsh and costly price associated with imperialistic vengeance there often is this lack of interest, this lack of will to help on the part of those who should most logically do so.

From the point of view of ideological leanings these cadres are in the same camp with all of us in the revolution, but when they are personally isolated for victimisation by the ruthless imperialist machinery they become the easiest of things for all of us to forget. In fact they just become some stinking unwanted burden in the eyes of pseudo-revolutionaries careful enough to maintain the equilibrium between the sweet personal privileges acquired in the revolution and the strategic need to avoid inviting the anger of the enemy in the imperialistic camp.

The recklessness of a singer or a columnist is his to face should the consequences be unpalatable, but the gains acquired through his bravery must of course be celebrated.

One can ask Last Chiyangwa a.k.a Tambaoga, that forgotten artiste that gave the revolution the hit song “Agrimende”, apart from doing the popular jingle “Rambai makashinga.”

Errant in many ways the young musician is, but surely he does not deserve the exposure and neglect he has suffered in the full view of cadres who once found in his radical lyrics ammunition to help win national elections.

Way back in 2004, this writer used to personally pay rentals for the lodgings of this musician after he was haunted out of his Chitungwiza residence by unruly political opponents who found in his music enough cause for barbaric intolerance and brutality. His own brother died in very suspicious circumstances associated with his political activism.

We have a revolution in which many realities must be faced. It is our revolution, and only we can make the revolution a success.
We cannot fall in the trap that took the MDCs to Maputo in the belief that Sadc would help win for them a postponement of elections the parties knew very well they were going to dismally lose.

In fact MDC-T in particular came to a point that the leadership believed South Africa would help them win elections against Zanu-PF. But didn’t the self-confessed non-African Zuma become the first to pass congratulatory messages to President Mugabe once the MDC were duly handed their deserved defeat?

This revolution is not going to be completed by the help of the IMF, neither will it be sustained by the aid of international donors, whether well or ill intentioned.

The revolution will not be completed by the solidarity of African nations, granted or denied.
We cannot ask others to sacrifice for us to the point of ignoring their own problems, even when we are convinced that their problems are not comparable to ours. Precisely this is why the hullabaloo about a Sadc financial package to rescue Zimbabwe after the 2008 rock bottom economic decline never really came to fruition.

Those of us who support the policies of Zanu-PF must know that we are making this revolution, and for better or for worse we must accept whatever consequences may come with it. Some of us standing on behalf of this revolution away from the homeland understand very well about the ruthlessness of some of these consequences.

We made up our minds to start this revolution, no one asked us to make it. We like the MDCs want to do, could have mortgaged off the country and put it up for rent. Someone wealthy enough could have paid, and we could be living pretty now, by slave standards.

We could be blissfully enjoying slave employment as grateful farmworkers on our own land, or loyal employees in white-owned mines in our own country.

But we are the ones who judged that all forms of outside control should be rejected. Now it is time to pay the price. And we must.
This revolution is not going to succeed on the backdrop of endless cries over the evilness of economic sanctions imposed on us by those who feel victimised by our own actions, not even by our mobilising of international friends for a unanimous call for the lifting of such sanctions.

Frankly speaking those who imposed the illegal sanctions on us must be thoroughly enjoying the loudness of our cries, because indeed such cries are quite gratifying.

We must do away with this mentality that says re engaging the West is in itself a way of salvation.
There are very good reasons why we disengaged from the West in the first place in the context of why sanctions must imposed on others.
Unless one is a masochist or has suicidal tendencies, there is no logic in one helping his own enemy, and surely the West is neither flagellation-oriented nor suicidal.

So how do we expect the West to help us out of the sanctions debacle without making fools of ourselves, or them defeating their own cause?
The West is not going to provide us with ammunition so that we can survive and make our revolutionary influence felt and convince those around us to follow our example. Why would imperialism do that? To what end? For whose good would imperialism do that?

Imperialism is copying our own legacy. That is why Tsvangirai is saying it took 17 years for Zanu-PF to dislodge Ian Smith, and so it should take the MDC to dislodge Mugabe and his Zanu-PF. He even goes back to 1947, to 1936 and the Samkange days even – of course to encourage himself with history where the facts of today stand opposed to his ambitions. He stands a man mocked by fate. But imperialism is already setting for us benchmarks and deadlines along the way to 2018.

Morgan Tsvangirai has already announced his boycott plan and the reasons he will give for the action.
He has already said he is fighting a legitimacy war – meaning the war to discredit any winner other than himself.

Morgan Tsvangirai is longing for another 2008, another monumental economic disaster; another massive cholera outbreak killing millions if possible. He is telling his Western handlers to hang on in there with the sanctions, and adopt a wait and see approach to the whole game plan.

Zanu-PF is so far classically disappointing with its numerous excuses in the wake of such challenges as power-shortages, water shortages, and general service delivery.

Crediting sanctions with responsibility for every social ill in the country is the most tacit way of admitting the success of the West and the failure of Zanu-PF, and Zanu-PF cannot perpetually play victim to its foes.

We can even argue that had it not been for sanctions our leaders wouldn’t be corrupt, or poachers wouldn’t be killing our wildlife, or our wives wouldn’t be so immersed in extra-marital affairs.

But how is Zanu-PF committed to the sacrifices associated with the implementation of the revolutionary policies it sells to the electorate? How committed is Zanu-PF to spearheading national development by revenue realised from its preached indigenisation policy?
How committed are those individuals appointed by the state to represent our peoples through Community Share Schemes or Employee Share Schemes?

Does Zanu-PF realise the imprudence of its factious succession politics? Or to some the revolution is just a smokescreen while Tsvangirai’s quisling politics is the real deal?

Have we not heard Tsvangirai and Biti publicly expressing fond solidarity with at least one alleged faction within Zanu-PF?
Where is the meeting point, and how was it reached, if for once we choose to take the comical duo of Tsvangirai and Biti seriously?
Did Biti tell us that the other faction is the chaos one?

If Zanu-PF is convinced that Tsvangirai’s ignorance is enough to give it political survival then the party is blinder than taking an expelled former member for a second expulsion in parliament, so to speak.

A revolution does not succeed simply on the basis of the weakness of its opponents. A revolution succeeds on the successes of its own goals and policies — on the successful implementation of its own policies.

This see-saw nonsense where the MDC wins votes on the basis of Zanu-PF’s failure to deliver, and Zanu-PF wins votes on the basis of the blatant foolishness of Tsvangirai must come to an end.

Otherwise 2018 would be Tsvangirai’s turn, as was 2000 and 2008. We know 2002 went Zanu-PF’s way, and so did 2005, and now 2013. Nathaniel Manheru touched on this in detail in his last instalment in the Saturday Herald.

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

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