Zanu PF can’t be trusted in national dialogue




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Right now there are several schools of public opinion as to how as to how to approach the Zimbabwean question.We as a people are known for being pedantic and unduly scholarly about everything. We will write huge treatises over trivia and follow it up with lengthy pseudo erudite arguments.

By Kenneth Nyoka

How do you deal with a problem like Zimbabwe?

No easy or simple answers there. Others state that our only way out is via dialogue between the main political players viz Mnangagwa’s Zanupf and Chamisa’s MDC Alliance. The presumption is that both organisations are homogenic which they are not. Zanu-PF is itself an organisation riven by internecine fighting.There is the army Zanu-PF, a faction consisting of a group of waspish young turks in the army who primary interest is to retain the army’s hold on levers of the state and power.

This allows them access to national largesse and afford them the opportunity to enter into lucrative mining deals and loot thereby maintaining their current luxury lifestyles. These remain a threat to ED because they are a restive young lot who will remove him at the slightest indication that their interests are no longer being served by him.There is also a Zanu-PF dinosaur faction of old,ailing and howling hounds hunched at Jongwe House.This coterie of geriatrics afflicted by delusions of grandeur are known for their sense of entitlement and their alacrity to revert to the liberation war narrative which ended 40 years ago.

ED belongs to this group which is totally out of touch with modern ways of doing things.This gang have been leeching on the state for the past 40 years and like the leeches they are will hang on with everything they got till they probably die.In the process they are also creating a dynasty for looting, a lootocracy which allows their offspring to also join them and inherit their looting ways. Looting has become hereditary in Zimbabwe. If your father is a looter, they will in turn confer upon you the tools and estate to loot.

The sum total of my argument is this.How does one then sit down to dialogue with people whose main agenda is to loot and protect their architecture for looting.? I am not saying the other side is full of angels. No.I do not hold any brief for them either.Their tendency to run to the Americans at the slightest of provocation makes me very uneasy.Americans have absolutely no one else’s interest at heart but themselves.

My argument is therefore that for any dialogue to be meaningful it has got to be people eccentric. For the past few years there has been very little people centered politics in Zimbabwe. Zanu-PF have been busy fighting to protect their loot and the means to loot.They pay lip service to their national obligations by donating a few groceries to starving villagers now and again or extending this and that road to divert attention. MDC Alliance have been pulverised by the same Zanu-PF and are perennially engaged in a battle to survive as a single entity. The people look on from the side lines flabbergasted by it all. They themselves have been turned into political fodder by both groups.

Too much politics and less servant leadership has led us to where we are at the moment. It appears everyone is too focused on reaching the apex (kutonga,to be in power) at the expense of everything else.
People will have their own opinions about this. Like I always say opinions are like arseholes, everyone has got one.We need a complete paradigm shift which places the interests of the Zimbabwean people at the forefront before politics.

Zanu-PF has bastardised this concept and used the army and police to bludgeon the people into submission. They have then attempted to portray a picture of Zimbabweans being a peace loving and serene population. Truth of the matter is they are afraid of the brutality of their government and its state security apparatus.

What is the point of this palaver then?

It is to point out that dialogue for the sake of dialogue is meaningless if its purpose is only to serve to entrench the interests of the ruling elites and top opposition become an accessory or accomplice to that simply because we need to “move on”. It is called political expediency and short-termism.

National dialogue has to be frank and honest and I do not think the current Zanu PF leadership are capable of that. They will be characteristically devious and duplicitous.

I stand corrected and lets debate.o