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Perspective Stephen Mpofu
Zimbabweans are at war. Ironically at war with themselves and with the enemy hell-bent on causing anarchy to further their imperialist designs and turn back the clock of the revolution that brought Uhuru and its attendant benefits to the masses in this country.

On the one hand, there are those leaders and ordinary citizens, both stalwarts of the revolution, who believe that Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans and Zimbabweans alone, and that any action taken by the government socially, economically and politically should advance the fruits of the armed revolution that freed Zimbabweans from the shackles of white racist oppression under colonial rule.

It is this group of people who are in the forefront of the fight against re-colonisation by Western imperialists now using their dirty money to create anarchy by bankrolling street vendors to oppose the government’s initiative in relocating them to designated sites thereby decongesting streets in order for normal business to run uninterrupted in the central business districts of Zimbabwe’s cities.

Then there are, on the other hand, Zimbabweans who hunger after power for power’s sake and believe the country is not free unless they accede to power themselves by whatever means – and these are the people in collusion with imperialists by telling vendors to resist relocation to new trading sites being set up by local authorities, particularly in Harare at this time in point.

The populations of street traders in Harare, the capital, and in Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo, have burgeoned over the years because workers who lost jobs due to illegal Western sanctions, which have crippled the economy, have turned to street trading to eke out meagre existence for their families.

The sanctions imposed by Britain, America and their allies were intended to exact regime change and reverse land reform in order for white farmers to continue to enjoy a large share of land while the black majority needing that land the most continued to scratch, like chickens, small and mostly barren pieces of land as though they, not the white minority squatting on vast tracts of land, were aliens in the land of their ancestors.

It is therefore a tragic irony that the Western imperialists are now embracing the victims of their sanctions as though their governments are kind-hearted Samaritans. Of course, they remain anti-Zanu- PF government as ever before and are merely using vendors as cats’ paws to attempt to bring about illegal regime change so that a new regime that kowtows to the contemporary imperialists may get into power and preside over the hegemonic designs of the foreigners.

Of course, there are those political leaders who run with the hounds and have been telling street vendors to stay put on shop pavements and in confrontation with the government.

One wonders whether this second group of people and their political organisation are not aware that Western imperialists with diplomatic representation in the country are hell-bent on dividing Zimbabweans to weaken them and then bring them under the foreigners’ control, or whether they are in cahoots with the foreigners because they want power for power’s sake.

It really boggles the mind, the way some of our people run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. Is it a lack of patriotism that causes them to behave the way they do as sellouts, Trojan horses, or is it because of political immaturity?

At 35 years of age, Zimbabwe is still fairly a young country, and a look back into the past through the telescope of time should remind all Zimbabweans of the way imperialists worked to divide and weaken our people in order to keep riding on the backs of our people as masters of the destiny of the black majority.

A momentary return to the colonial period should therefore dissuade Zimbabweans from bowing down their ears to incitement by imperialists to oppose those in power in the country right now as any such connivance will amount to political emollition.

Emollition because they will also resist implementation of the country’s economic blueprint, Zim Asset, and as a result there will be no solid advance in this country’s economic growth — and Zimbabwe’s enemies will celebrate the stagnation.

Then, of course, there is the question of external political financing whose implications some Zimbabwean political organisations do not mind, or are aware of but accept as long as the bankrolling acts as a lever to put them in power even against this country’s law forbidding external funding for political parties.

Yesterday one political organisation was saying it would boycott any future elections in Zimbabwe unless electoral reforms were effected — reforms that one understood as being meant to put that party in good stead for political victory.

Today the same organisation says it will cause those reforms to take place whether those in power like it or not. But, surely, should not reforms, reforms meant to benefit all the people of Zimbabwe, not be discussed and agreed by all concerned seated around a negotiating table?

No doubt any reforms meant to bring about positive change and stability politically and economically must be consensual, like sex, and not be forced on other people, like rape.

But now, following some pep talk by some foreigner dangling a fat purse those self-anointed reformists say they will take part in future elections in this country after all.

Are conditionalities accompanying foreign bank notes good for Zimbabweans or are they meant to open the door for a return to imperialism to this beautiful country of ours?

The bottom line in the discourse above is that if Zimbabweans remain united in the defence of their freedom and sovereignty they will remain invincible, whereas if tossed here and there by imperialist waves they will drown and with that the revolution that in 1980 ushered in a bold new political dispensation on the smouldering ashes of oppressive colonial rule.