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Analysis Stephen Mpofu
Façade-democracy dies once adversarial pressure is mounted on it as a litmus test of its staying power. And so like façade democracy, façade-revolutionaries die the moment the enemies of black freedom and self-determination wave a succulent carrot in their eyes to buy them over to their side as tools in an imperialist war against their own country. Sceptics will probably dismiss the claim immediately above as political balderdash in the extreme. But consider recent, turbulent events that occurred in some of Zimbabwe’s urban centres including Harare, the capital, and you will no doubt be persuaded to agree that some of those former freedom-fighters, or revolutionaries who became associated with the upheavals have virtually died.

These are some of the people credited by the masses with carrying out a revolution that freed Zimbabwe from the colonial and white racist Rhodesian regime in 1980 after a protracted armed struggle.

They published a communiqué calling for President Mugabe to stand down from power, but have not displayed the courage of their conviction by owning up to its authorship and so leaving everything to speculation as to whether the former fighters did pen the document or that it was written elsewhere and then foisted into their hands to try to give it some kind of authenticity.

Some commentators have said that the language in which the communiqué was couched remotely matches the revolutionary language of people who denied themselves rainbows of life by heading into the bush to liberate the motherland from an oppressive, ruling foreign culture.

That no one has admitted authorship of the so-called communiqué distributed to the media after a meeting of war veterans in Harare would appear strongly to suggest that foreign powers pushing for regime change wrote that document and had it published with its distribution timed to coincide with the meeting of the ex-combatants as a way of concealing the heinous hand behind efforts to destabilise this country.

By sheer coincidence, or deliberately, the US governments public broadcaster, Voice of America, did have a field day on the communiqué with its Studio 7 for Zimbabwe hosting a phone-in discussion programme with Zimbabweans, one of whom was given a lion’s share of time to call on former Zipra fighters to pull out of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans’ Association “and leave Zanu-PF alone”.

He said the former members of PF-Zapu’s military wing whom the late Vice President, Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo, left in the government should get out and leave Zanu-PF to stew in its problems. Cde Joseph Chinotimba tried strongly to object to what the previous speaker had said but was denied that chance with the programme being brought to an immediate end.

This pen believes that the call for ex-Zipra members’ disengagement from National War Veterans’ Associations exposes the hand of the enemy trying to cause division among Zimbabweans and in that way weaken their solidarity against imperialists pushing for regime change and using Zimbabweans so that it may appear to an unsuspecting world that Zimbabweans themselves are fed up with their own government.

Then there are some opposition parties that have also demanded President Mugabe’s resignation, claiming that he has run down the country.

Ironically, these parties command little public support or are riddled with power struggles at the very top.

Divided the way they are and therefore becoming candidates for a fall, it boggles the mind to think how they can form a stable and functional government themselves to push programmes benefitting the Zimbabwean nation as a whole.

Which implies that should the Zanu-PF government and President Mugabe step down, foreign paymasters of these quislings will immediately become defacto rulers of Zimbabwe.

Fortunately, however, President Mugabe told a solidarity meeting with him in Harare by ex-combatants and others who contributed to the armed revolution in their own way that he would not stand down at the behest of foreign agents of regime change as he was elected by the people of Zimbabwe and his government is in power constitutionally.]

Obviously having failed to shut down Zimbabwe using their local regime change agents, this country’s foreign enemies, who obviously know no defeat, will no doubt try again and again to achieve their nefarious goals using every malevolent trick in the book.

But having tasted the sweetness of freedom from oppressive rule and the joys of self-emancipation, Zimbabweans should not be caught unawares by the enemy at any stretch of their revolution that should continue, like a road without end until the end of this Age.

For this reason, this country needs the Ernesto “Che” Guevaras for whom revolution became a second nature.

An Argentinean native and physician, Guevara was a revolutionary who was not satisfied with the revolution that liberated Cuba from foreign rule in which he participated but instead left to stir up liberation movements in Africa and in South America to embark on revolutions to free themselves from rule by foreigners.

Following the communiqué fiasco linking war veterans, do we Zimbabweans boast any Fidel Castros who did not flinch from an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with a roaring, hungry lion just across the river from Cuba for more than half a century until the enemy roared itself hoarse with dawn breaking on it not so long ago that co-operation and friendship were better than confrontation.

Because they were made of sterner stuff, the Guevaras and Castros unarguably stand as the validation of the saying that “revolutionaries never die”.

By contrast it stands as a sad commentary that some of Zimbabwe’s own revolutionaries have cowered under the hungry roars of political beasts beyond very distant rivers and died to be turned by the same enemies into political goblins to steal the freedom, independence and sovereignty that we all cherish.

It is to be hoped, however, that the many gallant and patriotic former combatants who continue to talk and walk the Zimbabwean revolution will reject any attempt by the enemy, however lucrative, for them to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds as such collusion certainly spells doom for them and their children and their children’s children.

For once our freedom and country are taken away from us, retrieving them might become a mission near impossible if not altogether impossible.