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Perspective Stephen Mpofu
TWO interlocutors communicate by telephone across a political divide.
INTERLOCUTOR ONE: Hello, there! Our deepest condolences to you people.INTERLOCUTOR TWO: Condolences for what?

INTERLOCUTOR ONE: Heads of your men and women rolling almost everywhere in the country, decapitated by provincial guillotines.
INTERLOCUTOR TWO: Phew! What has that to do with you people?

INTERLOCUTOR ONE: It gives us the assurance that we’re not alone in the woods, especially after that memorable disaster we suffered when our boats capsized, torpedoed by your pirates on July 31 last year as we tried to cross the Rubicon. So, you see, what’s happening in your camp is a boon to our renewal efforts to get back on steam and run more fiercely next time around.
INTERLOCUTOR TWO: (Guffaws into the mouthpiece): Too bad for you in the woods, still being stalked by lions.

INTERLOCUTOR ONE: Ah! What lions are you talking about?
INTERLOCUTOR TWO: Political lions roaming the woods while you pile up coat upon coat of new paint on your jalopies and replacing a broken rear-view mirror here, a tail-light there and a shattered head-light over there to make people believe you’re travelling in a brand new vehicle. But lo and behold! Sooner or later the old engine will start to stall and eventually cease altogether and you won’t catch up with us on your bare feet.

INTERLOCUTOR ONE: Just what are you getting at, Mr?
INTERLOCUTOR TWO: Well, Comrade — sorry, Mr, for calling you a comrade as that might frighten off your Western backers thinking that you’ve turned communist, as they call us. What I’m trying to get at is that you’re chickens pretending to fly like birds. But, unfortunately, all you can muster is wiggling your wings from the rooftop to the ground or from the ground to the window of your cage.

INTERLOCUTOR ONE: (Mutters something unholy into the mouthpiece): I’m afraid what you say is a blatant insult to us in the opposition.
INTERLOCUTOR TWO: (A cynical laugh). No, it’s a metaphor, like the metaphor you used moments ago to describe votes of no confidence passed on chairpersons by our provincial committees.

INTERLOCUTOR ONE: Oh, I see! If we’re chickens as you claim, what about yourselves considering the chaos taking place in your provincial party structures?
INTERLOCULAR TWO: I like your question and the answer to it is that we’re an eagle, our party.

This imaginary dialogue is, in the humble belief  of this pen — a journalist, an author, a consummate lover of the motherland — validates to a very large extent political dynamics unravelling themselves in the ruling Zanu-PF on the one hand and in the fractured political opposition in this country, on the other.

Also like astute political reformists elsewhere in this country, this pen believes that what the detractors of Zanu-PF probably call upheavals in the party’s provincial structures are, on the contrary, the revolutionary party’s maturation process for it to grow younger, stronger and soar higher and higher into the political firmament for better, not for worse, for this country.

Zanu-PF is an eagle now in a mutating stage and those laughing at the goings on in the provinces had better place both their hands over their mouth and watch in silence, even in awe, at the revolutionary party’s rebirth and reinvigoration process underway.

Communicologist Felix Moyo, of the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, probably put it more poignantly when he pointed out that “the lack of a credible political opposition in the country” had rendered chairmen and chairwomen of Zanu-PF in the provinces so complacent they forgot or neglected their responsibilities, hence the no confidence vote passed in them by the committees they led.

The ousted leaders have been accused of promoting factionalism and of forming parallel party structures in addition to buying votes in the areas under their domain.

This pen believes strongly in independence’s being  the true revolution in human dignity, and remains convinced that restoring the dignity of the black people of this country, stolen by racist colonial rulers, remains the main focus for Zanu-PF which brought Uhuru to this country nearly three and a half decades ago.

But probably the absence of a strong political opposition breathing heavily behind the backs of Zanu-PF and threatening to outrun it, as suggested by Moyo, Nust Director of Information and Public Relations, or a lack of the love of the people and of the will to lead them to a bolder new future, the leaders kicked out of their positions failed to live up to the  people’s expectations as commanders leading their troops in a war to end under-development in their respective provinces.

Instead they broke sweat working to turn their provinces into fiefdoms of factionalism to the extent that the little bastions of power that some of them created for themselves tragically lured them as a faction into plotting the ouster of a legitimately and overwhelmingly elected President Mugabe.

And, who knows, the dastardly plot to depose the President was probably hatched by his external enemies as well as of his party, Zanu-PF, and probably with plum jobs in any new regime being promised the cat’s paws.

But now it is all over — or just — for the plotters and for those other provincial leaders given short shrift for fanning factionalism and for other, alleged corrupt activities.

They came into power as respectable and honourable leaders, courtesy of the people’s votes. But disgraced they now go out into the wilderness as political lepers that no one is willing to touch them, or be touched by them. If they choose to form their own political parties or to join the opposition, the dishonoured leaders will go out there a political albatross hanging over their chests and a few if any people will want to associate with political rejects as implied by the expulsion from their positions in Zanu-PF.

A glimmer of hope for their rehabilitation exists though, and they will probably be reintegrated into the revolutionary party by again starting right from scratch by, say, accepting chores to sweep the offices of their successors and to clean windows and toilets as a demonstration of the love for the party that nurtured them to the point where they became constipated with power and started to act in Machiavellian ways, and thereby courting their erstwhile demise in the process.

In retrospect, the potency of people power has been amply demonstrated in the various provinces and should serve as a warning to potential abusers of political power anywhere in this country and probably in other countries as well.