Whether outsiders seduce inverted Zimbabweans . . . President Mnangagwa
President Mnangagwa

President Mnangagwa

Perspective with Stephen Mpofu
You (yes, you) guess what?

Whether the weather be good, whether the weather be bad, and whether outsiders seduce inverted Zimbabweans to derail THE EDM Express Economic Recovery train, dry bones in Zimbabwe’s economy are bound — in fact already set — to live again whether some people like it or not.

But you know what! A successful member of a family often faces rivalry from those members of the family unit who are less gifted or uninventive or indolent and are wont to sit on their hands and brains instead of using them to create a better new future for themselves and the entire family.

Replace the familiar family unit with the Sadc family in which Zimbabwe is a member and chances are that rivals of the new thrust by the Government of Cde Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa’s no-holds-barred efforts in wooing direct foreign investment to revive our country’s Western-sabotaged economy, will rear their ugly heads, driven by the jealous of an ugly woman against her more beautiful rival, as it were.

One or two of such jealous Sadc family members might wish that they could temper with the rails to derail the EDM Economic Revival Train.

These same people must have frothed at the mouth when during the early years of independence after 1980 Zimbabwe became the bread-basket of Southern Africa and thanks to the peasants who earned that reputation for the motherland often working small or relatively infertile pieces of land while settler farmers dosed sitting on vast tracts of fertile land seized by force from hapless black folk.

These same rivals of the peasantry agricultural feat must have clucked their tongues while reaching out their hands in to the bread-basket that circulated along the great North Road to as far as Cairo, this communicologist and other Zimbabweans in exile at the time can confess the bread-basket popularity in which the young Zimbabwe basked.

But for Zimbabwe to become the industrial hub of Southern Africa will be too much a feat for some of Zimbabwe’s Sadc family members to wake up one morning and discover that there is no longer a market for them to even dump their sub-standard products.

To be sure, these family members are likely to cause potholes clubbing the ground with knobkerries in their cities in anger at this country’s economic revitalisation story.

They may even withdraw their support for trade and other economic showcases to try to pull down a family member who has outpaced them in the run to economic glory and a brave new future for this country.

Yet — and, indeed, co-operation among all the Sadc countries individually and collectively in pushing the regional industrialisation programme has the potential to turn southern Africa into a huge industrial hub or zone capable of transforming the image of the African continent into a force to be reckoned with by those in the West and in the East who are reputed world economic giants.

But, of course, the greatest danger to current courtship for direct investors by this country lies in-house; indeed a tragic irony that no efforts should be spared in making sure that this tragedy never ever flaunts its tussles.

Already there are people who aspire for the top leadership of this nation who speak publicly as though they have been seduced and converted to the camps of this country’s outside enemies who by their deeds and utterances have made it clear to all and sundry that Zimbabwe must ultimately be recognised as not a success, but rather a failed state as long as Zanu-PF remains in power.

How, for instance, does one justify the patriotism of a leader who openly declares that those outsiders who supported our freedom struggle to the hilt, and have remained our all-weather friends, should not take part in Zimbabwe’s economic revival campaign?

Can such people and those of their ilk pass the litmus test of unadulterated patriotism as Zimbabweans and not people whose body resides in this country while their loyalty abides with sworn foreign enemies of our motherland?

Surely having gone through the baptism of fire in the armed struggle that brought freedom and independence on which some so-called opposition leaders are constipated as they strut around boastfully in public, the Zimbabwean masses know without any shadow of doubt on which side their bread is buttered and should therefore not be swayed away by inverted patriots.

There is no doubt in this writer’s mind that leaders who oppose what their national government does, while at the same time claiming to represent Zimbabweans, should they find their way into power, will fling open the back door for contemporary imperialism to come marching in so they can dine with the oppressor as a reward for selling out their motherland.

The ballot later this year should decide once and for all the fate of such sell-outs who masquerade as genuine Zimbabweans.

In the same camp as the running dogs of imperialism are the people, so far nameless, who caused some of the recent Zanu-PF primary elections to end up as a virtual disaster.

These people must have been working to the gallery of behind-the-scenes opponents of the ruling party who have an axe to grind against the new dispensation administration of Cde Mnangagwa and therefore want to drag its image in the mud in hopes of causing Zanu-PF’s defeat in the forthcoming elections.

The ruling party is duty bound to leave no stone unturned to discover the precise loyalty of those people who sabotaged the smooth running of the primary elections in point.

Surely, cognisant of the suffering of the masses in this country as a result of illegal Western economic sanctions accompanied with de-campaigning our government, Zimbabweans should be politically prudent by now to close their ranks against prostitutes of imperialists who seek to tip-toe their way into power by hook or crook.

At nearly four decades of freedom our people should tell the political woods from the trees and ensure that no one foreign or local hoodwinks them into voting for running and yelping dogs of imperialism.

Present generations should leave behind a bequest to generations of their children and their children’s children a government of the people by patriotic people for patriotic people.

Dubious leaders adept at manipulating innocent souls as though these were handkerchiefs from their pockets to wipe off beads of sweat from their embattled brows, must never ever be given carte blanche freedom to roam the political landscape polluting the minds of the people with outlandish ideas that promote rebelliousness in the nation.

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