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Perspective Stephen Mpofu
People with narrow political interests have caused potentially incalculable damage to Zimbabwe’s body politic, to the economy and with that to the bellies of povo who personify the revolution which in 1980 secured our beloved motherland from the cruel clutches of a foreign ruling culture. These past few days two capitals of Zimbabwe’s virulent nemesis in the West have been hysterical, telling the world that this country was politically unstable and therefore unsuitable as an investment destination.

In de-campaigning Zimbabwe those countries were feasting on the grand conspiracy by the now-disgraced political leaders in Zanu-PF against President Mugabe’s life and his leadership — a conspiracy that has seen principal actors also falling by the wayside, like yellowing leaves in autumn, provincial elections for central committee positions countrywide were held in an exercise aptly described by youth chairperson for Harare province Cde Godwin Gomwe as “the democratic re-orientation and renewal of a party with a democratic and revolutionary history.”

Never, never again, this pen wrote in these columns recently, will those at the helm of the revolutionary party take the mass followers of Zanu-PF for granted, believing they can lead the povo by the nose to troop behind these leaders in any heinous plot to assassinate our president as a way of creating a vacuum to be filled by their own factional leader or leaders.

It has since transpired that after their suicidal adventure came to naught some of the provincial party leaders implicated in the plot to eliminate Cde Mugabe are coming back to the party with political caps crushed in their hands and feigning contrition and seeking forgiveness and rehabilitation into the party.

Had these people’s hearts been filled with patriotism and an appreciation of the fact that they had been fattening their bellies ensconced in positions they otherwise had not deserved but for President Mugabe’s desire to give his helpers a role to play in ruling this country, they might have said no, no, no to any misguided element recruiting them into a plot to kill their political benefactor and, in hindsight plunge this country into a bloodbath in reprisals by aggrieved masses against their treachery.

No incumbent leader in any of the party’s structures should be duped by any fake regret by those implicated in the plot against the President into welcoming them back into the fold with both hands.

Last week a fervent supporter of the President and of the ruling party – and who along with this pen suffered the hardships of exile during the liberation struggle – called this pen in Bulawayo from Gutu to express his total disagreement with a suggestion in these columns that the Zanu-PF leaders who have fallen by the wayside should either dig a hole in the ground or the air and spit into it, pledging they would never again betray the party, or troop over to join the fractured political opposition.

In retrospect and reflection this pen concurs with the caller that the conspirators against our beloved President should be left to stew in their failed conspiracy until such a time as their time in this carnal world is up and they can proceed to defend themselves for whatever they did while in the flesh before the Judgement seat of Jesus Christ. Some of them are infamous, long time schemers against the President.

It is actually surprising that none of the leaders exposed for their part in the plot to unseat a President, re-installed to power on July 31 last year, have not themselves endorsed their political suicide by removing themselves physically from the desolate political turf along which they now trudge in defiance of the ignominy they stare in the face as publics will wonder whether she/he had lost their mental faculties lining up behind blood thirsty, misguided, power hungry potential murderers baying for the President’s head.

What remains to be seen is whether anyone from parallel structures that the factional leaders — cum co-conspirators against the President created will not be allowed to worm their way through the sieve and attend congress to give them a chance, slim though this might be, to agitate against the continued leadership of President Mugabe as First Secretary of the party and as Head of State.

As this pen stated in a previous instalment, people power has vindicated itself in the way the masses as custodians of their party and of the revolution have an unflinching intrepidity, when the worst comes to the worst, to tell the woods from the trees and do justice to the woods.

The message for all incumbent and future party leaders from what has been going on is that no person, whatever his or her political station can ever be more Zanu-PF than the ordinary person in the backyard or out in the periphery whose cracked bare feet leave their imprints on the soil or secure their clothes with a belt made from fibre.

Perhaps the re-orientation and renewal now in process in the ruling party deserves immortalisation for the benefit of posterity.

In this pen’s humble opinion; this legacy will probably be best as left behind in black and white as well as in film.

Here, therefore, is a wonderful opportunity for creative minds in this country to write a book about what is going on in Zanu-PF which has the potential for a thriller.

Here, too, is a golden opportunity for film script writers to create a block-buster for the film industry in Zimbabwe and abroad, with both the book and the film entitled: All the Conspirators’ Men and Women.

The riveting story in both the book and movie could begin with First lady Cde Grace Mugabe’s look alike and star actress, embarking on a countrywide tour and ripping masks off the hideous faces of some of the conspirators against the President as well as against herself, with the masses of co-actors flushing out the rest of the conspirators and their cubs from their filthy holes.