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President Mnangagwa

Stephen Mpofu

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s pending countrywide tour announced soon after the unveiling of his ruling Zanu-PF party’s campaign and election manifesto last week Friday, could not have come at a more appropriate time with harmonised elections due to take place soon.

For the first time since his new dispensation Government replaced the regime of Mr Robert Mugabe last November, the new Head of State will wade into the throngs of the masses to feel, first hand, the temperature of their mood vis-a-vis his re-engagement efforts with the rest of the world to revive an economy virtually shattered by illegal Western sanctions aimed at reversing the land reform programme embraced by all black Zimbabweans.

The President said he will unpack his Government’s programmes — or stated in other words he will provide the nitty gritties of what the Zanu-PF administration will do if returned to power at the next polls.

In as much as is possible, the nationwide tour should provide an illuminating heart to heart and ear to ear encounter to chart the way forward for the masses, who are the powerhouse in implementing social, political and economic programmes.

What this also suggests is that those in the presidential entourage should disabuse themselves of any attempt to block what they might regard as hostile or negative questions from the public in apparent efforts to protect or please the President.

This is because when all is said and done, a national leader is and should be regarded as a servant of the people who put him in power and whose joys and disappointments he should be exposed in order for him or her to fully carry out the mandate for which the leader remains ensconced to power.

It will also help opposition party members or those sceptical of the President’s national programmes to attend any public meetings to be held in order for them to know the true direction in which the country is going, contrary to the political rumblings of some of their own leaders.

Generally, Zimbabweans pat their own shoulders as they claim to be archetype of true democracy.

Yet the proliferation of opposition political parties to as many as 107 in a population of around 16 million people should stand as a litmus test to the claim of the democracy to which our people profess?
[A true democratic state as we know boasts at least three political parties that compete for power in a country at any given time.]

But be that as it may, the new period of the economic and political dispensation through which our nation is passing happens unfortunately to be riven by such ills as political and economic corruption with these anomalies seriously being aggravated by hundreds if not thousands of marriages reportedly breaking up each year so that a false portrayal of stability exists in communities or society as a whole.

In the case of marriage, which God designed and sanctified and should not be violated on the whims of human frailty or canal desires, the dictum is now no longer “till death do us part”, but, rather, the family unit is disintegrating at the whims of the devil who fights to put apart what God has put together.

In the circumstances, this whole dizzifying situation of the fall of the family unit, political and economic corruption, can the Church, Christians that is, continue to boast of being “the salt of the earth”?

For as long as is known, salt has been used to preserve and flavour food in addition to being an antiseptic.

Which suggests that Christians or churches dotted around the country should act as powerful grains of salt ridding society of various canal ills and make life tasteful and in that way spare our nation God’s judgment.

The alternative, as stated without any ambiguity in God’s holy book is that salt, which has lost its power, becomes fit only to be thrown away and be trampled underfoot.

Those who have ears to hear have heard.