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Stephen Mpofu
KUDOS to God’s handiwork in using the military in this country as a primary tool in wrenching open a strong-room door to release a political stabilisation intervention latent with unlimited opportunities to take the motherland to higher levels of political maturation as well as a buoyant economy, both of which have the potential to make this country great again in accordance with the revolution that brought independence and freedom in 1980 after years of oppressive rule by white colonialists.

Zimbabweans, as a Christian people, ought to know that good governance is the will of God, and that those who wake up one morning ensconced in power must realise that they carry a commitment to make good God’s will through a humanistic approach to governance.

But sadly enough the niceties of power in the latter years of Zimbabwe’s independence blinded some leaders to the need for a humane approach to governance resorting instead to malevolent means to fatten their bellies while those who put them in power wallowed in quagmires of want, aggravated by imperialists in the West who imposed financial and economic sanctions that all but ruined our economy in a bid to bring down the Zanu-PF government for introducing land reform in order to improve the lot of the majority who live in the communal lands.

It is these criminal elements who surrounded ex-President Mugabe and led to his fall this week.

Thus, those Machiavellians will go down in the political history of this country as having unwittingly or knowingly worked with the imperialist proponents of regime change to try and reverse the gains of our revolution.

Members of that cabal obviously exploited Cde Mugabe’s increasing dependence on them on account of his senility to hijack the revolution, leading up to the country’s sorry economic state.

Cde Emmerson Mnangagwa — a man who went through the baptism of fire as a guerilla in the protracted armed struggle and was sworn in yesterday as the new Head of State, replacing Cde Mugabe — holds the new hopes for millions of our people for a better Zimbabwe politically, economically and socially.

Having himself tested the brutality of the cabal which saw him fired from his position as Vice President of the country and also sacked from the ruling Zanu-PF party, Cde Mnangagwa will no doubt have been made wiser by his bitter experiences to have as his advisors people of revolutionary sterner stuff and who put povo and the country before self and political gratification.

In an address upon his return from South Africa where he fled after receiving information that he had become an object for elimination soon after his dismissal as Vice President, he told a large gathering that received him at Zanu-PF headquarters in Harare that all the people of this country were equally important.

The new president’s handling of the affairs of this nation will thus be judged by his own words, no doubt about that.

Now, when all euphoria ignited by the events of these past few days has evaporated, Zimbabweans must take a hard look at the reaction of the world at large to our new dispensation.

Some Western countries that slammed punitive sanctions on this country jumped on the bandwagon along with our friends in the progressive world celebrating with us the new turn of events in the motherland.

Behaving as if Zimbabweans had short memories, the proponents of regime change shed crocodile tears, saying the economy of this country was in a quagmire, implying that the Zanu-PF government alone was responsible for that state of affairs.

Yet if truth be told, the illegal economic embargo on this country contributed a lion’s share to Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown as the sanctions virtually halted inflows of foreign capital in borrowings by the government or for investment, in addition to seizing earnings from our mineral exports overseas.

If Britain, the former colonial power of this country and the USA — both of which introduced the sanctions with their continental European cousins lining up – had been heard to say that they had lifted their punitive economic sanctions, Zimbabweans would celebrate them as friends indeed.

But, instead, those imperialist countries spoke of this country’s having been the “bread basket” of Africa before land reform was introduced.

The hidden implication of their remarks is that Zimbabwe’s economy collapsed after land reform because land occupied by white settler farmers and which the government reposed for redistribution to the blacks who needed it the most had been responsible for this country’s “bread basket” fame.

But the truth is that peasants were responsible for making the country famous agriculturally and that droughts and other adverse weather conditions plus the economic embargo ruined the bread basket status.

President Mnangagwa should therefore resist any attempt by the West to have landform reversed as a pre-condition for restoring full relations with the West.

Any reversal of the agrarian revolution will amount to flinging the door wide open to contemporary imperialism with all its negative designs for our country.

What is instead imperative is for the government to sanitise the land reform programme so that multiple owners of farms should have some of the land taken away from them and redistributed to those in need of the asset for use in producing more food instead of having the land kept for speculative purposes, or as status symbols.

Selling the land to former white owners or to their ilk should be prohibited as these people, or some of them, are wont to keep the land fallow or to grow exotic grass for their livestock or for export instead of growing food for the people of this country.

Land, which is Africa’s most abundant Godly endowment should be used to create food as well as wealth for millions of the continent’s people, most of whom suffer from want and risk their lives travelling through harsh desert conditions and turbulent seas to seek refuge in a Europe not overly receptive to the refugees.

Meanwhile, the world press gave highlight to news that Cde Mugabe and his family had been granted immunity from prosecution and that the incoming president had guaranteed the family total security will no doubt have been welcomed by many in Zimbabwe as well as in other, progressive nations as an act of magnanimity validating the saying: “to err is human, to forgive is divine”.

Besides, the good that Cde Mugabe as Head of State during both the armed struggle and in the many years of his presidency – and which can be counted on both hands – should not be allowed to vanish into obscurity after the end of his tenure in office.

On the contrary his successors now and in the future should be guided by those positives in leading the people of this country.

When all has been said, the intervention of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, resulting in the recent turn of events, will no doubt be immortalised in the annals of Zimbabwe’s political history as a prudent and timely, even God-inspired, restoration of the legacy of the derivatives of the revolution that brought freedom and independence to this country in 1980.

A aluta continua