Zimpapers Logo

Perspective Stephen Mpofu
ZANU-PF stands in the  full glare of a globe watching the party’s every act and determining whether those deeds impugn or whether they  enhance its character in the eyes of the international community closer to home or farther afield. That is so because Zimbabwe’s ruling party — which has trounced and left its rivals sprawled by the wayside in all previous contests for supremacy — must carry everyone, followers and opponents alike, whether the latter stomach it or not, along the road, rugged or smooth, meandering or straight, like Selbourne Avenue.

Or put it this other way to drive the crucial message to everyone’s  fuller home. A team practises for kudos in a major campaign and before a huge crowd with eyes peeled to discover if any player trips or pulls another down by his jersey to the repugnance of the spectators, or there is a smooth flow of play that rises to a  scintillating peak with the team drawing cheers as a form of moral and monitory support from stakeholders in support of the team’s campaign for honours for itself  as well as for the country.

As the practice progresses one senior player kicks the ball out of play and off the pitch  and is red-carded by the other players usurping the referee’s powers and is barred from joining the other players in the dressing room at half-time to celebrate goals already scored against its junior team.

The players are livid at their teammates’ action and demand an apology instead of finding out what motivated the offence, which was apparently an act of preventing a goal by the junior team as the defence lacked coercion, to thwart the opposition’s threat at their goal with the keeper appearing out of balance.

Earlier than that the team imposed targeted sanctions on five players, banning them from the clubhouse but without the approval of the club’s technical team which alone had the power to suspend players.

That, then is the scenario at Zanu-PF’s Matabeleland North province with the ruling party’s National Secretary for the Commissariat, Cde Saviour Kasukuwere, declaring that the dismissal of the five Hwange party members by the Matabeleland North Provincial Executive Council on Saturday was null and void.

The suspensions were a solo decision that the party would not countenance, Cde Kasukuwere said.

There have also been failed attempts by the Matabeleland North executive to suspend Politburo member Cde Sithembiso Nyoni and the Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda, with the former now being barred from attending a party to be held today  in Binga to celebrate the appointment of Politburo members from Matabeleland North Province as punishment for calling the Zanu-PF Matabeleland North provincial  leadership shallow and refusing to apologise.

Team Zanu-PF has before it the Zimbabwe Agenda for Socio-Economic Transformation to implement as a major campaign, and success in this regard will be contingent on team work.

As such, a primitive culture of the politics of who is who must be banished from the minds of all Zimbabweans and be replaced with a culture of the politics of oneness in the drive for the emancipation of the motherland from underdevelopment so that Zimbabweans will not be forever paupers but rather be masters of our own destiny.

The year just gone by and its ashes are still warm under our feet — saw manifestations of blatant discontinuities in the revolution as a result of which some big heads in the ruling party and its government rolled, with a bleak political future now starring them in the eye.

In the aftermath of these developments any political squabbles, such as those in Matabeleland North province, will only serve to give off an ugly portraiture of a party fighting with itself and shooting itself in the foot and disabling itself in the process from proceeding with the mammoth task of implementing the mother of all postmodern developmental initiatives, Zim-Asset.

Those Zimbabweans who keep an alert ear to the ground will already be aware that the country’s foreign detractors have been busy propelling propaganda to the effect that political instability is the order of things in this country — and frightened by what they hear, potential investors are likely to remain tight-fisted with their money, which we badly need to revive and move an economy badly bruised by illegal Western economic sanctions.

Of all years, 2015 should no doubt have unity as a signature tune for all Zimbabweans in their act of economic, social and political self-actualisation as a continuity of the revolution that won us the independence we boast and which we must guard jealously so that the freedom we enjoy remains a road without end.

What this suggests therefore, is that the party in power should rein in any of its members, however high or low in rank, who put Zanu-PF’s name into disrepute, through any and all forms of political indiscipline or indulgencies in corruption, factionalism among vices that are anathema, and on which the opposition will readily pounce. In this regard, it must have come as a breath of fresh air to hear the Commissariat chief saying there was indiscipline in the provinces after congress as the acknowledgement will obviously spur him to move in ruthlessly and clean up the rot so that neither the ruling party nor its government will be seen by the outside world to be burdened with cobwebs on their backs.

As will obviously be clear to everyone, a disciplined army will always be invincible whereas one that suffers  from indiscipline is disarrayed even at the sight of a poorly armed enemy — and developmental challenges can be intimidating to a team bereft of unflinching intrepidity.

Moreover, any indiscipline that remains encrusted in any Zanu-PF or governmental structures will obviously be exploited by rival parties and their foreign  backers to try to weaken the incumbent government in a bid to rise to power with disruptions to existing developmental programmes suffering a mortal blow.

Team Zanu-PF can only flaunt and sustain its supremacy through purposeful unity, while obscene power hunger that disregards the needs and aspirations of the masses will only serve to dig the party’s grave.

Besides the Zimbabwe that we inhabit is not a cocoon but, rather, a part of the inter-dependence of nations.

Which suggests that as much as possible  our ways should ever so much resonate particularly with the ways of the progressive world whose helping hand we are wont to seek when the going gets really, really tough as is the case today with a foreign economic embargo akin to a heavy weight tied round Zimbabwe’s neck in bid to drown this nation under a deep sea.