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Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

AS Zimbabwe edges closer to harmonised elections this year, on a date yet to be announced, all unmitigated patriots should beware the dictum “unity, peace and development” with the wilfully deaf mutes having no place in a society labouring day and night to transcend the colonial legacy of underdevelopment.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has called on everyone to be peaceful in the run-up to the polls with the police, who act to fulfil their mandate of maintaining law and order in the country known by everyone to leave no stone unturned in their mandate to maintain law and order prior to, during and after elections.  They do this so that our country, underdeveloped as it is, like many others on the African continent, may see the lights of brave new futures for present and successive generations inspired by the revolutionary spirit which saw many gallant sons and daughters of the soil sacrificing their dear lives so that unity peace and development might become a combined legacy for our people until the angel of the Lord sounds a trumpet to mark the end of a world riven by trials and tribulations, and in the process heralding a season for profound joy for those who overcame a world in which the devil works day and night to try to derail any blessings from God to us His collective creation.

Genuine, peace-loving parliamentarians might wish to push for the promulgation of a law that leads to the banning of a political organisation found guilty of financing violence

Three days ago a discussion hosted on a local radio station provided an opportunity for some political leaders of youths organisations to expose the machinations of some leaders whose political aggrandisement showed the need for peace in the political development of our nation with youths being paid to cause violence against rivals so that those politically hind-sighted leaders might be victorious in elections so as to strut about in the August House of Parliament without feeling any guilty conscience about their unholy route to that law making body while their victims nurse wounds inflicted in the political power struggles.

In the circumstances, law enforcement agents might wish to ride on the disclosures by the youth leaders in point to revisit their strategies in order to root out destabilisers of unity and peace.  The two values catalyse development in our beloved motherland, particularly in the countryside where most Zimbabweans still live but on which colonial Rhodesians thumbed their long, congested noses as the “periphery”, or backyard of urban settlements which those without knees set up in our country as their homes away from their native countries beyond many waters.

As things stand with some uninverted patriotic leaders worming their way to stardom by financing political hooliganism by using loyal youthful followers as knobkerries against rivals — as claimed by their leaders in the radio discussion — genuine, peace-loving parliamentarians might wish to push for the promulgation of a law that leads to the banning of a political organisation found guilty of financing violence.

The point must be made to all and sundry, as our country seeks developmental partners eager to invest their hard-earned money for the betterment of our nation, that the most lethal force needed to banish poverty and all other forms of underdevelopment is THE COMBINATION of peace and unity without which all other initiatives aimed at transcending want in all its forms are pipedreams, as it were.

But, of course, Western imperialists who illegally imposed economic sanctions decades ago in a failed bid to remove Zanu-PF from power for introducing the land reform programme — as an empowerment tool for our people to be on the march to development after years of being wilfully impoverished by their foreign rulers — will no doubt rub their hands with glee at any possible alternative means available to dump their arch enemy, the revolutionary party ruling our country today.

A brave new future for the present and future generations of Zimbabwe will forever lie in unity which engenders peace and unimpeded political, economic and social development.

Those with ears to hear have obviously heard and must do something about the message above.

Those with their ears cocked have heard the shrill message encoded in the foregoing discourse and must in turn loose deafening wake-up calls to the political hooligans indicted above to stop trampling with their dirt-caked feet on the legitimate rights of political rivals and, concomitantly on the bread for their opponent’s children and/or dependants.