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Richard Runyararo Mahomva
Credit is due to the 17th Annual Zanu-PF People’s Conference, I retired from my writing sabbatical.

In this swift transfiguring space of our power dynamics, a rejuvenated energy to reading the science in our politics remains essential.

It feels good to be back and writing again.

This self-exile escape from letters marries it joys with my few days of stay in Bulawayo ahead of mega Zanu-PF Conference.

Once again, writing from home is even more pleasant as the inspiration is being derived from the one-to-one discursive connections with my home-boys and girls on their views about the Zanu-PF People’s Conference to be officially opened on Friday by President Mnangagwa.

Somehow, one would wonder why people in Bulawayo are all obsessed — if not envious of Esigodini for hosting this conference. Is it because this is an event of high political magnitude or the ordinary Bulawayo person just wanted the city to have an experience of some commemorative glamour?

After putting together the pieces of this puzzle; the drawn conclusion is that Zanu-PF’s force of relevance is omnipotent.

The interest to have a Zanu-PF conference in town or to have it discussed in the neighbouring locale of the hosting province substantiates that Zanu-PF transcends the narrow polarised terms of our political discourse. Zanu-PF’s popularity pierces through the divides of geography.

This is precisely illustrated by the weight of Zanu-PF’s nationalist eminence.

This proves how Zanu-PF is an institution founded on the unbridled and enduring aspirations of sustainable national development.

This acutely explains the monumental and preceding value of the Esigodini gathering as an unequivocal expression of the voice of the people — particularly the concerns of that thick voter majority whose common binding narrative has remained undefeated since the days of the liberation struggle.

As the People’s Conference roars to life in Esigodini, Zanu-PF is reclaiming its sanguine institutional memory.

The party is reliving its triumph, thereby reconnecting to the cosmic forces of power which extricate the significance of Esigodini from any other sacred part of our country.

Colonial anthropologists have deliberately applied selective amnesia not to disclose that once upon a time Lobengula’s indunas from Induba, Intemba and Gasa trailed down Esigodini to pay amalobolo/roora for Xwalile the daughter of Mzila who was absorbed into the royal family to be Ndlovukazi (king’s wife).

It was in Esigodini where the king found love and paid homage to Esigodini by marrying from there, thus making the land a site of sacredness.

Therefore, when Zanu-PF hosts its indaba in Esigodini it is symbolically depositing its vision and mission to posterity, at the same time submitting its existence to the royalty energies of the land.

By convening at Esigodini, Zanu-PF is ceremonially revoking its unquestionable relationship with the past and that interwoven connection of history with the future.

The ritual is even consecrated more by the fact that the party is placing its longevity resolutions in the land where the king found a womb (wife) to sow seeds of the royal family’s continuity.

By so doing, Zanu-PF is re-igniting the energy of regeneration and germination.

It can only be spiritual that Zanu-PF of all places chose Esigodini. In Esigodini lies the unnamed ancestries of royalty.

Therefore, the return to Esigodini is not only political.

It is cosmic and not only is this a homage rite, it is also a supplication.

The land’s barrenness must be healed, the skies must bring forth rains to sustain the mainstay of our economy.

The vision of the toddler republic must find inspiration from those who led the way for us into the present.

Consequently, Esigodini’s warming up to Zanu-PF should be a clear indication to all that the binding national question resides more in the common history and vision we share as descendants of this country.

For long, some sections of our polity have stirred the country’s southern region towards ethnic myopia.

On the other hand, even after the November transition, Zanu-PF has been unfairly accorded its right to express the national vision due to antagonistic polarities aimed at advancing the crumble of Zanu-PF’s power by the opposition.

As such, Zanu-PF must emerge from this conference as a stronger political power-house whose impact must stir the nation towards the apex of development and consolidating enduring national interests.

This must be an opportunity for Zanu-PF to reframe and remap its power consolidation measures and that can only be achieved if the conference responds to pressing national questions.

As a starting point, harnessing industrial growth must be a seriously tackled resolution for exigent implementation.

After the conference, Government must create a policy environment which naturally capitalises our industry. This will activate the fulfilment of employment creation promise.

Captains of industry must also be alive to the need to create opportunities for strategic partnerships with foreign counterparts in their shared and respective areas of specialisation.

Cognisant of that need for the widening the net of mutual business alliances, there is need to liberalise interactional frameworks for our business sector with their external counterparts.

We have a comparative advantage because of our natural commodities which drive the global industry. The world needs us in as much as we need it.

We also have our graduates who just need to be fine-tuned to be relevant professional assets for the exigent development that all sectors of our economy require.

These graduates deserve a space to contribute to the economic development they desire. Inclusive economic policy-making is also key in uniting us to the values nationalism proposes.

It is also incumbent to note with high consideration, the role that every citizen has to play in the development of the country.

Beyond our peripheral points of conflict in interest, we all have a duty to be patriotic and make sure that we are not involved in illicit activities and political vices that derail the progress of the entire nation.

Self-interest and lack of patriotic morality cannot continue holding us at ransom.

Before demanding behavioural transformation of those in power and those racing to be in power, we the citizens must take charge of the social transformation we want and inspire political will.

We have all suffered from the crude effects of corruption and we cannot afford to be the source of its practice; at the same prejudicing the republic the paradigm shift it deserves.

We all have a role to play regardless of who was in power or not then and now. The Zanu-PF Annual Conference is not just about Zanu-PF.

It is about the values that Zanu-PF has stood for in the past and how they can be manipulated in the service of national interest.