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Rangu Nyamurundira
There is more meaning to Zanu-PF’s sweep of all 16 seats in the recent Parliamentary by-elections than merely reclaiming vital urban seats from the opposition MDCs after more than a decade.
It is, after all, a victory that comes at a time Zanu-PF is reasserting its authority over self-indulgent ambitions in its midst.
The results from the June 10 by-elections certainly put into perspective the dreamy politics of those purged from the party, those who believed they could lay siege to Zanu-PF by simply declaring “People First”.
As it turns out, the people’s first salvo in the chill of June 2015 is a resounding “Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front comes first”.
The people have vested their aspirations in the party and have reaffirmed its 2013-2018 mandate.
What the people are saying is that we have never entrusted individuals really, with their flawed personalities often taken to selfish and corrupt ends. Instead, we would have such flaws checked by adherence to institutional ideology and purpose and have individuals legitimised only as far as they represent and strive for the party’s uncorrupted objectives.
The by-election results must be taken as the beginning of the exorcism of lingering ghosts threatening to haunt the people from political graves dug by Zanu-PF’s corrective 6th National People’s Congress.
The private media and their “political analysts” have been scrambling to extricate those crying “People First” from their graves.
Only recently they called upon Joice Mujuru and her group to reincarnate their political persons upon the unfortunate and sad passing on of Amos Midzi.
According to these “political analysts” in The Standard of June 14, 2015, this death was “an opportune moment”, “a golden opportunity” for the so-called People First to come together and strategise a way forward against President Mugabe.
Is it not ironic that those that have sought to wave the President’s age as cause for stripping away his electoral mandate now proffer the dead as a rallying point for “People First”? Surely it is prudent to raise the question, “wakachekeresa here?”
Zanu-PF remains with the living, those who voted in 2013 and in the by-elections, and those who shall vote in 2018.
It is a Zanu-PF that must stay true to its ideological objectives, and has thus far stayed the course thanks to the resolute stand of its First Secretary, President Mugabe.
That is why we maintain our endorsement of Robert Gabriel Mugabe to lead the party and nation.
A May 2015 survey by Afrobarometer revealed that of the Zimbabweans surveyed, at least 63 percent retain trust in President Mugabe, with as much as 70 percent in rural areas endorsing the President.
But the survey also showed Zanu-PF lagging behind at 54 percent. There is a fracture.
On one side is a leader defined by integrity and principle. On the other side is a party put into disrepute by officials and followers tainted by allegations of gross corruption and a chronic sense of entitlement.
Even now, while President Mugabe, as SADC and AU Chair, dazzles and entices Africa with the idea of an economic renaissance, his governing party has malcontents in it.
The party and its Government seem unsure, fearful and ineffective in policy implementation. At the heart is a destabilised and conflicted indigenisation and empowerment programme under siege within its own sanctuary of our Zanu-PF Government.
The true spirit of Zanu-PF must rise, as it did in December 2014, to put to rest self-important and entitled individuals eroding the ideological objectives that form its institutional foundation.
People who join the party must serve it, adhere to its authority and conform to its ideological agenda – or find themselves rejected by the people.
Zanu-PF must not take for granted its mandate from the people. The power plays simmering below the surface will whittle Zanu-PF’s political authority.
Zanu-PF must be wary of over-confidence.
The by-election results are far from a guarantee that the political hearts of the people are forever committed. In politics, hearts are often available for the taking.
Zanu-PF must urgently embark on a holistic drive of mobilising the hearts and minds of the people knowing that these people will not support it on empty stomachs.
The people look for socio-economic deliverables. And these will not be delivered by a Zanu-PF and Government whose ideological objectives are crippled by the chronic sense of entitlement that has gone viral within its leadership and ranks.
Shall the party be represented by those who chant its slogans the loudest only to stab a knife into the heart of its economic revolution?
How is the party in Government to achieve Zim-Asset, whose heart remains indigenisation and economic empowerment, when selfish leaders defile the ideology? How shall “an empowered society and a growing economy” become a reality when leaders are taken to corruption which cannibalises ideological objectives?
True, sanctions have inflicted gross economic hardships in the agenda to depose President Mugabe.
Yet we must be frank enough with ourselves to admit to ideological misfits that cripple the party’s restorative agenda.
Rangu Nyamurundira is the acting corporate secretary of the National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board, and a member of the Zimbabwe Youth Council board. His views are his own and do not represent those of the institutions he is associated with.
Online Reporter