adminZanu-PF may be configured to operate under the nose of such a dilemma which is wont to excite appetites for dictatorial tendencies among some leaders — a situation that has prompted that party’s Secretary for Administration Cde Didymus Mutasa to read the Riot Act to the party’s top leadership.
In a statement early this week Cde Mutasa charged some Zanu-PF Central Committee and Politburo members with acting in ways that were tantamount to usurping the powers of chairpersons in provinces where they come from, by directly interfering with the work of the chairpersons, for example, in contravention of the party’s constitution. In the inclusive government Zanu-PF is on an indigenisation and economic empowerment crusade that seeks to position the masses of this country in control of an economy that for decades had remained in the hands of a foreign ruling culture.
It would be a travesty of that party’s enthusiastic empowerment agenda were the economic powers now being vested in the people prevented from cascading to provincial, political party structures to enable leaders to hold sway in party programmes and decision-making processes.
What Zanu-PF is saying to its top brass through Cde Mutasa is that provincial chairmen should not be transformed into political puppets that dance on strings in accordance with manipulations by senior party leaders. If this is allowed to go on — who knows — these provincial leaders might be used by their political superiors as knobkerries to clobber the latter’s political opponents.
Worse still, the people complained of by Cde Mutasa have the potential for creating leaders with one ear and one eye — a clear recipe for dictatorship should such people themselves rise to the helm of this nation’s leadership.
As is already known, a leader who wants other people to see things through his one eye and hear through his one ear is nothing short of a tyrant, and such people are an abomination in the modern world in which we live with democracy as the spool of national and corporate governance. Zanu-PF’s top leadership has of late been talking against the imposition by the party of candidates for election by the povo.
That empowerment move, which is likely to see people committed to serve their community and the country elevated to positions of responsibility, would come to naught if senior party leaders in the Politburo or
Central Committee were not restrained from dictating their authority directly or by remote control through chairmen in their home areas.
In any country where political organisations jockey for power, the most beautiful of these stands to carry the day when all things are considered, for the parties are like beauty queens parading on a ramp and courting the fancy of the audience. As such, a beauty in rags, however glorious these might appear, is unlikely to appeal to anyone’s fancy.
Similarly, a political party whose structures are like rags cannot hope to win the support of the majority of people in a given country. Stated otherwise, a political party is like a human body whose structures — the heart, the liver, lungs, kidneys, and so on — function independently but for the collective survival of a person. If one of these vital organs is diseased and begins to malfunction, the rest of the body, or person, falls sick and is hospitalised for medical care.
Likewise, if one structure of a political party is diseased by unwarranted interference, the whole organisation is rendered dysfunctional and might eventually die as there is no known hospital where a sick political party may be taken for medical care and recuperation.
Political parties are therefore as sensitive as the human body, and where party structures have not held strongly through trying times the political organisation in question slips out of the reckoning as a contender for power. In any case, a party that survives political heat and rides political storms, such as those now existing in Zimbabwe, must of necessity serve as a role model with the behaviour of its leaders acting as a benchmark for the conduct of rival political parties.
This pen believes that by calling for an unfettered administration by provincial chairmen, Cde Mutasa and his party want Zanu-PF, as a revolutionary people’s party, to set an example of how political party affairs should be run for a party to remain strong and a force to be reckoned with by other big and nondescript parties in the land.
After the successful annual people’s national conference a fortnight ago in Bulawayo, Cde Mutasa’s call for non-interference by the top echelons of his party in the affairs of provinces is an important issue of which the party’s leadership must ponder this Christmas for the survival and continued strength of Zanu-PF.
If the party gurus commune with their hearts over Cde Mutasa’s call they will be surprised at how their party grows from strength to strength to supremacy.
Online Reporter