Creatures at the top

Perspective Stephen Mpofu
In the young years of independence in the 1980s, when the fledgling new state of Zimbabwe was tinkering as it were with Socialism — in tune with socialist states that had helped with the prosecution of the freedom struggle — the ruling Zanu-PF introduced a code under which government leaders were required to declare their assets.

However, some leaders would have none of the ethical code, as Shakespeare would say.

Enraged by this defiance, Cde Mugabe, then as Prime Minister, denounced the rebels as “creatures at the top” who preferred a pursuit of wealth rather than obey the injunction meant to mark a radical departure from oppressive, Rhodesian colonial rule under which whites would not share and share alike the wealth of this country with the majority black population.

Concerned more with steering the country away from a narrow path of self interest by whites and to a broad revolutionary order of things, the party in power apparently eschewed any punitive measures that might have disqualified from government service those officials who thumbed their nose at the leadership code.

One might suggest that the powers that be forgave the anti-code fortune-seekers in hopes that in time when, as it was hoped, a Socialist state would be fully established, everyone in the service of the ruling party and the government would embrace the code as a guide for all who sought high office.

As it turns out now, however, Zanu-PF appears to have lost it there, and lost it badly as the corruption, the rot, would in future ramify to grotesque proportions in our society, witness vote-buying, factionalism and probably worst of all, some officials reportedly supping with the sworn enemy of both their party and government while shining enemy daggers are drawn at them.

Obviously, denunciation by the top Zanu-PF leadership of factionalism and the use of money as a medium for rising to office are coming too late and not likely to achieve much as the corruption appears deeply embedded in our society today.

This pen believes that the corruption should have been nipped in the bud as it were when it first reared its ugly head soon after independence.

Strong disciplinary action should have been taken against those with a tendency of defying party rules and regulations by destroying their politicalness — the substance that continued to lure innocent  people to retain these leaders in office or to elect new ones with kindred tendencies, believing they were the right succulent fruit that sent their mouths watering.

That this was not done, was akin to keeping, or putting a fruit which has started to rot in the fridge, in hopes of reversing the corruption.

But of course, refrigerating rotting fruit never ever arrests the decay nor its putrification either.

Thus continuing to retain membership of offending party cadres, is like refrigerating fruits that are wont in time to contaminate fresh healthy fruit that they come into contact with.

Giving congenital party offenders short shrift appears, in this pen’s humble opinion, to be the right way of protecting party, government and state loyalists from the defiling behaviour of recalcitrant rebels.

What is worse, such people remain as potential Trojan horses who might smuggle the enemy into the country to effect regime change, or sabotage state institutions in a bid to reduce Zimbabwe into a failed state for all to laugh at.

For instance, is it not a tragic irony for any  party or government leader in Zimbabwe openly to seek money for economic development from a country that has declared that it wants the economy of this country “to scream” in order to effect regime change?

Is it any wonder therefore that political leaders who have clearly become irrelevant in this  country are taking advantage of the confusion brought about by factionalism and vote buying in the ruling party  to try to organise demonstrations, which might turn to violent, in the  belief that such moves  will tell the world they are still forces to be reckoned with?

Zanu-PF should put its foot down hard and rid itself of political weeds hibernating as a genuine crop to pave a clean path to a successful congress in December.

Zim-Asset  has put Zimbabwe on the threshold of a bold new future the achievement of which will be contingent upon a yoke of oxen pulling together and not one of oxen and donkeys with divergent interests or commitments.

Which essentially means that it is critically important to have  a lean clean team of ruling party stalwarts and patriots serving the motherland than to be burdened with a conglomeration of self seeking leaders with little or no interest in povo at heart.