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and minds of voters.
But beware! While the colours of ideas and promises flighted by those vying for election might catch the eye or appeal to an eager ear, there is no guarantee that they will not fast after just a few washes, or that they will stand the heat from the electorate to deliver on the grand promises made in the run-up to the polls when the ballot boxes have been emptied and stored away and the public hold their breath and cross their fingers as they wait to see real evidence of the stuff of which the new MPs and of Government are made of.
But after 32 years of independence with many elections in between, Zimbabwean voters should be more experienced by now to know that not all candidates who make grandiose promises live up to their word and are therefore like an old car that has exhausted its life span.
You may dress it up in a new coat of paint, or even fit in imported parts, but it will not deliver the needs of the people as long and as well as it should. It remains a jalopy, a sikhorokoro which cannot be relied upon whether resprayed to give it a new look or fitted with imported spare parts from developed countries.
To be sure, there are so many political jalopies parked in the garages of some political parties that vie for election to Parliament and to rule this country, but remain bereft of any tangible evidence they will raise the country to a new level of development not as yet attained under the revolution that emancipated Zimbabwe from foreign rule.
So it will not at all advance the revolution much further if people are hoodwinked by leaders who claim to love Zimbabwe, but rely at the same time on the enemies of this country to help them give Zimbabweans a better new future. To truly love Zimbabwe is to do those things that vindicate the love that a leader or a political party claims to possess for the country.
To not do so is not to love one’s country, but is merely to have a feeling that does not translate into something concrete on the ground. Yet a political party exists in this country whose leaders have demonstratively worked tirelessly since independence to show Zimbabweans just how much their party and its leaders truly love the country. Yes, some people reading this article might already be wagging angry fingers and accusing this pen of rooting out for Zanu-PF. However, any similarities between the calibre, foresight and people-oriented approach to development that the pen urges voters to consider and Zanu-PF are a mere coincidence.
But any party whose developmental thrust is people-oriented and therefore coincides with a portraiture of the work that Zanu-PF as a ruling party has done for its country before the inclusive Government came into place in 2009, deserves to be given the right to govern this country by people voting also with their feet.
To ever expect foreigners to create jobs for people they have shackled with sanctions is something that simply will not wash. Or if they do fork out their money to invest in the country they will demand a pound of flesh in return — and that is bound to exacerbate poverty to more grinding levels with this country’s diamonds embargoed internationally and land the source of all foreign evil against the party that brought independence to Zimbabwe.
For instance, is it not a tragic irony that the British government and its ilk continue to dig in their heels against land reform, which has given our people a brave new lease of hope, when British researchers have given the agrarian reform programme the thumbs up?
A study by the United Kingdom’s Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University endorsed the land reform programme. Professor Ian Scoones, lead author of the study told BBC News a few months ago that he was genuinely surprised to see much activity during the year study conducted mainly in Masvingo Province.
People were getting on with things in difficult circumstances and doing remarkably well.
What land reform demonstrates is that home-grown ideas will effectively transform the lives of indigenous people even without injection of foreign capital into other such life — changing projects as indigenisation and economic empowerment.
Moreover, foreigners investing in such domestic people-friendly programmes will nearly always insist on their own people, expatriates, overseeing the expenditure of any funds given. Such foreign supervision in itself robs indigenous people of the right and authority to shape their own destiny in the way they want.
Perhaps, Zimbabweans need to be reminded of the reaction of Western donors to the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme or Esap in the early years of independence as the Government strove to improve the economy for the benefit of our people.
Some donors obscenely asked the Zanu-PF Government to draw water in perforated cans as its part of the bargain before any donor funding could be dropped into the hat. The thesis of this discourse should be read to suggest that while foreign aid might all be very well, it almost always is accompanied with conditionalities that amount to a noose intended to strangle an unsuspecting recipient.
The writer is the former editor of Chronicle.
Online Reporter