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FORMER Vice President Joice Mujuru on Monday virtually announced her re-entry into mainstream politics by releasing her political group’s manifesto dubbed, “Blueprint to Unlock Investment and Leverage for Development (Build)”. Mujuru – viewed as the de-facto leader of a coterie of disgruntled former Zanu-PF senior officials who have coalesced around an outfit called “People First” – penned a two-page statement which was published in two privately-owned and opposition leaning newspapers yesterday.
In it, the former VP – who along with her putschist cabal which included former Zanu-PF secretary for administration Didymus Mutasa and spokesman Rugare Gumbo was expelled for plotting to oust President Robert Mugabe from power in the run up to last December’s Congress – outlined her group’s vision for Zimbabwe and how they hope to tackle the country’s various socio-economic and political challenges.
Mujuru’s statement, which was full of policy departures from a party she joined as a teenager when she took up arms during the liberation struggle and later served with gusto as a cabinet minister since independence in 1980, was a stunning volte face and betrayed her bitterness and revulsion at being exposed and discarded by Zanu-PF.
All along Zimbabweans had assumed the former VP had taken her fall from grace with dignity and was quietly licking her wounds from the sidelines. Given that she had also hardly expressed her views on the People First project and was non-committal when asked about her links to it, most people were of the opinion that Mujuru was taking her punishment from the ruling party and would in due course apologise for her indiscretions with the hope of rekindling her political career. But how wrong they were!
It appears the former VP and her Gamatox cabal has been plotting an entry into the jungles of opposition politics and her statement on Monday was a declaration of intent to challenge the party which gave them succor and comfort for the better part of their lives.
The message in the statement rings hollow considering that it is coming from people considered to be the bad apples of the pre-December congress Zanu-PF. The Mujuru cabal – which had almost seized control of the party’s structures countrywide – was corrupt to the core and had amassed wealth on the back of extortion, bribery and other underhand dealings. It used that wealth to good effect – buying its way into power in the party’s various organs. Were it not for the astute leadership of Cde Mugabe, they would have succeeded in executing their nefarious plan with disastrous consequences for the country.
We are glad that they were exposed for who they are on time and measures taken to ensure that they do not see through their designs to usurp power unconstitutionally.
As for their so-called Build, it should be dismissed as an insincere document whose authors cannot by any stretch of imagination be linked to it.
In fact it sounds more like a reincarnation of the MDC-T’s JUICE economic blueprint which was full of high sounding rhetoric but thin on substance and real solutions to the country’s multi-faceted economic challenges.
Like JUICE, Build claims that there would be a wholesale review of the Indigenisation Act while on land, it says that all people who called Zimbabwe “home” shall be entitled to access land and participate in its sustainable utilisation.
This is hypocrisy of the worst order as Mujuru and her group were active participants in the crafting of indigenisation laws and to date are still some of the biggest landowners in Zimbabwe – thanks to their greed and grabbing of large chunks of farmland previously owned by whites.
It is difficult to fathom when exactly they experienced their Damascene moment to the extent that they now fashion themselves as later day democrats.
Explaining for the first time in detail what People First stood for, Mujuru said, “We’re national democrats, guided by the values of the liberation struggle, of self-determination, self-dignity, self-pride, expressed through the adoption of market-driven policies under a constitutional democracy, with the State acting as a facilitator and regulator to allow for a level playing field and to provide equal opportunities for all”.
What utter hogwash. The People First project is a collection of failed politicians from Zanu-PF who after being booted out of the revolutionary party, are now behaving like rejected spouses and spewing all manner of vitriol at their erstwhile comrades.
They are pretending to be democrats to elicit the sympathy of Zimbabweans but history will record that they were ousted from their positions due to greed and failure to follow laid down processes in seeking to wrest power from President Mugabe.
Their project is therefore doomed to fail because for starters, they cannot even relate to the manifesto they churned out to Zimbabweans on Monday.
Online Reporter