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The 7th Zanu PF National Peoples Congress is fairly obviously the stocktaking for the first term of the Second Republic as well as being the last Congress before the Presidential, Parliamentary and local government elections next year when the party will be contesting every possible seat at every level.
It does not require any inside information to work out that Zanu PF will be going into the elections on its record, especially its record since the advent of the Second Republic.
But it must be using the fact that it is the only political party in Zimbabwe with a large formal and organised membership at the grassroots.
This allows it first to find out exactly what everyone, and especially voters, want to see, and then having the organisation that can turn these desires into reality by electing a President and a Parliamentary majority.
You need both to implement a party programme and manifesto. So you need to know what sort of programmes to adopt, one that can attract support, and you need to mobilise the resulting support.
Its strong internal democracy, whereby the party membership can elect their local leadership and delegates for voting on higher positions, plus the primary system that allows party members to select their candidates for Parliament and local authorities, so weeding out a lot of chancers, gives it a lot of strength, allowing it to renew its team running the party and leading the country automatically.
Here it has an immense advantage over all opposition parties.
The MDC-A still has remnants of the old structures set up in the early 2000s, but without new input, and the CCC has a self-appointed leadership of opposition veterans and former student leaders with no real mandate, and no organised structure, nor even a formal membership, just supporters who have zero say in anything.
So Zanu PF is well ahead for a start. But it obviously needs to do far more than that, and hence the Congress. The very name, National Peoples Congress, summarises succinctly the task before the delegates.
It needs to set and reset national goals, it needs to remember that the people, all the people, count, and as a Congress it needs to ensure that the goals reflect what the people want and need.
And the party needs to rejuvenate itself, and become more and more a party that stands as a modern political movement, ready to move the country forward, rather than as the party that won independence, important as that was.
This has been a hallmark of the Second Republic Government. For a start those who were involved in the political and armed struggles are now a modest minority, and even then tend to be from the junior levels who resumed their interrupted education full time or part time after independence, and made their mark outside the political arena before going back into politics.
A larger group are the technocratic element, people who were schoolchildren on independence day, used the education opportunities the post-independence Government granted as a right, showed high levels of merit, and, critically when it came to being tapped by President Mnangagwa for high office, had made their mark by being very successful in doing something seriously practical in the wider world.
While the President felt that higher education was useful, the practical applications of that education impressed him more.
And over the life of the Second Republic there has been recruiting of the “freeborn” those born after independence, again properly educated, but again those who have made a mark in the wider society.
The party itself recognises this same need for moving the new generations up, and this process will obviously accelerate over the next few years. The generation change is already evident.
Since the youngest combat veteran of the liberation war turns 60 by the end of this year, since there were no child soldiers, over the next five years those still in the defence forces and the civil service will be retiring.
Many will still be active and fit, mentally and physically, but their roles change. This must have been one of the reasons for introducing the War Veterans League into Zanu PF, formalising and recognising their new roles, but also recognising that these new roles will be different for most.
So Zanu PF has already recognised, and this is easy with its large membership and internal democracy, that new generations who were not involved in the struggle against colonial settler regimes, and who were too young to fight, are now moving into the limelight, and that it is probable a majority of voters might have been born after independence.
In fact next year’s election will probably see a few voters whose parents are counted among the “freeborn” and who married young.
So the record of the Second Republic, especially the economic growth and the largely successful effort to ensure that this growth includes all, rather than pretending the wealth of the rich will “trickle down”, which is rare and uncertain.
We will move into that desired future of an upper-middle income country by ensuring that the people who will live in it will be upper-middle income as individuals.
And that can only happen because the Government has ensured that the opportunities are there in practice as well as theory, and that because the people have the actual tools they need to work for their own uplift.
This is the whole point of the Second Republic’s policy. You build the dams, the roads, the power stations, the colleges, equip the hospitals, put in place extremely practical programmes so farmers, for example, can access the inputs and technology they need, and then ensure people can reap the rewards of their labour and of applying their skills.
Do that and we can rise together. It sounds simple but putting that into practice has involved a lot of exceptionally hard work and very clear leadership.
While improving social services and the needed safety nets, that is just seen as something you have to do.
More important is to make very sure that the people you educate and train and keep healthy have access to the infrastructure and the tools, in the widest sense of that word, that they need and then let them get on with it. And make sure that this includes everyone, in practice as well as theory.
That is the record of the Second Republic, that is what this Congress has to entrench for the future, and that is what will win it majority support next year.
As the President himself stresses and practices, people want action, not promises, and certainly not lectures.
Intensifying what you do, rather than what you say, and making sure what you do is what is wanted and needed, and is inclusive, is how our oldest political party will remain connected to the people and relevant to the new generations.
Online Reporter