Elections: What’s new in the game?

becomes an apparent pointer to some of the policies that political parties are offering the electorate.
With the nation currently grappling with the shortage of water treatment chemicals together with the ever deteriorating power supply regime and the impending food shortages among other sanctions induced challenges, why would one think sexual needs of prisoners matter?

Inasmuch as it is imponderable as to how a whole senator would consider prisoners’ sexual rights to be of optimum national importance, this line of thinking, however, betrays a politician who belongs to a political party with no firm ideology.
Looking at the MDC-T, one will be forgiven for fumbling and failing to pinpoint the policies it is offering to the electorate. Except for the frequent sexual innuendos from its legislators and the habitual opposition to Zanu-PF policies, the party practically has no viable policies to run the country.

Maybe the party’s “jobs and investment” talk, though opaque, could be deciphered as it is supposed offer to the electorate. This offer was, however, ill-conceived as it was conscientiously mooted to thwart and undo positive developments brought about by Zanu-PF’s indigenisation and empowerment programme.
In this vein, the “jobs and investment” offer would become a capitalist vehicle to reverse benefits derived from the historic economic empowerment programme. It advocates the disempowering of blacks through the creation of more jobs for them while opening up huge investment opportunities for foreign, meaning Western, investors.

Conspicuously, it is envisaged to confine blacks to the periphery of economic activity as the emasculated “hewers of wood and drawers of water”, who will remain mere spectators as foreigners unremittingly siphon their resources to places yonder.
What is sickening about this ill-conceived offer is its blatant disdain of the blacks’ investment capabilities. It views local people as irretrievably unable to control their economy and thus require massive foreign, meaning Western, handholding. The party inauspiciously believes that empowering local people will chase away investors but creating an inexhaustible pool of local labour will attract more Foreign Direct Investments.

True to the colonial mentality, the MDC-T believes blacks are inherently backward to run their economy and thus should in the meanwhile, concern themselves with peripheral debates on sex and other sexual shenanigans as they await foreign investors to ship away their resources. To them, “the incapable blacks” should be drilled on legalising prostitution and homosexuality, controlling their men’s libido and catering for the sexual needs of their incarcerated compatriots!

This level of ideological emptiness resonates soundly among other political players in the country. Among these vain political actors and actresses, the voters will be forced to consider puerile and comic figures like Job Sikhala of MDC-99 whose penchant for political comedy can only be equalled if not surpassed by the ephemeral Egypt Dzinemunhenzva. These are grown up men who believe that the abrasive game of politics is child’s play.

Furthermore, voters would expectantly have to seriously look at other political parties whose policies are not only divisive but parochial and non-developmental. A sizable number of these parties hail from Matabeleland with Zapu, Mthwakazi Liberation Front and MDC-Ncube being specific examples.
These parties lack ideological depth as they are perennially ensconced with stoking the flames of the unfortunate and regrettable Matabeleland skirmishes of the

1980s. They try to conjure political aberrations like the marginalisation of people from Matabeleland and frivolously clamour for federalism or like Mthwakazi become secessionists.
Their divisive blueprints are patently bereft of any developmental policies. Their talk of marginalisation is puzzling and lacks substance. What is this marginalisation?

I would like to invite these regional politicians to visit my home area of Ngaone in Chipinge.
Ngaone village itself is no better than Entebe in Gwanda. Similarly, Chipinge is no more developed like Gwanda town. Even Mutare, my provincial capital city, like Bulawayo, is besieged by many challenges with some industries closing shop while the remaining ones are struggling to remain on their feet.

At the end of the day it becomes clear that marginalisation is omnipresent in all the ten provinces of the country. It is the bane of being enemies with imperialists. Manifestly, the whole country is “marginalised” as a result of the pervasive and deleterious sanctions. This phenomenon is therefore not peculiar to Matabeleland. Besides all these other parties, voters also have to consider other fickle parties like the Mavambo movement, NDU and other parties whose policies are apparently unknown.

Last but not least, voters have to weigh Zanu-PF’s tangible and people centred empowerment policies. Love it or hate it, the revolutionary party uniquely stands as the only party that has developmental policies aimed at galvanising our country’s integrity and self dependence.

Tendai Moyo is a social commentator.