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Stephen Mpofu
It is nearly all systems go — but GO differently, or so it seems if cantankerous antics exhibited by some opposition political power-connoisseurs are anything to go by.
It is all about the rural-revolutionary 10 letter concept, devolution, which is now certain to spring into action and in the process transform the rural set up where Zimbabwe’s majority lives, in some cases eking out a meagre existence with many, young-bodied men and women leaving the motherland to seek “better lives” in countries across borders where some of them have become victims of xenophobia in addition to rendering slave-like labour for a pittance.
Four days ago, the Government took a move to effect what all regions craving equal development have waited for so long. Cabinet approved the principles of the Provincial Councils and Amendment Bill which spells out the mechanisms of decentralisation and devolution.
The deputisation of central government power to provincial levels should see a renaissance in the development of rural areas, pejoratively described by colonial powers as the Periphery and by some blacks as “the sticks” with the transformation putting Zimbabwe on a fast track towards a brave new future developmentally, barring opposition political hawks from pouncing on the programme to try to satiate their power hunger by dividing provincial councils and areas they run after failing to win the July 30 harmonised elections.
That parliament adjourned prematurely on Tuesday last week after MDC Chief Whip Mr Prosper Mutseyami caused a furore by claiming that MDC-T Alliance leader Mr Nelson Chamisa won the July 30 Presidential vote against Cde Emmerson Mnangagwa, could just be the tip of an iceberg of the spanners that the opposition might throw into the devolutionary works to divide the people against each other politically and in that way derail the new programme.
In fact, Mr Chamisa’s spokesperson, Dr Nkululeko Sibanda, was heard saying on the Voice of America radio not so long ago, after the harmonised elections, that his party would play a big role in councils during devolution.
However, he did not elaborate whether that role would be to unite rural populations across the political divide for unimpeded development as one people.
A lack of clarity in that respect is wont to lead to speculation that the people in the various regions where his party would be active will work like a span of oxen and donkeys tilling the land with each kind doing what they know best on the succulent green turf along the way with the plough leaving behind ugly banks on which weeds grow to stunt or altogether ruin the crop — the nation — with the same colour, the same flowers and the same fruit.
The development of all rural areas is key to producing raw materials for the manufacture of products now being imported with the result that the majority of Zimbabweans are living hard lives by being made to pay through the nose and in foreign currencies not readily available in the country for goods that they need for their livelihood.
Yet political popularity and power should derive from policies intended to transform lives as well as from united and happy followers.
Today, if one keeps one’s ear to the ground, loud grouses – and justified ones at that — are to be heard from people saying that their regions or provinces are lagging behind in economic and social development because there are no local bigwigs in the country’s top political apparatus to spearhead development in their areas — an inference to regionalism or tribalism by the powers that be.
Now, if one needs any political magic wand to unite the people of Zimbabwe and coral them along one national developmental and emancipatory path into the future as one people, it appears to this pen to be DEVOLUTION.
Any political party trying to divide people for its own existence by, for instance, creating parallel power structures that are ultra vires the Zimbabwean constitution, as the political opposition has attempted to do after losing the harmonised elections, is doomed to failure, whether maverick political players in Zimbabwe like it or not.
Go devolution go-o-o.
derick.khumalo