adminStephen Mpofu
During his interview with the ZBC on the eve of his 90th birthday, President Mugabe spoke at length about succession at the top State job in our nation and its attendant qualifications and qualities.
He denounced politicians who arrogate unto themselves leadership in provincial domains as functional gurus, thereby pushing into the shade provincial chairpersons of their party who are rightfully the superintendents of affairs in those areas.
The President spoke against factionalism with such clarity as to ensure that the culprits would not feign any ambiguity and continue to indulge in what is indisputably a culture of impunity.
While the President’s reproach of factionalists was still ringing in everyone’s ears, the provincial party leadership in Manicaland also came out, guns blazing, against proponents of factionalism who put butter on the President in public while talking ill of him in private. However, these people took cover in their anonymity since they were not named.
In the interview, Cde Mugabe outlined the political standing of a leader with aspirations to succeed him at the helm of the nation when the time for succession becomes propitious.
That person should boast a political leadership mettle that endears the presidential candidate to everyone, or, put in other words, a man or woman of the people, all of the people in Zimbabwe.
Perhaps stated even more succinctly by this pen, Zimbabweans look for unifying leadership qualities of the kind demonstrated by President Robert Mugabe and by the late Vice President Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo and Simon Vengai Muzenda respectively. This pen can also mention the leadership qualities of Jesus Christ who as God in the flesh of a Jew embraced Samaritans instead of discriminating against them for not being God’s chosen people, like the Jews.
Surely, by this example did Christ set an example for humanity, never to discriminate one another on the basis of tribal differences. Indeed, Christians from different denominations who fellowship as one flock may be said to consummate Christ’s example of the oneness of people whatever their ethnic differences.
Factionalism at the provincial level may be likened to a stream that feeds its filthy water into a river polluting it in the process with tribalism whose consequences at the national level are always ghastly to contemplate, witness the internecine violence that has rendered the new African state of South Sudan virtually ungovernable.
Are those who promote factionalism in Zimbabwe for political aggrandisement so daft, or so blindly hell-bent they do not realise they are playing with fire, like mindless
children and could set this beautiful country of ours ablaze and reduce it to cinders politically as it were?
Or do they possess chicken brains that the wise saying “United we stand, divided we fall” does not ring true in their ears as they desire to go to State House riding on the back of factionalism or of tribalism or astride both backs?
If truth be told, such leaders, should they accidentally accede to power, will remain mired in one place, their favourite tribal or factional domain, unable or afraid to set foot in areas they consider hostile to them by not being factional-or tribal-friendly.
Zimbabwe – indeed, like any other country -needs a leader who will marshal all of his people into a vibrant state with an economy propelled by vast mineral resources, such as diamonds which our good God kept hidden in earth’s belly while colonial exploiters reigned supreme, and then delivered these gems to us at independence so that Zimbabweans might use them to overcome their impoverishment, grinding as it is in some cases, and be a nation to be reckoned with by more economically advanced countries in our global village.
Online Reporter