adminTemba Dube Senior Reporter
INFORMATION, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo has revealed the secret behind Zanu-PF’s crushing victory in last year’s July 31 hamornised elections.President Mugabe routed MDC-T’s Morgan Tsvangirai by about one million votes for the Presidency, while Zanu-PF won 160 National Assembly seats against MDC-T’s 49, with the remaining seat going to prominent lawyer, Jonathan Samukange, who stood as an independent.
MDC-T dismissed the poll outcome alleging widespread rigging by Zanu-PF.
Addressing journalists at the Bulawayo Press Club on Thursday, Prof Moyo said a thorough understanding of political science and history assisted Zanu-PF to get the edge over other political parties.
Prof Moyo, who is a political scientist, said all countries had political cycles that when studied, showed a trend.
He said Zimbabwe had a political cycle of 15 years – give or take three years, the more recent distinct ones lasting from 1965 to 1980, then 1980 to 1995-98 and 1998 to the 2013 harmonised elections.
“I want to suggest to you that although, especially our colleagues who do the natural sciences and so forth, tend to view politics as unscientific, as something that just happens – they do thega (happens accidentally) in politics. Actually, there is more order to politics than that,” said Prof Moyo.
“As a matter of fact, politics is actually scientific. And anything that is scientific that has order requires some scheme to explain it. You need some kind of a schematic model to explain what is happening so that you can have a reasonable chance to predict what will happen and not be one of those who is left wondering what is happening, or what has happened, even worse.”
He suggested each political cycle was governed by key aspirations of the moment and key challenges that could be isolated.
“You know that from 1965 to 1980, we had a 15-year cycle protracted armed liberation struggle and you know what the issues were. I would like to suggest that that 15-year cycle was speaking to quite a longer period about our colonisation . . .” said Prof Moyo.
He said the six key issues in the struggle were the need to reassert unity of the people, address the wealth of the nation, deal with the poverty gap or inequality that existed – which was largely racial, restore and reaffirm the country’s democracy as there was no democracy in the UDI, establish order and stability and assert national sovereignty.
Prof Moyo said the slogan “Zimbabwe will never be a colony again’’ supported the case for sovereignty. He said from 1980 to 1998, key aspirations included unifying the liberation movements, Zanla and Zipra, and consolidating independence.
“There were two challenges. One was the existence of the apartheid state, an external challenge that had domestic consequences. The other one was the Gukurahundi disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands which made it very difficult to consolidate these liberation movements as well as consolidate our sovereignty,” said Prof Moyo.
He said the major challenge between 1998 and 2012 was addressing the major grievance that was not addressed in the first 15 years – the land reform aspiration.
Prof Moyo said during the period, people spoke politics but owned nothing except politics.
“What opened our eyes was when donors under the auspices of Britain in 1998 convened and renounced the Lancaster House commitment that basically said there should be radical land reform in Zimbabwe. It was followed by hondo yeminda, which resulted in a majority of our people living off the land,” he said.
Prof Moyo said after 1998, the country faced threats from the regime change agenda and sanctions, leading to an exciting situation after the harmonised elections, reminiscent of 1980.
He said consolidation of policy implementation, which was not prominent in the first two cycles, came to the fore in the last election.
“Zanu-PF spent a lot of time looking into the future and demographics to come up with an empirically grounded manifesto looking forward into the entire 15- year cycle.
He said the country had now replaced talk of political sovereignty with actions to achieve sovereignty over its resources and application of a knowledge based strategy to build the country, in the economic turnaround blueprint, ZimAsset.
Prof Moyo said the country was back to a period reminiscent of 1980, where big and wonderful things were possible.
He said there was a need to engage the skills generation and recall the skilled people who left for the diaspora, while ending polarisation that was engendered by the media and uniting to build a better Zimbabwe.
Online Reporter