malvernmugadzikwa
THIS is it!
This week will be another page-turning moment in the storied, colourful and tortuous history of Zimbabwe, as more than 6,6 million voters will exercise their prerogative to choose public office bearers who will shape and influence our lives and livelihoods for the next five years.
Elections have to be taken for what they truly are — a sacred democratic ritual that can make or break a people, nation and polity.
You see, governance, whose mandate is derived from elections, is a preponderantly onerous responsibility that directly impacts on people’s lives.
Singapore’s founder and influential leader Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) — who is considered one of the most consequential and visionary leaders of the 20th century, together with other luminaries such as Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s economic miracle — fell short of calling it existential.
In his famous political campaign rally speech before the December 23,1980 general election, LKY said something that rings true to this day.
“Whoever governs Singapore,” he said, “must have that iron in him or give it up. This is not a game of cards! This is your life and mine . . .”
In countries such as Zimbabwe, where the bullet brought the ballot, elections will and can never be a game of cards.
Sterner stuff
Bishop Lazarus told you some
time back that this week’s election is extraordinarily stacked against the opposition, especially considering developments over the past 1 821 days of ED’s presidency.
The same craft-literacy and craft-competence he has used to establish solid pillars and foundations of a fast-growing economy and modernising State, which we see today, have also been used to reconfigure the ruling party, ZANU PF, into a united and fiercely efficient political machine.
For more than a year, the party has been more than prepared for Wednesday’s watershed plebiscite on the future of Zimbabwe.
Was it not on October 28 last year when ED told the revolutionary party’s Congress that “ZANU PF is ready”?
“Our systems are oiled. Election materials and resources are in place to mount a roaring campaign for a thunderous victory of our party. The people’s revolution is ongoing and unstoppable,” he said.
This explains the swashbuckling and suave political campaign we have been witnessing this year.
But the opposition, which clearly seems to lack the wherewithal to mount a meaningful campaign, has been limping.
The optics from Nelson Chamisa and CCC’s campaign trail — considered the only notable challengers after barely managing to field candidates in all 210 National Assembly constituencies — must be nothing more than enervating for even its most ardent supporters.
They have resigned themselves to address supporters from the back of lorries and against the backdrop of diabolically improvised décor.
This is a sad indictment for a political party that pivots its campaign promise of modernising Zimbabwe on “bullet trains” and “spaghetti roads”.
And the messaging and turnout have been as lukewarm as they have been disappointing.
Luke 6: 43-44 teaches us: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognised by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.”
With nothing to energise its base, particularly after the Government stepped in to rein in the engineered ruinous and destabilising volatility in the financial markets after the proclamation of the election date, CCC’s campaign has wobbled.
Such chinks in the opposition’s armour might prove fatal in a duel against a re-energised consummate gladiator like ZANU PF.
English playwright William Shakespeare’s character Julius Caesar once said “ambition should be made of sterner stuff”, but we have not seen any from the opposition.
Omens
The omens are also not looking good for the opposition.
Some time back, we were told that “winds of change” that were blowing in the region, which had resulted in regime change in some regional countries, would naturally be accompanied by an encouraging change of fortune that would motivate the electorate in Zimbabwe to do a number on ZANU PF.
But, as Bishop Lazi writes this, the said countries, which he will not name out of decorum and decency, are variously
grappling with fuel and mealie meal shortages, among other cost-of-living crises, notwithstanding the financial support they got from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during Covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war.
Some of them have even received millions from these two institutions, but this has not fundamentally changed their wretched circumstances.
Yet Zimbabwe, a country that has been under sanctions for the past 23 years and cut off from the global financial system, boasts granaries that are full of locally grown maize and wheat.
It is even now exporting to countries that are in need, as another humper harvest beckons.
And not only is Zimbabwe’s economy one of the fastest growing on the continent, it has also managed to finance an ambitious infrastructure development programme that has resulted in some world-class signature projects.
All this is likely to temper the protest vote, which has been the opposition’s lifeblood for the past two decades.
It is not hunky-dory, but Zimbabwe clearly has a good thing going.
It gives credence to Bishop Lazi’s previous assertion that mindlessly changing leadership is not the solution to extricating Africa from the vicious circle of poverty, underdevelopment, disease, hopelessness and death.
If it was, then Ghana — a country that has had 12 leaders since its independence on March 6, 1956 — would have been more developed and prosperous than China, which has had seven leaders after Mao Zedong.
Africa’s challenges cannot be solved by those who authored them, least of all their quislings.
Instead, the solution is in making our resources — of which we have plenty — work for us; the same way ED has leveraged on mining and agriculture to support growth without assistance from the IMF and the World Bank.
Italy Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni could not have been clearer in her interview with America’s Fox News on July 31 when she said: “Africa is not a poor continent; it’s not. It is a continent that has many, many resources; moreover, rare art, metals, raw materials, 50 percent of arable lands . . . And Africa today is the victim of many external spoilers that work against its stability . . .”
Clear choices
So, this week, we have clear choices to make.
We have to choose between craft-literacy and craft-competence, honed through years in the political trenches, and amateurish politics with perilously scant knowledge of the inner workings of the world.
We have to choose between more of the same — food security, roadworks, clinics, schools, irrigation schemes — and an uncertain future.
We also have to choose between self-determination, being the judicious use of our resources, to sponsor our own development, or an unproductive relationship in the “loving arms” of the IMF and World Bank.
The progress that has been realised in the past five years, regardless of the ill will and hostility from the West, is hard to ignore and easy to grudgingly acknowledge.
In an interview last year with Trevor Ncube, the proprietor of the Chamisa-aligned newspaper titles, firebrand Margaret Dongo was typically forthright: “Talking about where the country is today, between you and me, let’s be honest here, more than 30 years had gone down the drain. If what is happening today, which is only three years, had been done in 40 years, would we not be a Dubai?”
Bishop Out!
Online Reporter