We have an opposition that celebrates Western sycophancy in Zim

Ranga Mataire Group Political Editor

We are coming to the end of a dramatic year, in which countries started emerging from a ravaging Covid-19 pandemic to face the same challenges. 

From climate change, the Russia and Ukraine war, drug abuse, the World Cup and its share of politics. 

In Zimbabwe, politics still dominate the public discourse. It’s a staple diet that feeds into people’s anxieties, aspirations and even private relationships. 

A peep into social media reveals a frightening dichotomy of frenzied diatribes against political opponents. It appears no one listens to anyone. 

You are either this side or that side, and each side claims legitimacy and sobriety over the other. 

By the look of it, something is always lost in the narrative. It’s almost like a rat-race, and hard for the uninitiated to select substance from bluster. 

It’s bewildering that some things that appear so obvious and wrong are given new meaning. 

Take, for example, Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) deputy spokesperson, Gift Ostallos Siziba. Supporters regard him as one of the brightest minds. 

When he got to introduce Barack Obama at an event of the Obama Democracy Foundation in Washington DC, a few weeks ago, he was hailed as a movie star.

For those who have read on America’s role in supporting the white settler regime in Zimbabwe, and those aware with the US’s current disruptive interference in the world, Siziba’s waxing lyrical on Obama was diplomatic naiveté. 

None of the CCC supporters saw anything politically suicidal in presenting the USA as the paragon of virtue. 

Here is the spokesman of a party still struggling to shake off its image as a Western stooge, on a foreign stage, unable to even pretend that the label is unfair. 

Let’s dissect why the opposition party no longer feels ashamed to be seen to be kowtowing to the political whims of America. 

The first reality that has struck the opposition is the awareness of their assured electoral defeat in the 2023 elections. 

They know that voters have decided that no way under the sun can a party so publicly eager to roll back the liberation map wake up as the governing party. 

Conscious of this assured electoral clobbering, the CCC sees an avenue, as they have done before, of self-enrichment through financial donations from their Western backers. 

They must be seen to be doing something to appease the benefactors. Sadly, the majority of CCC supporters are not aware that the people they follow are in it for personal gain. 

It’s never about the public interest or public good but lining their pockets. 

The CCC is aware of the odds that confront them in the impending elections. 

Financially and structurally threadbare, the opposition is in a quandary. It has cast aside all pretence of being a democratic alternative and are now resorting to unashamedly waxing lyrical an American administration, whose sanctions in Zimbabwe have caused untold suffering to ordinary citizens. 

Glamourising Siziba’s bootlicking exposes a serious lack of historical consciousness. 

One would expect our young people to be the repository of historical consciousness but, alas, we have them brown-nosing a major threat to a fair, just and democratic global order. 

Historical consciousness empowers people’s understanding of how the past, present and the future relate to each other in history. 

This consciousness is deficient in the CCC leaders and their supporters, a hazard in a country that has been a liberation torch-bearer in the SADC region and beyond.

We have always been told that the young represent the future, but what happens when the future appears to die in the present for a few trinkets?

During his presidency, Obama approved the use of 563 drone strikes that killed approximately 3 797 people. 

In fact, Obama authorised 54 drone strikes in Pakistan during his first year in office. 

One of the CIA drone strikes under President Obama was at a funeral, murdering as many as 41 Pakistani civilians.

The following year, Obama led 128 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan that killed at least 89 civilians. 

What political wisdom informed Siziba to think that his party derives political capital in being associated with such an individual? 

At a time, African leaders are calling for sanctions on Zimbabwe to end, here is an opposition official in the belly of America, offering tacit endorsement for what Africans are against. 

What are these African leaders to think, when CCC next knocks on their doors for an audience? 

There is a reason for all this.

This is a political organisation without a constitution, structures, and an accountable leadership. It has no consciousness, no policy, and no vision. Its entire policy is whatever its leader says at a rally. 

A party with consciousness would know all this. It would empower individuals to realise the folly of praising America on a foreign stage, confirming all the accusations of puppetry. 

But this is not that sort of party, and we must expect more own goals, which ZANU PF will gladly receive with both hands.