The Casino politics of my motherland

By Courage Shumba and Madock Chivasa

We have deep and profound fears for Zimbabwe. In the absence of a reassuring past we are troubled about the future, and the great struggle that we might abort, as we seek comfort and accommodation perhaps even peace in complicity and silence. 

We are at risk of becoming a casino people , a gambling nation , a people to whom nothing is ever too much, for whom there are no boundaries, a humiliated and defeated congregation. After our last instalment, we had reason to think, to wonder what it would take for our country to wake up to the “what” not “who” politics – to be liberated in the head, to vote according to ideas, to make ideas the basis, the lifeblood, the core value, significance and mantra of our politics.

We are a people that live for today. We are incrementally becoming indifferent to choice and quality. We are comforted when electricity bounces back after some several hours of load shedding, compliant when the taps drip out some dirty, filthy water for some few hours, happy when the diesel queues are not as long as they used to be, or if that US dollar is back in supply. Our indifference has been hardened by fear and ignorance. We live in fear because those who rule us are blind to our problems and their reaction to our demands for better livelihoods are brutal, physical and forceful.

We are happy if elections go without too much bloodshed, without too much violence. We are happy if the police do not storm into a community meeting, a party headquarters, a civil society workshop and load citizens into trucks and hold them prisoner for months on end without trial.

We are under a government that is uneasy about a free people, at war with the idea of genuine liberation and system that believes its survival lies in less not more choice for the people. We are under an administration that can no longer see its beautiful side, one that is sure of the anger ,rejection and resentment around it.

We are slowly forgetting that we are owed a duty to be governed well, predictably and respectfully.

That is the point we made last week to the chagrin and discomfort of a few. Zimbabwe needs to run away, as fast as its weak legs can escort it out of the captivity of political deities, little human gods, infallibale ,irreplaceable characters of the type we think cannot be replaced.

We need to look at Zimbabwe with a fresh pair of eyes and we need to be a demanding people who refuse to be passengers if the details of the journey are not clear. We have been taken for a ride, for mugs just looking at what remains of what used to be a thriving, proud and decent people.

If it was suggested that we people have diamonds, have gold, have chrome, copper, we have fertile large lands, we have nice occasions of rain, and sunshine, that we have a magnet of rare animals including birds, we have wonderful rare caves, ruins and waterfalls and that you are a hard-working and resilient people.

That you have energy experts among you. You have medical consultants of the highest grade. All the above and you are a borrowing, begging nation, running without shame from America to China, bragging about who you now borrow from. “We are looking East” they boast, unnerved by the content and the realities of size of mind that continues to borrow when its feet are standing on fortunes of encouraging magnitude.

This foolish government reckons its about looking East or West, about some Samaritan nation or neighbours out there. Some people whose duty is to give us what we eat. It never happens that the Samaritans can be us. Its never about looking up to the rains, ( thats how you feed), up to the sky for solar energy, (how you light your homes) and down for the minerals (how you finance development), the attractions (how you get tourism). There are no Samaritans to wait for the money is here in Zimbabwe you scroungers!!

Our country needs ideas based on our reality, our size as a country, our competition, our strategic advantages, our unique regional solidarity and in our advantage over some within our own region. We need a politics that is informed by knowledge and unrepentant patriotism. We need politics that creates and maintains friends in our region and the world without compromising that in Zimbabwe the welfare of the citizen of this country is paramount and overriding.

We want to build a Zimbabwe we believe in, a home, a paradise, a land of opportunity. We want to see a country that is free, democratic and whose people can achieve their dreams. We want a state that looks after the elderly, that inspires the young, that supports innovation, that encourages diversity and competition. We need a country that is fair to its people, that is rewarding of hard work, yet alive with fun, with family traditions, a happy people .

We have had a bad and uncomfortable experience in this country for too long, in fact anybody born after 1990 knows no better than the misery and mishap of a government of excuses. Our people do not live on excuses. What we want for our country is progress, stability, security, peace. What we need to do as as a people is to give ideas a chance.

We believe that Prof Lovemore Madhuku has the vision, the hunger, the energy and thirst to turn around the fortunes of our great, great country and make Zimbabwe a dream that can be lived. We believe that the NCA Party is the ideal candidate for what is essentially a vacated government.

Courage Shumba and Madock Chivasa have written this article in their personal capacities