Exiles have missed the point
By Mutsa Murenje
I am very worried dear Zimbabweans. Yes, very worried about the jeers that the Prime Minister received from exiled Zimbabweans when he made a clarion call for them to start considering returning home. It appears to me that these exiles have apparently forgotten the critical fact that it is our patriotic duty to serve our national community by placing our physical and intellectual abilities at its service.
Mine is simply an invitation to look to the future, so filled with uncertainties but also with promises which appeal to our imagination and creativity. It’s out of an awareness of my mission that I propose to speak out. After all, “Hope, faith and a purpose in life is medicinal. This is not merely a statement of belief, but a conclusion drawn from meticulously controlled scientific experiment” (Harold G. Wolf).
From a more analytical point of view, it can be said that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) represents a great movement for the defending of the human person and the safeguarding of human dignity. Amid changing historical circumstances, the MDC has contributed and is still contributing to the building up of a more just society or at least to the curbing of injustice. It goes without saying that part of the responsibility of citizens is to give careful consideration to current events in order to discern the new requirements of the movement.
I am strongly convinced that our PM had paid particular attention to current events obtaining in our country and had come to the conclusion that the missing link was the critical raw materials in the form of exiles no wonder why he brought to their attention the fact that they had to come home. One thing for sure is that Zimbabwe is ours whether good or bad. If good, to maintain that goodness and if bad, to make it good.
We all are in dire need of change but the question is: Do we understand what change is and are we ready for it? I understand change not in its narrow sense, that Mugabe has to go. But I also look forward to social change, economic change and indeed political change. But what is change? Change to me means active participation in the transformation of our country. For Zimbabwe means a great deal to me and am overly convinced she is as important to the success of my life as I am.
That explains why I am immersed through and through in the fight for democratic reforms. I want to be the change that I want to see in Zimbabwe and I would also want my esteemed Zimbabweans in the Diaspora to be the change that they would want to see in Zimbabwe. No change can be realized when we want others to fight for us and just return to reap where we never sowed. That selfish mentality is the one that we are even trying to exorcise from our society.
We want a complete overhaul of our institutions and this to me means a cultural revolution. My humble submission is that a cultural revolution will help us to realize fructification and fruition of our insatiable hopes and desires. This, obviously, is based on our free and deliberate choice to pursue something beyond ourselves both for our own benefit and for the benefit of the community.
What is it that you want to do for Zimbabwe for she has proven to be dangerously ill and cannot as a consequence, meet all your needs? Perhaps this also explains why one had to leave in the first place. In talking about a cultural revolution, I have kept at the back of my mind that we need to do away with the culture of theft, culture of violence, culture of corruption, culture of nepotism, culture of patrimonialism, culture of celebrating mediocrity, culture of kuda kutonga kusvikira madhongi amera nyanga/perpetual rule, culture of reaping where we never sowed, culture of mere talk without action et cetera.
I am not oblivious of the fact that exiles have in mind this reality that we are continually threatened by unemployment, which, in the absence of any kind of social security, means the spectre of death by starvation. For our society is divided into two classes, separated by a deep chasm. We have the haves and the have-nots. Not only that, our society, not long ago, was torn by a conflict all the more harsh and inhumane because it knew no rule or regulation.
It was the battle for supremacy. Kuti I cannot be defeated by Morgan Tsvangirai. The conflict set man against man, almost as if they were wolves. This obviously is an insult to wolves because it is in their nature to behave that way but is it in our nature to behave that way? This is food for thought.
My message to exiled Zimbabweans therefore is that we all have something to say about specific human situations, both individual and communal, national and international. Let’s formulate a genuine magic potion for these situations, a corpus which enables us to analyse social realities, to make judgements about them and to indicate directions to be taken for the just resolution of the problems involved. I know that the GNU is a negative solution to the problem at hand. It’s not a perfect arrangement but at least a workable one. Or maybe exiles maintain that the evil solution is in reality detrimental to the very people it is meant to help.
Has the remedy proven worse than the sickness? If this is so then there is no doubt that our nation needs a new Zimbabwe and a new beginning. It is in a political, social and economic hole. At this point in time, we can’t honestly be talking about the way forward but the way out of the hole.
And it is from this standpoint that I advance the thesis that exiles have a critical and fundamentally significant role to play in getting Zimbabwe out of this hole. This is what we call patriotism. Vast multitudes are still living in conditions of great material and moral poverty and these are in dire need of assistance. I believe I have been correctly understood and I rest my case until next time.
