Weep for a people taken for granted

By Tino Chinyoka

If, according to Marxism, religion is the opium of the people, then political parties are the skokiana of the Zimbabwean populace. There is so much misunderstanding of our relationship viz-a-viz these groupings that we are routinely taken advantage of by those at their helm, because they know that they have never had it so good.

People identify themselves by the party they support. Dig deeper and you find that that support has very little to do with what that party stands for: but more about what it once stood for or did in the past. It is as if once support was ceded, it cannot be withdrawn: a contract more sacrosanct than any other.

Zanu PF is the party of liberation, and we are to support them because of this. Some of us might have done so because family members died in the name of said liberation struggle. But when does that loyalty end?

If the country was liberated 35 years ago, why does it feel like it needs some-more liberating now? The same relatives in whose name we support the party must be looking back from their graves and shouting: I went to Mozambique for a lot less than this rubbish you are standing for, so where is your courage?

On the other hand, the MDC once stood for democratic change. A new dispensation, a new way of politics. Several election losses and one leader who sings Handiyende Part 2 later, the change we were promised is much less what was hoped for, and more of what happened in 1980: a mere change of the bum that uses the toilet at 1 Chancellor Avenue.

Political parties run policies toward election time, and these come in different hues. From the downright bribery (vote for us and we will forgive all local authority debt and to hell with the consequences for service delivery) to the slightly unintelligible “in the short term, immediate measures will be implemented to consolidate the stabilization of macroeconomic fundamentals” as was claimed by JUICE.

Once election time is over, these so called policies are forgotten, and real life carries on. Mention bhora mugedhi now and it sounds slightly embarrassing even. Juice? What it is, even your most fervent MDC supporting friend will not tell you. It is as if once they lost, they decided that they did not want to keep associated with their JUICE.

You cringe and weep for the supporters of ZANU PF, who have to try hard to justify what is happening in their party, yet secretly suppressing the urge to vomit each time a certain lady takes to the podium to speak. Ask them ‘what happened to the 2,000,000 we were   promised’ and you get a treatise in dissembling. It was the sanctions.

We are creating them. There was a drought. On and on as if sanctions (if at all they matter) weren’t known when the promise was being made or there had never been a drought before such that it could not have been factored in before the promise was made. Bottom line, they just lied. And got away with it.

Add to those who feel for the lies the number that support Zanu PF because of the liberation divided (the present writer included, up to now), and you have a pool of suckers ready to vote for a monolith that has lost direction and only exists to perpetrate one man’s hold on the reins of power for the betterment of his family.

But liberation dividends can be binned when it shows that the country needs new liberating processes, and lying to people has an annoying habit of not being permanent. Eventually they wise up, and you run out of lies. You cannot tell people that 2 hours electricity a day is normal because of sanctions when you are everyday travelling to every conference that will have you, and a few you are not invited to.

People raise legitimate questions about the cost of the President’s travel and you hear howls of how as AU Chairman he must travel. Okay. But the question is: who pays for that travel and did we vote for that? How many extra minutes of electricity could we buy with what is being wasted? Your instinct is to weep.

Weep, Weep, Weep.

Weep for a people taken for granted, presumed stupid by those that seek to take advantage of the trust that we have placed in them. Weep for the lies we believe, when we are told that they care about us all, when in fact they do not. Weep. Weep for the relatives who lost their lives and bound us to a political party that cares not for us, doomed in the knowledge that the other guy is no better anyway.

The opposition makes stupid proposals like campaigning for a boycott of yoghurt from Gushungu Dairies when people have no money yokuti vawane musuva we sadza. It is like they assume we will support them no matter how stupid, unfeeling or useless they get. And the sad thing is that they are right.

One year ago ZANU PF did away with Mai Mujuru and brought in two male Vice Presidents. Now, because the winds suit certain shoppers, we hear talk of women’s quotas and wonder: in whose bedroom was the party congress held to decide these changes?

And the sad thing is, they just might get away with it: placing a wholly unqualified person to succeed the husband she met when she was about 22 and he was 66. Anyone ever did think just how wrong this was? And if all her instruction in statecraft is at the hands (or loins?) of a person who has clearly taken the country to the dogs, where will she take it? To the monkeys?

You can support a political party, but when it sees nothing wrong with housing a man and his entire family in a hotel for an indeterminate amount of time simply because his wife thinks that the mansion they were offered is not posh enough, you know it is time to look for a new party to follow.

Those dead relatives, who make us like this dead and decaying monolith, will surely not thank you for standing for that hubris. But, and here is the fix: The opposition is no better.

You have a Professor going about insisting he leads ‘the real original MDC’ as if he holds the title deed to the party. Hanzi Tsvangirai was an uneducated enemy of democracy who had to be removed. Removed from what, one wonders?

Wake up and smell the coffee: when you score a zero in a survey of leaders in a country of politically aware citizens like Zimbabwe, the message to take from that is that you are not liked. There is only one MDC yes, but it is the one led by Tsvangirai. The MDC went with Morgan. Especially when our people act like they made a blood oath with the party. They will not return.

And not criticise. Even when they should.

Weep for people that remain faithful to a party that has betrayed every principle it stood for from day one. A party of workers that responds to workers’ demands for more pay with “you eat what you hunt”. That sees nothing wrong with some of its high ranking officers representing bosses in court cases against workers.

That justifies Tsvangirai’s instance on keeping that mansion which is allegedly not a mansion on the basis that ‘he is entitled to it’ yet seeing no irony in the fact that the entitlement derives from the very same crony-building economy-destroying ZANU PF that the MDC allegedly stands for.

Where is all that JUICE talk about “The economic illiteracy, corruption, sabotage, mal-governance and quasi-fiscal insanity was epitomized by Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono who destroyed the economy by monetizing the crisis and ruining the currency”?

Weep for people that have power yet mortgage it away for no return. Voters without a clue how important their votes are, who allow their politicians to enrich themselves while throwing around platitudes about doing their best in the face of international sanctions (ZANU PF) or a dawn that will come only after we have free and fair elections based on an electronic voters roll (MDC). As a people, we deserve better. And only as a people can we get it. Not from ZANU PF or the MDC, because none but ourselves can set us free of these clowns.

Make your vote matter in 2018. One thing is certain though: a debt to dead relatives over a liberation war dividend is not enough justification to keep supporting Zanu PF anymore. It is time to leave.

Tinomudaishe Chinyoka

Unaffiliated.