By Jacob Mafume
The chickens are coming home to roost and they are roosting very loudly for ZANU PF. The party has been thrown into a tumultuous raucous whose end is clearly going to drag Zimbabwe into the ‘chaos scenario’ which we in the People’s Democratic Party have long warned will soon be the sad reality in Zimbabwe.
It is sad, however, that in the thick of the factional fights to succeed Robert Mugabe, who turns 92 this month, it is the ordinary people who are suffering.
Government business is now at a standstill as even top civil servants are fighting in the corners of their political masters.
So petty are the fights in ZANU PF that whole grown up men are busy squabbling over under wears, which went missing some three decades ago during the liberation war.
Some of the ZANU PF politicians are questioning the paternity of their fellow comrades, which for all intents and purposes will not take the country anywhere except into the deep abyss.
This is coming at a time when the country is reeling under a serious drought which is killing hundreds of cattle every week and with over 1.5 million citizens in need of urgent food aid.
The clueless regime has declared a state of disaster on the drought but what is apparent is that ZANU PF is the biggest national disaster, a dozen times more disastrous than the current El Nino drought.
In addition to the acute food shortages, hospitals have no drugs and recent statistics show that one in every five women dies while giving birth. Such shocking levels of maternal mortality are akin to a soft genocide and the blood drips fresh from Mugabe’s hands.
To add salt to injury, while the health sector is on its knees, the Health Services Board’s (HSB) moribund leadership of one Ruth Kaseke takes the time to victimize and suspend doctors.
All the while the Minister of Health and Child Care is burying his head in the sand after his shameful looting at PSMAS.
It has not occurred to the selfish and clueless ZANU PF politicians that our doctors are the last string holding the almost broken down health system and it moves an inch it would be hell.
Education which has been in perpetual crisis since the appointment of Lazarus Dokora as Minister in 2013 has entered a new crisis as he attempts to out-compete each other with Jonathan Moyo as to who must introduce the STEM learning programmes.
It is sad that the future of thousands of children is being sacrificed on the altar of political convenience and cheap propaganda.
To institute a viable STEM programming requires serious and deliberate long-term policy intervention not some fly by night campaign gimmick.
It is the ultimate evil for ZANU PF to actually take the platform of education curricula as a battle ground for their toxic factional politics.
It is now apparent that ZANU PF’s factionalism and hate politics is the greatest threat to Zimbabwe and as the PDP we reiterate our call which is gaining currency; that Zimbabweans need to find each other and liquidate ZANU PF.
We cannot end the current rot and chaos if we are balkanized in our small corners, we must come together and end the vicious circles of exclusion imposed by Mugabe and his cronies.
In this regard, we in the PDP remain committed to pushing for a grand coalition of democrats that will put an end to the madness and vulgar which ZANU PF has reduced our nation to.
We believe that collectively we must push for the National Transitional Authority (NTA) which will give Zimbabweans time to heal and recover from ZANU PF’s long years of trauma and decay.
The NTA will sanitise our politics and create a level electoral field, institute a programme of economic recovery, embark on the long overdue question of national healing, align the country’s laws to the new Constitution, address the all important question of devolution of power and ensure that all those who committed crimes under ZANU PF rule are brought to book.
Jacob Mafume is the spokesman for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)
