By Wilton Machimbira
President Robert Mugabe met his hitherto all-weather friends, the war veterans a few days ago for the much-hyped make or break it indaba. At face value the raison d’etre was to address their grievances.
I suggest that Mugabe wanted to test the waters and possibly disarm them by his usual philibustering theatrics. Those without political amnesia are cognisant of the fact that Mugabe is one such character who indicates left to turn right.
A master of well-choreographed political chicanery. War veterans are an important constituency in Zanu PF and a vital cog in the party’s survival, but recent events suggest otherwise.
It is imperative to thoroughly examine if Zanu PF and precisely Mugabe still consider the war veterans as an important constituency, if recent events are anything to go by.
Considering the recent brutality the war veterans suffered at the hands of State machinery, one is tempted to believe that they are now redundant in Zanu PF’s survival matrix. It’s not easy to come to terms with the fact that you are now redundant in your organisation. It’s a bitter pill to swallow. It’s traumatising and heartbreaking. Redundancy is horrible, but it’s a fact of life.
It was more than a rude awakening for war veterans to bear the brunt of the repressive State machinery. The very same State machinery they had previously connived and worked in cohoots with, to decapitate and decimate the opposition party MDC.
They were visibly caught off guard. For long, war veterans had enjoyed lots of immunity, almost akin to diplomatic immunity and would find it hard to accept the volte face by their patron Mugabe.
For God’s sake no-one bothered to remind them that there are no permanent friends in politics, except permanent interests. They were hoodwinked for long into believing that they were the owners of Zimbabwe, as such they can not stomach the reality of an ignominy of political irrevelance.
They, thus, find it hard to believe that liberation war credentials are no longer that much of a bargaining chip in a modern-day Zimbabwe.
The straight jacket concept has been discarded owing to change and continuity that characterises politics. Just like Mao’s widow, First Lady Grace Mugabe appears to be aiming for the top post.
She has since argued that liberation war credentials do not mean anything, although most people in Zanu PF have used them to embellish their curriculum vitaes and also as a means to an end.
These war veterans deserve all the condemnation for failing to reign in the increasingly defiant Mugabe. They deserve to be discredited for being accessories to Mugabe’s misrule. They willingly aided and abetted Mugabe’s autocratic rule.
Nothing lasts forever except eternal life and the writing is now on the wall and Zanu PF’s honeymoon with the war veterans has reached its twilight.
The war veterans absymally failed to utilise the leverage and clout they had and not surprisingly they are going to be jettissioned like used condoms, typical of Mugabe modus operandi. There is no rescue team in politics, it is each man for himself and God for us all.
Mugabe is one such a character, who employs three Ds to achieve political ends, that is, Delay, Deceive and Destroy and these war veterans are the latest victim of three Ds. Total annihilation.
Considering the fact that it is the war veterans who played a prominent role in terrorising opposition party activists, one is tempted to say they are having a good taste of their own medicine. Leopards cry louder when they are dragged on dust. The indaba held by Mugabe and the war veterans can be viewed as a modus vivendi meant to placate the visibly disenchanted and disillisioned war veterans. For they have been used to receiving preferential treatmment.
Mugabe seems to be employing the carrot and stick strategy in his dealings with the war veterans.
It’s a catch-22 situation for Mugabe to appease the war veterans and the political toxin in the name of Generation 40 simultaneously.
His airport rebuff on war veterans was more of Mugabe’s usual pre-emptive strikes. He has an obsession with pre-emptive strikes against real or perceived enemies.
It is indeed a zero-sum struggle for power within Zanu PF and from the look of things, the war veterans seem to be clutching at straws. The war veterans might be applauded for summoning their courage to tell Mugabe point blank the housekeeping issues they wish to be addressed.
However, their greatest Achilles heel is the failure to tackle the root cause of the problem. The gist of the matter, which happens to be the succession imbroglio. It’s all about who is going to succeed Mugabe and the rest are just red-herrings.
The sycophantic war veternas excoriated the commissariat department under Saviour Kasukuwere. They argued that the department is flexing its muscles on vote-of-no-confidence suspensions and expulsions, which are an antithesis of what it is supposed to be doing, that is, mass mobilisation.They proposed that the department be headed by someone with liberation war credentials.
It is this warped thinking that makes them naively and regrettably assume that only those with liberation war credentials deserve powerful posts. It’s a disheartening sense of entitlement that deserves no place in this modern-day Zimbabwe.
The bottom line is that the war veterans and Zanu PF political commissar belong to diametrically opposed factions. Factions that came into being as a result of the perennial succession issue in Zanu PF.
Frustratingly the war veterans did not bother to raise the pertinent issues bedevilling the citizenry.
The catastrophic state of the economy. They dwelt on Zanu PF housekeeping issues and “their” welfare. Their welfare and not the welfare of the masses.
It is this kind of indifference, avarice and sheer gluttony remniscent of the biblical cows of Bashan during the time of prophet Amos that deserve to be condemned.
Woo to the cows of Bashan.
