Hopewell Chin’ono: A dream deferred will soon emerge as age takes care of Zim’s liberation generation

By Hopewell Chin’ono

Age is actually a very funny thing that we often overlook except for birthdays, it is humbling in so many ways than we care to think about.

Someone who is 70 years of age today, no matter how rich or powerful they are, they will be tucked away in a grave somewhere in 20 years time, that is if they are lucky to get to 90 depending on their health, otherwise they have around ten to 15 years left before they meet their maker.

As some of us snap out of a ritualized denial that we are now hurtling towards 50 in a couple of years, we now know too well that we have 30 to 35 years left on your clocks.

The odd ones might hit 90 years of age, but those are the very odd ones because we have taken to decadent lifestyles that will consume us earlier than we would have wanted.

They might have 40 years to go but very few will be that lucky like my own dad who died at 90 years of age or Robert Mugabe who is turning 95 tomorrow and still counting, most probably hoping to achieve his public yearning to reach 100, but he is an extreme case and not the norm.

This brings me to ZANUPF the political party of liberation and independence, its failure to shift its political and economic thinking has essentially made it a party for the old guard and a very rural party.

If you remove President Emmerson Mnangagwa who is 76 years old and his deputy, General Constantino Chiwenga who is 63, you will have to go back to the barracks to get someone credible to lead ZANUPF.

This political party might die with its owners, the ones who fought in the struggle for independence and won the war but then ruined the country through spectacular mismanagement underpinned by gross corruption and colossal incompetence.

Political parties that don’t have a commitment to leadership renewal have found themselves either extinct or absolutely useless because they cease to exist based on legitimate moral and patriotic values, deeper ideas or any credible political principles.

They are held together by their leadership’s appetite to crudely accumulate wealth using the state apparatus underpinned by the gun.

That is where Zimbabwe is now and that particular political survival exists merely because political elites rarely commit political suicide deliberately as Robert Mugabe did to his presidency through making Kamikaze and reckless decisions at the tail end of his chaotic rule.

The decay of ZANUPF started with Robert Mugabe’s refusal to go and the demise and assassinations that followed all those that challenged his prolonged rule.

This has left the party thin on ideas and thick on violence and repression, the party that was once the home of intellectuals is now left holding on to nothing but a sledge hammer to deal with any political problems challenging its rule.

ZANUPF ceased being a home for original credible thinkers a long time ago, the likes of Edison Zvobgo, Robert Mugabe, Simon Mazorodze, Nathan Shamuyarira, Dzingai Mutumbuka, Fay Chung, Herbert Ushewekunze or Bernard Chidzero don’t exist anymore in it!

You now have the likes of Supa Mandiwanzira, Ziyambi Ziyambi, Kazembe Kazembe, Prisca Mupfumira, Joram Gumbo Obediah Moyo, Enegy Mutodi, Ozias Bvute and on the other end of the institutional memory spectrum you have the likes of July Moyo who are now headed towards 70.

ZANUPF is also packed with folks holding on to fake PhDs, folks who have never produced any intellectual work and have NO ability to do so even if it meant their lives depended on it.

ZANUPF’s survival is now anchored on the patronage and sycophancy currencies as opposed to genuine efforts to transform the lives of Zimbabweans, the political elites continue to crudely amass wealth whilst the masses toil in abject poverty.

As one of its original intellectuals Nathan Shamuyarira said as far back as 2008 that ZANUPF was headed towards a mafia construct devoid of any credible ideology but superfluous comical revolutionary talk.

ZANUPF is now held together by the one realization that without its existence, its current lot will lose power and with it access to the feeding trough.

Unlike other political parties of independence such as Zambia’s United National Independence Party (UNIP) of Kenneth Kaunda that disappeared, ZANUPF has survived because of its political symbiosis with the military.

It has become so normalized that General Chiwenga talked about saving the party casually on the eve of the November 2017 coup d’etat when he was still commander of the country’s defence forces.

So as I have said in the beginning of this note, age is the key element to ZANUPF’s survival, but as Professor Lumumba always says in his lectures, one can safely say that those with ideas in ZANUPF have NO power and those with power have NO ideas!

I will make one prediction today that I know will come to pass, the personal economic fortunes being built today on stolen resources will be lost as soon as these folks die.

The money will be traced and recovered as what happened to Sani Abachi of Nigeria after his suspicious death in 1998.

I had a drink with a UBS banker last night, she told me that the easiest and most exciting thing for any investigator of stolen fortunes is finding the money and getting their cut.

So the Nigerian Government offered to pay a percentage to investigators who traced the stolen money, regardless of using fronts, the money keeps on being found.

You will remember that before the elections I said President Emmerson Mnangagwa had an opportunity to either redeeming himself and his coup d’etat conspirators or his Presidency will go down in history as inconsequential.

Time will tell but it is a product that is not on the side of these Comrades, they might go to the grave with their party after all.

The current leadership is failing because the bounty hunters who are surrounding them are afraid of engaging them robustly and telling them the truth that they are headed nowhere with their current ways.

They are also surrounded by job seekers who are not able to walk away on a point of principle, as Nkosana Moyo said recently, many of them have been fighting for co-option and not genuine change underpinned by economic and political reforms.

The people around them lie that it can’t be done without losing power, they fail to understand that not implementing reforms will lead to a dramatic loss of political power as the domestic pressures build up and the idea of winning an election becomes an elusive dream.

The other problem is that there is a classic failure to generate progressive ideas, the so called thinkers around them are retrogressive in their ways and are pushing cheap, shallow and parochial motives devoid of any patriotic desired outcomes.

It is merely about having power for the sake of it instead of focusing on substance, many of them are settling for spin doctoring, attempting to sell a mirage in order to see another day and hopefully hoodwink those with long pockets internationally.

Again I come to the key ingredient that we all can’t fight, it is age that will be the determinant factor in how Zimbabwe progresses from here.

Without any shadow of doubt, Zimbabwe will not be the same in 20 years time, we are now on the tail end of this political and economic crisis.

Change is coming if you are luck enough to be around, if not, prepare your kids for that eventuality, age will succeed where we all failed.

Whoever will be in charge of this country’s fortunes in 10 to 15 years time will realize that Mugabe’s path that we are currently on will not be sustainable in a 21st century world.

A ZANUPF without a genuine political leadership renewal and a spirited commitment to adopting to the new world will follow its owners to the grave, that is a given certainty unless something is urgently done about its lost direction.

On a personal level, it is their kids that will carry the cross when the murky deals and loot becomes subject of international investigations unless they resolve their legitimacy issues and clean up before they meet their maker.

Ian Smith resisted progressive change but even him was smart enough to realize that a negotiated settlement was better than a revolutionary event because you lose control of any negotiating power.

Our current political leaders can turn the corner and avoid a catastrophic loss of political power by reforming the economic terrain through political changes, they will even not worry about using violence to win an election, failure to do so will make governing difficult.

They should not believe in the crooked advice given to them by the pseudo intellectuals around the state, even Mobutu Sese Seko had their ilk around him but they could not tame the tide of time.

Hopewell Chin’ono is an award winning Zimbabwean international Journalist and Documentary Filmmaker.

He is a Harvard University Nieman Fellow and a CNN African Journalist of the year.
He is also a Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Africa Leadership Institute.

Hopewell has a new documentary film looking at mental illness in Zimbabwe called State of Mind, which was launched to critical acclaim.

The recently departed music superstar Oliver Mtukudzi wrote the sound track for State of Mind.

It was recently nominated for a big award at the Festival International du Film Pan-Africain de Cannes in France. You can watch the documentary trailer below.