Nancy Makurira: Zanu PF engaging in another genocide to stay in power
By Nancy Makurira
Genocide either ethnic cleansing or based on political affiliation is a political strategy motivated by the need to retain power illegitimately and indefinitely. Genocide is thus a strategy meant to appeal to certain hawkish populations which are usually hardliners aiding the power retention attempts.
In this case, Zanu PF is killing children, while extending impunity to the offenders. This may sound strange, but there is a potent reason to buttress this claim.
Desperate times demand desperate measures, tragically to the extent of killing for ritual purposes which is now prevalent in the so called Second Republic.
The youth, the demographic that is the major participating cluster in ritual killings no longer finds solace in drug abuse as a means to an end of coexisting with a harsher poverty spawned in a disenfranchising environment.
An environment in which only Zanu PF is thriving, given its status quo strategic position on top of the food chain in the referenced disempowering environment designed specifically to be so, allowing Zanu PF to retain power, heedless of disastrous implications.
The focus of the article is not on ritual murders per se but on the motive, psychologically and materially sponsored by Zanu PF failure.
When the state that is conflated with the criminal party that is Zanu PF, it loses sleep over people protesting, exercising their constitutional liberty of the right to assembly, to the extent of raping protesting women, beating them, abducting them, individuals like Mamombe or Chimbiri while tolerating child killers for rituals is one such reason.
When people protest, especially the opposition, childish reasons veiled in hypocrisy such as disregard of Covid 19 regulations are thrown at them, regulations the same Zanu PF enjoys in violating to imagined treason, Zanu PF descends on them on full force.
You are seeing the level of impunity last seen during Gukurahundi. Lawlessness compounded by rule by law, both of which are aids to Zanu PF perpetual power retention illegally is the causal factor.
The people killed on basis of ethnicity in Matabeleland were of neither direct threat nor consequence to Zanu PF stay in power, barely a year after independence.
The same is the case for the children killed for rituals and those yet to be killed for as long as Zanu PF is pursuing its one party utopia. The children do not threaten the status quo but are killed so that Zanu PF continues to pillage and bleed this country dry.
This is what the people’s leader Nelson Chamisa means when he says that there is a constitutional and legitimacy crisis in Zimbabwe which the despotic club SADC continues to deny.
Not only are the youth responsible for the ritual killings disenfranchised due to the aforementioned crises, they are marginalized, excluded and alienated from political levers of power and economic opportunities.
The youth, whose previous crutches had been drugs find them of little utility compared to alleged quick rich schemes that ritual killings seek to endow on the desperate youth.
When you have corruption that is endemic, unemployment which is rife, suddenly drugs are no longer sufficient for the youth that is restless and wallowing in poverty.
When you are living on less than a dollar, some with family responsibilities, killing of children for rituals to make money does not look like a bad idea to Zanu failure birthed indigents. Why not? After all they have nothing to lose. Zanu PF wins, tragically.
Ironically, there is no single case of ritual murder for money or blood wealth during Zimbabwe’s only golden age to date, conceived through the internationally supervised and negotiated government of national unity, albeit short lived as it was, having been aborted by the ruinous Zanu PF. Why is that? What can possibly explain this discrepancy.
It is simple. The opposition understands that power belongs to the people. The opposition appreciates that you can only retain power endowed to you by the people, you cannot kill, maim or rape for you to perpetually keep it, for it is futile.
In the long run, that is. In addition, the opposition embodies certain democratic values and qualities, particularly broad based participatory inclusivity, accountability and transparency bulwarked by ever devolving power.
Given the above factual reminiscence, there was no motivation whatsoever cajoling the youth to do the despicable as means to an end of jumping off the train of poverty which incongruously has no destination in sight.
Because the opposition, through its commendable strategic comprehension of reality, realizes that the people’s welfare is of paramount importance, compared to self-ordained entitlementalism Zanu PF has, ahead of the primacy of people’s welfare, contributing to the crises which are spurring the genocide of children.
Nancy Makurira is the MDC UK and Ireland Youth Assembly Vice Chairperson
