Even as President Robert Mugabe made his most recent warning after his return from the 69th session of the United Nations general assembly that Zanu PF party members should desist from engaging in corrupt activities in the name of the party, factionalism had taken a new twist deserving an equally revolutionary address.
Adulterating more of the country’s faculties, inhibiting growth as all factions claimed allegiance to national advancement, factionalism has introduced a system where more energy is diverted towards personality branding, where “people praise and human worshipping matters most” in dictations to outmanoeuvre other contending factional cult.
We are too afraid to face the truth, too frightened by the gravity of honesty and opt for dishonesty at the expense of millions of Zimbabweans whom the justice of serving the truth could help. That defines us, a people engineering commotion under phoney fidelity to His Excellence, the president of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Mugabe, purporting to be serving him in earnest.
Even in a case where Mugabe has not adequately involved himself in factional issues within his party, the issue of succession has created facial quarters unbeknown. The entire issue is hidden under metaphors.
Simply put, Mugabe weighs performance through feedbacks and all liberty of policy implementation is bestowed upon the same people on power scales. Therefore, in any sense, little inhibits leadership hopefuls from running what could be seen as a factionalism-led government beyond Mugabe’s knowledge.
Mugabe has not yet nominated a candidate to succeed him should he prefer to relinquish power.
At least his decision for doing so is well informed and strategic. A time like this, filled with looming commotion and betrayal, would be more volatile.
So far the era of factionalism has brought with it the burden of great unsettlement both in Zanu PF and Zimbabwe’s otherwise main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
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Looking at the latter, the MDC-T got an offshoot, the MDC-Renewal team led by former MDC-T secretary-general Tendai Biti. I know the MDC-T in this time of factional strife is not of pure and vestal modesty.
The openings Biti and Elton Mangoma left will need to be covered, if only peacefully. But today I am far less interested in Morgan Tsvangirai’s case. There is a much greater chore at home.
Zanu pf, whose fabric allows for no such hasty disintegration, could be poised for more disaster provided the current power struggle rages on. Contrary to the known two main factional groupings, it is dangerously fallacious to overlook the possibility of more unmanifested juntas that could be somewhat regional and tribal. Juntas are factions. I am not suggesting anything.
The basic rule in communication in its many forms, including writing, is to seek to diffuse knowledge and acquaint the reader with a subject.
And in this offering, which marks identity of its own, I intend to highlight troubles that are likely to topple us.
I borrowed the title from a South African writer whose article was equally dressed in the same vein.
Martin Young challenges the Isis terrorism, Israel and Hamas, Boko Haram, Westborough Baptist Church crisis, among others, which to him appear as thought executed under the same God, although authorised under varying religious sects.
In Zanu PF, the current diction to loyalty is misconstrued.
What renders these factional wars harder to fathom is their moulding nature. Their foundation seems to be more common, their strength more tallying.
Besides that the liberation struggle synchronised everyone’s power in a manner scholarly education does not.
We have people holding the same political power obtained from the “over 15-year war institution” against the white colonial regime of Ian Smith.
The media has too enjoyed its fair share. It has moved out to defy more grievous issues it disputed during the formulation of the new Constitution of Zimbabwe.
It has seemingly surmounted Aippa and advanced to be more clamorous and political. It has made factionalism more visible and more ravaging. Even the Herald now gets the reader’s awe.
Thanks to the new phenomenon of glaring cabalism.
Factional protagonists hopefully are not propelled into more fierce wars by the trumpet calls blown out from the media.
Then the media should be equally commended for having brought the issue to Mugabe and the general populace.
For unlike the MDC’s in-house or pre-congress wrangles, Zanu Pf’s factional resonance has direct ripple effects on the country’s economic health.
In a faction-hit government, national resources are diverted to strengthen cults and the phenomenon is at its worst if cultism is led by those who sit in Cabinet.
I might not know, but Mugabe could be viewed to have treated surrogates to Olympian impunity. He has had the trust all leaders ought to have towards his team. It is not imaginable that the grafts resulted from the same pond.
But I know Mugabe was made to bear witness of the goings-on through carefully architected and sanitised “performance reports”.
For example, Billy Rautenbach and Temba Mliswa affairs, whether integrating a candid business lining, evidently grew to levels that require good rowers to maintain the Zanu Pf houseboat straight.
Mliswa now has the United States of America’s Eric Little in the alleged CIA epos,. a case that was well marketed by the media’s new factionalism-brought-about liberalism.
He coerces Jonathan Moyo into the same canoe.
Bereft of ideas, politicians are thus tempted to fill that empty space where political differences and national dialogue used to lie with their own stories and personalities.
But the fact that such appearances become a non-yielding substitute for political solutions to some very pressing problems should be reducing us to tears – and not of laughter.
Celebrity politics was previously novel to Zimbabwe’s political framework and will play intermediate successor to factionalism.
Celebrity politics is defined by languor, by non-commitment to serious national development matters.
Politics defines American President Barrack Obama who presents himself as the “real man” on chat for and panel shows, at best delivering light comedy. That is our handicap.
I know the six comrades I discussed rough politics with will find good response in this offering on where we are marching.
Zisunko Ndlovu is a social development practitioner and political writer from Binga, Send comments and suggestions to: [email protected]
