The Sunday Mail
Teddie Bepete
What has been unfolding in opposition circles over the past few days reflects the fact that the opposition lacks relevance in fulfilling its backers’ desired goal.
As President Mugabe was discussing lucrative co-operation with his Iranian counterpart, President Hassan Rouhani, in Tehran last week, a farcical opposition “coalition” was taking shape back home.
That “coalition” is riven by anarchism which left MDC-T deputy president Ms Thokhozani Khupe and her acolytes black-eyed in Bulawayo last Sunday.s President Mugabe was discussing lucrative co-operation with his Iranian counterpart, President Hassan Rouhani, in Tehran last week, a farcical opposition “coalition” was taking shape back home.
Shameful stuff. But I digress.
Iran is an important international development partner and has made giant strides in various sectors of a modern economy despite crippling Western sanctions.
Its rich cultural history dates back thousands of years to the Medo-Persian Empire and Sassanid Era when Iran conquered the ancient world.
The country’s success has its source in the people-oriented revolution of 1979, which the West deemed repugnant because it overthrew an American-backed shah.
After that revolution, the United States attempted subversion by arming Iraq under Saddam Hussein for a bloody war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians between 1980 and 1988.
Apart from highly destructive arms of war, American logistical and intelligence support was critical to Iraq’s performance on the battlefield.
The painful effects of that war were a hard lesson for Tehran in terms of self-defence.
Jeff Faux reported in 2016, ‘’Today, enter almost any urban neighbourhood or rural village in Iran and you will see prominently displayed photos of the local men and women who were killed in that war.’’
However, in recent years, though having a deep historical perspective, the row between Tehran and Washington has centred on the latter’s nuclear-enhanced economy.
Washington alleges Tehran is building an atomic bomb.
But what is apparent is that Washington wants to control the Middle East economically, politically and culturally.
Nonetheless, in the case of acquiring superior weapons, any rational being was going to justify the Iranians’ alleged actions given the fact that their country still bears scars of a war in which chemical weapons were deployed by the US and Hussein.
The Iranians understand their actions more than any one else could.
Many people have the wrong perception that nuclear energy is only used in the production of weapons of mass destruction.
Zimbabwe has large reserves of nuclear-rich uranium.
Radioisotopes, nuclear power process heat and non-stationary power reactors have essential uses across multiple sectors, including consumer products, the food and agriculture industry, medicine and scientific research, transport; and water resources and the environment.
Exploitation of nuclear energy is essential in modernising economies. All states that have reached modernity possess nuclear technology.
Coincidentally, the West has also wielded sanctions against Zimbabwe to subvert the gains of the people-oriented 1980 revolution.
The country’s main opposition is a product of a Western crusade towards that bid.
What has been unfolding in opposition circles over the past few days reflects the fact that the opposition lacks relevance in fulfilling its backers’ desired goal.
The tailor-made “coalition” of non-entities and its propensity for anarchy and violence shows that the Washington project lacks utility.
President Mugabe last week said of opposition activism: ‘‘We have bits and pieces; lots of bits and pieces that call themselves parties, trying to come together. And I have said in the past (that) they don’t have any record, any record of their having been fighters anywhere.
‘‘Political zeros. I have said it does not matter how many zeros you try to put together, they never constitute a unit. They remain zeros.’’
The President’s summation of opposition zeros was accurate given the ruinous fighting between MDC leaders soon after the signing of the cosmetic deal.
The violence that left Ms Khupe hospitalised undressed the whole notion of ‘’coalition’’.
How can anyone believe in an opposition that is without a dignified and principled leadership? A leadership that proves lame and whose major strategy over the years has never been its own?
One day, many years ago, Tsvangirai stood on a platform and said: “Handiti muri kufa nenzara?”
“Yes!” his supporters cheered back. “Hamusati,’’ he bellowed ignobly.
Here is the “coalition” leader, a man who vowed to rig the vote by bringing hardship upon the people.
Those who blindly follow him must heed Pan-African revolutionary Ahmed Sekou Toure’s counsel: ‘’An African statesman can never be a naked boy begging from the West.’’
Where is Morgan today? A spent force finding solace in the shadows of his past.
Fifteen years after his maliciously pessimistic utterance, with this year’s unimaginable bumper harvest, hunger is already an aspect faded from our horizon.
Morgan and his foolhardy cohorts must remember that their ‘’kith and kin’’, Ian Douglas Smith, once proclaimed that Zimbabwe would not be free, not in ‘’a thousand years’’.
But all this was in vain.
And this was before the heroic guerrillas made the final push into Salisbury during ‘’The Year of the People’s Storm’’.
Well, another people’s storm is coming: this one will wipe away the quisling opposition and water the tree of our freedom and empowerment.
