Signs of a rising Zimbabwe abound

HUMAN BEINGS are fickle by nature; more so in a fast-paced world where relationships are increasingly transactional.

English humorist, satirist and author Terry Pratchett once warned that the same crowd that cheers your coronation is the same crowd that cheers your beheading.

You see, victory and triumph make people coalesce, while defeat, which naturally engenders inquisitions and recriminations, scatters them.

As Bishop Lazarus had predicted, the inevitable defeat of the opposition CCC in the August polls was likely to be ominous.

It takes neither a seer nor a rocket scientist to surmise that without any mortar or glue to hold CCC together, failure was always going to lead to its unravelling.

For a party that considers itself a better democratic alternative to ZANU PF, we saw the most grotesque version of democracy in its internal candidate-selection process in the period preceding the elections, where the secrecy of the ballot was binned in favour of a medieval process that required voters to queue behind their preferred candidates.

But getting the most votes did not guarantee victory, as the final list of candidates was handpicked by an all-powerful shadowy cabal in Harare.

It was nothing short of farcical.

Most people saw and called it for what it was — Nelson Chamisa’s Machiavellian scheme to get rid of those who threatened his weak hold on power and wretched leadership.

Tendai Biti, Settlement Chikwinya, Welshman Ncube and many others expectedly fell by the wayside.

Despite this affront to democracy by supposed democrats, many were prepared to tag along and defer to Chamisa in the naïve and laughable hope of sharing the spoils upon capturing State power.

The inevitable, however, happened.

Like the typical proverbial Humpty Dumpty they were, and are, the CCC “had a great fall” and cannot be put together again. Kikikikiki.

In the aftermath of the August 23-24 elections, the fortunes of ZANU PF and CCC could not be starker.

ZANU PF continues to grow bigger and stronger, what with lost political souls like Jim Kunaka, who have been wondering in the wilderness, retracing their steps to the ruling party, while the inherently factious CCC has inexorably been gripped by the intrigue of cloak-and-dagger politics.

It seems Ncube, who considers Bulawayo his fiefdom, has thrown down the gauntlet through Sengezo Tshabangu, who has since written to the Speaker of Parliament to recall 15 CCC MPs and 17 councillors.

In a structureless party, anyone can call themselves anything and everything.

Well, Tshabangu believes he is CCC’s interim secretary-general.

For those who had not noticed yet, Ncube has recently been soliloquising his disgust at Chamisa’s leadership.

On September 8, he fired off a cryptic, but very revealing tweet: “Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health disorder of extreme self-centredness and forever seeking attention and admiration. Leaders with this disorder are capricious, selfish and have no empathy except as an instrument of attention-seeking.”

There can be no prizes for guessing what he meant or who he was referring to.

It was followed by another philosophical tweet on September 30: “Just reread Lenin’s political pamphlet, which I last read years ago when teaching at UZ (University of Zimbabwe): What is to be done? The burning questions of our movement. One of the core lessons: Without political theory there can be no coherent & meaningful political action, just random rhetoric!”

It is, therefore, unsurprising that Ncube has now emerged from the shadows, albeit through proxy.

Also remember that it was only recently that CCC members in Victoria Falls defied Chamisa’s directive to elect Ephias Mambume and Priscilla Mhlanga as mayor and deputy mayor, respectively, and opted for Prince Thuso Moyo and Lungile Nyoni, instead.

Similarly, without saying much, Biti — who is known for being intemperate and combustible, and is the preferred leader of the opposition for some Western powers — has been showing his displeasure at being sidelined by Chamisa.

Not to be outdone is our own Ibbotson Mandaza, who considers himself one of the many voices in civil society.

He recently made uncharitable remarks on CCC’s inability and incapacity to govern.

All these are signs of the groundswell of discontent and grumbling in and at the opposition.

Make no mistake about it, Chamisa hears and sees the growing challenge to his leadership.

Under the guise of consulting on the need for a fresh election — which he knows will never happen — he has been going around the country to keep his supporters galvanised, especially after the chastising defeat to ZANU PF.

He is also taking the opportunity to flaunt his followership to his rivals inside CCC to show his ostensible unrivalled leadership.

The Bishop thinks he will prevail in the end, but at a very heavy cost to the future of the opposition.

Let the games begin.

Full steam ahead

But President ED could not care less about the puerile sideshows in the opposition, which seem to be blissfully oblivious of the fact that opposition parties are not supposed to be needlessly adversarial, but complement the ruling party in pursuing common, bipartisan objectives in the national interest.

Indeed, they have a wooly conception of opposition politics.

Isaiah 58:9-12 promises: “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.”

After struggling under sanctions for the better part of two decades, the Lord is now helping us rebuild our ancient ruins and raise age-old foundations.

Signs of a rising Zimbabwe abound.

You should have seen how South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa gushed when he toured the modernised Zimbabwean side of the Beitbridge Border Post on Thursday.

With ED having recently set an ambitious target of achieving aspirations of Vision 2030 — a prosperous, modern and highly industrialised State — within the next five years, not seven, we can only expect him to maniacally drive his agenda at break-neck speed from here on out.

We have already seen what he has done in agriculture, where our wheat harvest is set to exceed our annual requirement by about 55 000 tonnes.

Last year, we had a 20 000-tonne surplus of the cereal after another record haul.

As a sign of things to come, the team that has been assembled to spearhead public works — with Winston Chitando as Local Government and Public Works Minister and Dr John Basera as Permanent Secretary in the same ministry — is made up of professionals known for their surfeit of competence and distinguished record in the private sector.

This is also the case with many who have been onboarded to be part of the bureaucracy that is going to deliver Zimbabwe’s lofty goals.

Bishop Lazi always tells sceptics and cynics who choose to unsee and ignore the many demonstrable milestones of the Second Republic, that if there is anyone capable of achieving the unthinkable, it is ED.

This is the man who has already sent Zimbabwe’s first satellite into orbit; the same satellite that now accurately relays data on our expected bumper wheat crop, among other vital utilitarian intelligence.

We are on the move.

Bishop out!