The Sunday Mail
Teddie Bepete
Having been seized with the Zanu-PF primary elections, I have been away since April.
Since then, a certain section of my readers have been asking whether I had been carried away by the winds of the primary polls.
This piece is not going to explain how I lost, neither am I going to give it as an alibi for that loss.
Whenever one winnows grain, a lot of chaff goes with the wind while good grain remains in the bushel.
ln real life situations, the one who allows himself to be carried away by the wind belongs to the useless chaff but the one who chooses to be good grain will live honourably to give life to others.
That was my choice, to be quality grain that will also be good seed upon the land.
No matter what transpires, the party is my life, it is the blood that flows in my veins. I will live to give a lease of life to the same party which lives in me. Nothing can separate the two of us, even in death.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa recently echoed his displeasure at the anomalies that transpired during the Zanu-PF primary polls, and his was a plausible act. Showing off maturity and impartiality as a statesman at such trying times earns him a mark higher.
There has been worries about political rough riders in the party and Government, those who pretend to be in support of the President.
Their actions confirm that this assertion is not a piece of fiction.
The party is the people.
Recently President Mnangagwa said, “The party is bigger than individual members. Zanu-PF is like a pocket, we all fit in that Zanu-PF pocket.
“But if you want to take Zanu-PF and put it in your pocket, you will get burnt until you remove the party from your pocket.”
Anybody who goes against the people is an enemy of the revolution.
The people struggled against the ruinous G40 cabal to usher in a new era, an era of hope and progress. They purged corruption and chicanery, which President Mnangagwa has steadfastly deemed as the country’s enemy number one.
When Nehemiah set out to rebuild Jerusalem, the journey was not without challenge.
He says in the beginning of the Book of Nehemiah, “Then I said to them, ‘You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and it’s gates have been burned with fire. Come let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace’.
“I also told them,’ You see the gracious hand of my God upon me and what the king had said to me. They replied, ‘ Let us start rebuilding.” So they began this good work.
“But when Saballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab heard about it they mocked and ridiculed us. ‘What is this you are doing?’ they asked. ‘Are you rebelling against the king?’
“I answered them by saying, ‘The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding, but as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historical right to it.”
Nehemiah’s message befits our current circumstances as a country. Zimbabwe calls for reconstruction for the good of it’s people.
The Wiseman said nothing will last forever. lf we are set to achieve glory, all these divisions will come to pass, and it is the future of our children that will last forever.
But it calls for citizens who are whole heartedly dedicated to that cause, who believe in the nation’s collective goals than in their insatiable ego.
True revolutionaries are not guided by the love of political office and aggrandisement of wealth, but by the spirit of struggle, which is spurred by their conscience, to change their societies for the best of the majority of their kinsmen.
True revolutionaries are driven by honest sense of duty and the dignity of hard work. Without these qualities, we will always witness the synthesis of half witted, ideologically bankrupt pseudo revolutionaries who will undermine the President’s efforts in fulfilling the goals of the new dispensation.
At one point during the fight against the G40 cabal, a certain party figure came to me and said, “Why can’t you use a pseudonym? This will give you a life line if things go otherwise.”
I rejected the suggestion because l wanted to remain principled.
Today, when l see some unprincipled people wining and dining with the President, l wonder if they have reflected on their shortfall in principle and direction. If they are genuine pan Africanists, why would they continue sowing division amongst our people instead of putting their hand in reconstruction?
Marcus Garvey imprinted this logic in our minds when he said, “The thing to do is to get organized. Keep separated and you will be exploited, you will be robbed, you will be killed. Get organized and you will compel the world to respect you.”
It is true that after emerging from colonialism, Africans could have been a greater people if they had worked in amity.
Lumumba once bemoaned these calamitous divisions when he said, “These divisions, which the colonial powers have always exploited the better to dominate us, have and are still playing an important role, and are still playing that role in the suicide of Africa.”
