The Sunday Mail
A NEW season is well and truly upon us!
Back in the village, as taught by our forebears, all we needed to do was look to nature for signs.
After shedding their leaves to go through the bitter winter, deciduous trees are now flowering and blooming, symbolising rebirth, regeneration, renewal and new life that comes with the imminent rainy season.
You should see musasa trees in all their glory at this time of the season.
Unlike other former colonised countries, our freedom and independence was not gifted to us, but we had to fight a bitter armed struggle for more than a decade
They represent one of the best artistic displays by nature known to man.
Their now velvety-reddish leaves will gradually transition to several emblematic shades of green before eventually assuming their common dark-green colour.
This majestic transition in nature is also happening in our politics, where we are similarly going through a rebirth, regeneration and renewal after the August 23-24 elections.
Last week, we witnessed the reconstitution of critical arms of the State, such as the Executive and the Legislature.
All these administrative processes are expected to run their full course soon, paving the way for the nation to pick up where it left off in its ambitious journey to build a modern, industrial and prosperous State within the next seven years.
Sacred land
In the lead-up to the August 23-24 polls, Bishop Lazi had been saying ad infinitum that this year’s polls represented a watershed moment for Zimbabwe, particularly in the post-2000 period, when the country came under siege for daring to repossess land that had been violently taken by white colonialists.
As expected, the elections yet again proved disappointing for those who have been waiting for the past 23 years to see regime change in Harare.
It is now unquestionable that sanctions were, are and will never be an effective interventionist coercive tool to aid Western designs in Zimbabwe.
It reminded the Bishop of what former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told CNN in August 2018.
“I believe there is a disease in the United States and that is the addiction to sanctions,” he said.
“We felt that the United States had learned that at least as far as Iran is concerned, sanctions do produce economic hardship but do not produce the political outcomes that they intended them to produce, and I thought that the Americans had learned that lesson. Unfortunately, I was wrong.”
Zimbabwe is sacred land.
Our tree of liberty, freedom and independence was, and still is, watered by the blood of martyrs.
This is why ZANU PF’s emphatic victory — though largely expected in Western capitals — becomes all the more historic, especially coming as it does when in two days, we will remember the days (September 12-13, 1890), when the Pioneer Column set base in Salisbury (now Harare) and hoisted the Union Flag in Cecil Square (now Africa Unity Square).
As a people, we had the unique distinction of unclasping the determined vice-grip hold of colonialism after a 14-year violent, bloody and unforgiving armed struggle against a well-resourced and professionally trained and equipped conventional Rhodesian army, which also had the moral, technical and financial support of the Western world, as well as apartheid South Africa.
This was unlike in other African countries that were gifted independence without much ado, and never experienced the melancholic agony of a relative or friend who was brutally killed or disappeared during the war, nor the ignominy of being sandwiched between two belligerent armed groups.
It was hell!
When reference to these critical epochs is made, some mischaracterise them as tired tall tales from a bygone era.
Except they are not.
We only just got our independence 43 years ago.
Veterans who fought the struggle — most of whom are still active and energetic today — still occupy critical arms of the State, and you can expect and trust them to play sentinel against malign forces they can smell from miles away.
Never be fooled by the hospitality, good-naturedness and seeming obsequiousness of Zimbabweans, which some people mistake for timidity and weakness; they are people of consequence.
We are a people who make and shape history; this is why some of the world’s superpowers consider our tiny teapot-shaped Republic their adversary, when we are clearly not.
Watershed
The outcome of this year’s elections proved one critical point — encouraging for Zimbabwe and discouraging for the West — that ZANU PF, through its history, character, ideology, milestones and trajectory, still holds sway over local politics, contrary to willed assumptions that the growing youth bulge — a phenomenon in much of Africa — would swing the vote away from the party.
However, for the first time in our elections, we really saw a meticulously coordinated disinformation campaign by the opposition CCC on social media platforms, which was carefully crafted to woo the young voter through automated accounts or “bots”.
There were numerous such “bots” — most of which were created on the eve of the elections and linked to Nelson Chamisa’s account, such as @GotoTafidza — that were involved in this massive influence campaign.
But the Bishop had long warned of the folly of such an elitist, misguided and detached strategy.
They should have heeded the invaluable message that losing Nigerian presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar shared with an irrationally exuberant youthful presidential candidate, Peter Obi, in the recent elections.
“They claim they have 100 million supporters online but you saw what they scored in Osun. In fact, in the North (of Nigeria), 90 percent of our people are not on the internet,” Atiku warned.
“Labour Party that does not have governor, members in the National Assembly, it doesn’t have State House of Assembly members. And politics in this country depend on the structure you have at these various levels . . .”
Moral of the lesson — bots do not vote and there is no polling station on social media.
But the Bishop thought — and still thinks — the just-ended elections were a watershed period in the history of Zimbabwe, because they hold an eerily dark foreboding for the opposition.
Their principal sponsors, the United States, look lethargic, as they are engaged in debilitatingly attritional covert and overt conflicts in Eastern Europe (Ukraine) and Asia (China); they could not care less what happens in Zimbabwe.
They did not quite come to the party in terms of sponsoring CCC in the last elections.
The burden lay on the European Union (EU), which splurged close to US$3 million to ensure that at least CCC had polling agents at every polling station, ostensibly as an anti-rigging strategy.
Those funds, however, disappeared in the structureless dark hole, the CCC accounts, which are essentially Chamisa’s personal accounts. Kikikiki.
Another beneficiary was Takudzwa Ngadziore — a Chamisa blue-eyed boy — who put money sank by “donors” to mobilise the youth vote to “good use”. Kikikiki.
Crying more than the bereaved
And this time, the US does not want to waste any effort in pretending the opposition won the elections.
CCC knows it lost, Chamisa knows he lost, observers know they lost and everyone — except the naive starry-eyed supporters — knows they lost.Do not be fooled, CCC councillors who contested in about 1 878 of the country’s 1 970 wards know full well of the election results throughout the country.
They all told Chamisa he had lost.
If you cared to notice, this is why he deflatedly went incognito on social media platforms after he had initially posted results where his party was winning.
They have now left it to Nevers Mumba — the discredited lone ranger from Zambia — to try and keep the generality of CCC members ludicrously believing there will be a fresh election. Kikikiki.
He now embarrassingly comes across as a hired mourner crying more than the bereaved.
Apparently, Chamisa’s recent preoccupation was raising US$200 000 to oil Mumba’s ill-fated advocacy and campaign.
Well, yes, there will definitely be another election — but in 2028.
Zimbabwe is not a country to mess around with.
Rest assured, soon, there will be discussion on the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, which Mumba purported to represent.
For those who might not know, this organ was specifically established at an extraordinary summit of the bloc held in Gaborone, Botswana, on June 28, 1996 at the behest of former president Cde Robert Mugabe, who became its inaugural chairperson.
It was meant to be a bulwark against Western designs in the region, not a Trojan Horse.
And those who have short memories must be reminded of how we dismantled the SADC Tribunal after it strayed from its mandate — just as Mumba did in his preliminary report on Zimbabwe’s election — by ruling that Zimbabwe’s land reform programme was unjust as it was discriminatory against white farmers.
Argh!
What nonsense!
To be clear, the SADC Tribunal only had jurisdiction over disputes arising from the interpretation and application of the SADC Treaty, its protocols and other subsidiary instruments; not jurisdictional issues that are pertinent and peculiar to a sovereign nation.
Which court ever ruled against the egregious dispossession of land from indigenous Africans?
Nonsense!
And, just as we did then, we can also do now.
Happily, thanks to regional cooperation, our counterparts in the region are aware of these shenanigans, which can have a contagion effect, if they are not nipped in the bud.
New season
But never be distracted.
This is the beginning of a new season.
As you might have seen, ED has been very agile and nimble in putting the governance structures needed to continue with his agenda.
He is racing against time.
He fully appreciates the work that must be put in for his vision of a prosperous Zimbabwe to materialise.
Many urban folk will, in the medium term, appreciate his efforts when water from two major projects presently underway — Kunzvi (Harare) and Lake Gwayi-Shangani (Bulawayo) — begins to flow from their taps.
A great new Zimbabwe is nigh.
Revelations 21 :1-5 says: “Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’”
All this shall come to pass.
Bishop out!
