×
NewsDay

AMH is an independent media house free from political ties or outside influence. We have four newspapers: The Zimbabwe Independent, a business weekly published every Friday, The Standard, a weekly published every Sunday, and Southern and NewsDay, our daily newspapers. Each has an online edition.

Zanu PF must stop blame game

Comment & Analysis
Yesterday we carried a story under the headline “Mangwana denies Copac walkout”, in which Copac co-chairperson Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana (Zanu PF) denied his party had walked out of the meeting. Mangwana claimed that “the meeting had adjourned after a disagreement on how to proceed on the minutes of our workshop”. What had irked the Zanu […]

Yesterday we carried a story under the headline “Mangwana denies Copac walkout”, in which Copac co-chairperson Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana (Zanu PF) denied his party had walked out of the meeting. Mangwana claimed that “the meeting had adjourned after a disagreement on how to proceed on the minutes of our workshop”.

What had irked the Zanu PF side of Copac was the resistance by the other parties to accept the former ruling party’s 29-page document seeking to overturn most of the issues already agreed on. Mangwana’s subsequent utterances after their boycott are nothing new as they typify Zanu PF’s modus operandi that has hurt this nation for 32 years — fighting reality through denial.

Zimbabweans today face problems caused by Zanu PF, a party that decidedly thinks what it prefers to believe determines what is true and not the other way round. Since Independence in 1980, Mangwana and his colleagues have systematically negated reality and as is typical of those in denial, their motivation is nothing other than their overpowering desire for things that are true to be false, so that they maintain their grip on power.

Thus, the party has implemented policies that are at variance with reality, pretending to be championing the cause of the majority. This has had serious consequences for the ordinary man and woman as manifest in a stumbling economy, political violence, human rights abuses, vote-rigging and resistance to positive reforms, among other ills.

Currently, Mangwana and Zanu PF want to smuggle their party position into the new constitution disguised as people’s views. This is sheer denial of reality by Zanu PF because the current draft constitution is largely a collation of people’s views which they were party to. They simply want to block reforms, slow down the constitution-making process and blame other parties for the inevitable mess.

The blame game is so entrenched in Zanu PF’s denial mechanism to the extent that the party now believes the self-delusion that it is not culpable for anything that went wrong in this country, despite holding the reins since independence.

They blame colonialism, sanctions, the West and its perceived “puppets” among others, for all the country’s woes as if these were the architects of corruption, political violence, the chaotic land reform, draconian laws and policy inconsistencies that form the bedrock of the majority’s suffering today.

The irony is that they refuse to see the reality that the roots of most of these ills are firmly embedded in their party.

And the tragedy is that Zanu PF does not see the need to change. They think they can change the hands of the clock so that the current context suits their anachronistic view of the world.

Their reasoning is deeply rooted in denial — thoughts and actions that reinforce the false notion that nothing has to be changed, everything should be static and those that seek change are either enemies or foolish.

Zanu PF must stop forcing its self-delusion onto the people. This has hurt the nation more than enough.