FORMER Vice-President Joice Mujuru’s opposition Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) has launched a book chronicling Zanu PF government’s leadership failures since independence in 1980.
BY NQOBANI NDLOVU/SILAS NKALA
The book titled: The National Grievances, was authored by Retired Colonel Kudzai Mbudzi, and will be used as one of ZimPF’s campaign tools ahead of the 2018 elections.
Speaking at the book launch in Bulawayo yesterday, Mbudzi said: “The book chronicles (President Robert) Mugabe’s gross governance and leadership failure from 1980 to date and it is my wish that every Zimbabwean gets a copy of the book irrespective of their political affiliation, before elections.
“Mugabe has authored for himself his own political manifesto of misrule over the past 36 years. Therefore, this book is equally positioned to be the manifesto of all democratic movements in Zimbabwe towards the 2018 elections.” Mbudzi said the opposition party hoped to distribute about four million free copies of the book at its campaign rallies.
“We are tired about saying ‘Mugabe must go’ without doing adequate and detailed in-depth analysis of why he should go. The mantra is a tired one, hence this book,” he said.
“We want to produce about four million copies, which we want distributed to all parts of the country. It is also our intention that the book gets into vernacular languages, such that it’s accessible to everyone regardless of political affiliation.” The book emphasises the importance of forging political alliances to strengthen the struggle against Mugabe’s government. “Through the joint leadership of Mai Mujuru, Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T), Tendai Biti (PDP) and other democrats change will certainly come to Zimbabwe and the nation will have to rediscover the rule of law and the sanctity of persons and property,” Mbudzi said.
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In the book’s foreword, senior ZimPF official and former Energy minister, Dzikamai Mavhaire, said the book vindicated his infamous “Mugabe must go” mantra, which he made in Parliament in 1998, leading to his first expulsion from Zanu PF.
Mavhaire was, however, later readmitted and fired again last year.
“The contribution by Mbudzi to the fledgling genre of liberation literature invokes in me a not-so-strange sense of de javu,” he said.
“I now feel thoroughly vindicated. If only people had paid a little more attention to my words at the time. We would have been spared this Mugabeism mess. In a nutshell, this book lays bare, with rare scholarly valour, the simple message that we are all being held to ransom by one man Robert Gabriel Mugabe.
“The script, to me as rightly put is the political manifesto of Zimbabwe’s current and modern-day democracy movement and cuts across party and other individualistic sectional interests.”
Meanwhile, opposition party members yesterday embarked on a clean-up campaign in Makokoba constituency, where they declared that Mugabe and the incumbent Zanu PF legislator Tshinga Dube would not survive the 2018 crunch polls. ZimPF Makokoba women’s coordinator, Thembelihle Sibanda, said the campaign was a service to the community and also a strategy to reach out to the people.
“The party is gaining a lot of ground here and we are saying to Tshinga Dube and his friend Mugabe it’s over, they are just our walk over come 2018. If you look at this campaign you can see that the youth came in their numbers, which means that they are suffering, they have no jobs because of the failed government,” she said.
