No more buying snake oil from Zanu PF!

By The NewsDay | Aug. 5, 2016 | 5 Min read

NO one knows precisely how and when the regime will unravel, because change is a process, not an event.

Echoes,Conway Tutani

People should not expect too much too soon. They should not get ahead of themselves. Optimism and realism ought to be finely balanced.

But it’s getting clear in people’s minds that this government has, for all these years, been like a snake oil salesman who sells fake substances with no real medicinal value as a remedy for all diseases. Policies of little real worth or value — or none at all — have been promoted as solutions to problems facing the nation. These have proved to be nothing more than snake oil.

Another thing: Support for Zanu PF is deeply rooted, meaning that while an increasing number of people are now angry with the ruling party — and quite rightly so in the face of systemic corruption and widening income inequalities — they are not yet ready to vote for another party when it comes to the crunch. It will take such people one more election or two to cross that psychological barrier of finally dumping Zanu PF. And, of course, it’s their democratic right to be sentimental and even stupid, if you will.

But equally true is that many people are now completely fed up of systemic corruption and, to them, there is no turning back. They rightly deciphered long ago that major institutions and processes of the State are routinely dominated and used by corrupt individuals and groups, who make them crawl and grovel in supplication to get what they are constitutionally entitled to. They have no alternatives to dealing with these corrupt officials. For instance, no Zanu PF membership card, no stand, as people are being brazenly told by Zanu PF youth leader Kudzanai Chipanga. What is more at work here? Delusion or ignorance? He talks like he owns the place to himself. That’s economic, social and territorial apartheid. You can turn anything into a cause. Simple-minded slogans seem to have a potency. It doesn’t take courage or skill. The politics of ideology has largely died down. There are no taboos, no limits, no morals.

These corrupt individuals are also able to maintain their positions in government and politics no matter how many times their wrongdoings are exposed, and they are immune from culpability no matter how strong the evidence of their illegal activity is. Why is Energy minister Samuel Undenge still securely in office after being implicated in shady deals running into hundreds of millions of dollars at parastatals under his portfolio pointing to criminal abuse of public office? It has also not gone unnoticed that Indigenisation minister Patrick Zhuwao has been obstructing investigations by Parliament into irregularities he is fingered of in his ministry also smacking of abuse of office.

Instead, these people use their power and manipulate the system for their own advantage, ensuring that fellow corrupt travellers are “on-board” in the common vile purpose of amassing more power and wealth. This systemic corruption has probably become the most poisonous pill in our body politic. Before you are a politician, you are a human being, but it’s the complete opposite with these characters. Appealing to their human side is futile because it has been deadened by greed for power and wealth.

Keep Reading

In the run-up to the 2013 elections, they promised 2,2 million jobs, vowing to implement change to make the lives of the citizens better. Once retained in power, they shift their focus away from all of those lies and false promises they made to get elected. One Nathaniel Manheru has not only shifted goalposts by saying that the onus is on unemployed people themselves to create those 2,2 million jobs, but that opposition supporters have no locus standi or right to demand those jobs as if support for any party is cast in stone; as if they are not taxpayers in their own right whose mostly paltry income is deducted to fund the National Budget, which, in turn, funds job creation. So, how, where and when are they excluded? If we take Manheru’s illogical bluster to its logical conclusion, those who did not vote for Zanu PF in 2013 should be exempted from paying tax. But how do you establish that when every vote is, by law, secret?

Well, Manheru, like those of his ilk inclined to be apologists, is so amateurishly wrong. They have been so monumentally wrong so many times — and they keep on proving it. What can one make of this? Could this be a manifestation of amorality on a massive scale? The perfectly sound idea of bond notes is unsurprisingly treated with high suspicion because it’s from these people. Are they lying? Is this a trick? Are they using Reserve Bank governor John Mangudya to lull people into a false sense of security?

Highly plausible alternatives have been totally ignored, and they pursue other avenues with dogged determination and little, if any, thought about the devastation on people. Even when the reasons presented to the public for engaging in these policies have been exposed as blatant lies, they still dig in despite the strong objections of the masses, never stopping to reconsider alternatives which would be beneficial to the majority.

A consensus, not contrived, is beginning to build up among Zimbabweans — including war veterans who have dumped President Robert Mugabe and thrown in their lot with the people — that they won’t buy any more false promises and disastrous policies from Zanu PF. War vets were historically conditioned to back Zanu PF whatever and whenever. The regime has turned on them with a vengeance because of their call for Mugabe to step down. They are now feeling the full force of the regime’s ferocity. They are now getting the taste of what it feels like to fall foul of the repressive and unforgiving system, which, it must be mentioned, they were very much a proud and unapologetic part of.

But it’s mighty significant that they have finally joined the long-suffering people and now accept that whatever happens to the people at the hands of the regime will also happen to them, as is already being seen.

The regime is — unintentionally, but much welcomely — making people put the country above the party.

No more snake oil from Zanu PF!