It is quite strange that Zanu PF, which claims party leader President Robert Mugabe still enjoys popular support across the country despite his failing health and incapacitating age, still uses food and other “benefits” to frog-march people to the rallies to hear the 93-year-old speak.
NEWSDAY COMMENT
This is exactly what Dangamvura/Chikanga legislator, Esau Mupfumi and Destiny for Afrika Network founder, Obadiah Musindo have demonstrated by dangling food handouts and ill-gotten housing stands to lure residents to attend Mugabe’s campaign rally scheduled for June 16.
And to think the man has the audacity to call this “payback time” because the maize he had been distributing was from the President! And all those who benefited from the 10 000 Destiny for Africa housing stands in Manicaland will have to pay the price, as they have no choice, but to attend the rally — and obviously every other Zanu PF event in the province.
This is very immature politics at play when food and other basic necessities, such as housing, have to be used as some kind of political carrot, when every Zimbabwean is guaranteed such rights by the Constitution.
Should the vote of hard-pressed citizens at the mercy of Zanu PF’s failed policies be reduced to the value of a meal? Is this the gospel of empowerment that the ruling party claims to preach?
So, many years after the chaotic land reform programme that we have been told had been successful, why should people need food assistance from politicians desperate to pocket their votes?
It is tragic that many people, including the elderly and the hungry, will travel many kilometres to hear a 93-year-old sell them a pitch of hope for the future. And it is unlikely the pitch will have any takers.
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This is the conduct of selfish politicians desperate to protect their ill-gotten wealth because there is no other reason why they should have people go for the rally on the basis that they will get food handouts and residential stands.
This demonstrates clearly that these people are not genuine and sincere in what they are doing, but merely politicking.
