Opinion ROY MUROYI
The people of Zimbabwe failed to recognise the historical patterns associated with the leaders of the Second Republic. The result was Zimbabwe today, a country with a volatile political environment and a broken economy, showing no signs of mending.
Chuck Palahniuk, in his satirical novel, writes that “there are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch closely, history does nothing, but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognised. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher. What we can’t understand, we call nonsense. What we can’t read, we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables”.
The historical past that gave birth to the Second Republic is a clear testimony to the above statement by Palahnick. Many saw the birth of the Second Republic as a very welcome development because they were tired of the old dispensation under President Robert Mugabe.
Many of us forgot the historical past associated with the army as well as its leadership, including the men behind the removal of Mugabe, Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga and President Emerson Mnangagwa. The political rhetoric given by Mnangagwa during his first 100 days in office has turned out to be the opposite of what we see in Zimbabwe today.
To date, Zimbabwe has witnessed the shooting of unarmed civilians by the military in broad day light under the command of the Second Republic government.
The military has been accused of raping women in the process and also abducting civil society and opposition activists, a clear sign that the military is bent on controlling the politics of this nation like before.
It is also critical to note that the military-led government has also done some unimaginable things during their short stint; they have closed down the internet for days, so as to allow the military to brutalise demonstrators.
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The very same government has been accused of tampering with cars belonging to anti-government speakers and political players in a bid to cause road accidents.
The most recent being Apostle Talent Chiwenga , Vimbai Tsvangirai-Java and MDC lawyer Thabani Mpofu.
On the other hand, economic growth and political stability are deeply interconnected.
The uncertainty associated with this unstable political environment brought about by the Second Republic has further reduced investment and the pace of economic development.
Command economy has not yielded any tangible result since the new dispensation was ushered in. Volatile political environments in history and presently have proved to be bad for economic growth, no matter how promising the economy may be. Vietnam, for example, is controlled entirely by the ruling party with almost the same tactics that we are witnessing in Zimbabwe today. The economy is one of the most volatile in Asia. What was once thought of as being a promising economy has recently been in distress.
The Second Republic was born out of the need to preserve the belief systems and ideologies of the Chimurenga guerrilla warfare that claimed the lives of more than 20 000 Zimbabweans between the mid-1960s to 1979. The military wing of Zanu, Zanla, adopted the violent culture and eventually wanted to control the party that bore the military.
This is exactly the curse that has befallen Zimbabwe today. The military now controls the politics in Zanu PF and beyond.
Ken Flower attributes this military takeover of Zanu by the army to the 1973 taking over of the Zanu PF Dare Rechimurenga/War Council by the late Josiah Tongogara and the military High Command.
Since then, Zanu PF became a lawless military-controlled party.
A number of studies of Zimbabwe’s struggle have argued that the tension between the military and political sections of Zanu permeated the party and remained a permanent feature of its DNA even after independence.
The liberation war of Zimbabwe was characterised by the subject more referred to as discipline. The subject of discipline during the liberation war of Zimbabwe has not been examined a lot.
There are references to the administration of punishment in specific circumstances or, more often, regarding the unprofessional conduct of guerrillas, like we see today with the Zimbabwe National Army.
Geoffrey Nyarota, in his book Memoirs of a News Man, gives examples of punishments that were exerted on individuals during the war. Nyarota examines the different punishments given to civilians by guerrillas in the bases (pungwes). Nyarota gives examples of how brutal the guerrillas were in dealing with civilians. This brutality was attributed mainly to the politicisation of the Zanla guerrillas.
This volatile political environment caused by the army today can easily be described as the curse of the Second Republic. With soldiers complaining about the economy not functioning and being paid in the not-so useful RTGS dollars, this is most likely to be the curse that will completely destroy the Second Republic.
