The Sunday News
Richard Mahomva
As I sat down to write the third submission of this series I was compelled to reflect on numerous conversations I have had with colleagues on the country’s current political landscape; especially this particular episode of our history in the making and of course a new twist to the making of our national memory as we await the outcomes of the 2018 election.
Beyond all the conversations that I have had with colleagues there is one person whose deconstructionist leanings have remained phenomenal particularly his rebuttal trademark statement, “It’s not new, hapana zvinyowani apa”. Many at times Cde Zvavanhu uses this statement to diminish arguments opposed to his perspectives on a particular matter.
Dingilizwe is the “I have seen it all’ type. It takes one to bring in an idea he is not familiar with to make him concede.
Therefore, I am tempted to borrow Prof Zvavanhu’s rebuttal trademark to challenge the attribution of decisions made by the Government to factionalism.
This follows a surfeit of the mundane that has been peddled in the headline by most our newspapers and this reflects how we are failing to analyse issues in context and in history as they arise so that we may have sober appreciation of what shapes the present.
This is because from time to time decisions are made and it is not new that decisions are arrived at to respond to any particular mandates of governance and issues of national interest.
All of that is not new. It has constituted a significant part of our history as a people and as a nation.
Instead, such structural amends reflect on the state’s capacity to proffer mitigation strategies to given challenges of any given period. In our media, the recent Cabinet reshuffle has been attributed to factional dynamics.
As such, it is important for us to interrogate that anti-narrative as we engage such submissions from a perspective of bringing new thought alternatives to the existing. This is because we now suffer from rational engagement due to media sensitisations aimed at disseminating linear narratives.
One typical case is that of the obtuse misinterpretations of the recent Cabinet reshuffle. It is also the interest of this article to discuss that the path to 2018 shall only be sustained by the ideological consistence of the party’s President, Cde Mugabe.
It is from that perspective that I argue that the country’s fortunes shall continue to be guided by history and consistent leadership value systems.
Troubles will come and go, but the party shall find itself and refocus its energy towards victory. This can only be achieved through continued enhancements of the structure safeguarding the welfare of national interest.
To this effect, I am compelled to go down the memory lane right up to 1977 when President Mugabe spoke about the need for the revolutionary movement to incessantly work towards giving meaning and clot to its structure in facing day to day challenges.
Therefore, according to President Mugabe this Central Committee meeting was important in the following respects:
(a) This is the first meeting of our Central Committee since its reconstruction last March, when new structural changes were made in order to suit ourselves to the situation facing the Party.
(b) This meeting occurs at a very important stage of our struggle, a stage when the war has gained significantly in momentum and its effects have begun to be felt by the enemy and we are, accordingly, called upon to review the war in terms of our general policy and strategy in order to intensify our war effort.
(c) We are also meeting at a stage when the Party stands in need of a structural consolidation, a clear definition of departmental functions and systematic streamlining of appointments so that the entire Party machinery can be geared to greater efficiency and effectiveness.
(d) This Central Committee meeting, in order to achieve progress, has, in my opinion, to take stock of our past as indeed it must examine our present and proceed to cast its view into the future.
The past, present and future constitute the time-frame or form in which our actions pitted one against the other as we move towards the attainment of our objectives.
Guided by the above, one can trace that the issue of structural rationalisations are meant to enhance the mandate of the nationalist movement. They do not necessarily have to reflect on unresolved attempts to resolve internal problems. Structural amends are meant to refocus, reboot and re-energise the course of power consolidation.
Therefore, the reshuffle is not anything new and it must not be a cause for fear for those who are ardent followers of the party’s realist path to overcome neo-liberal interests in the 2018 armageddon — it is not new.
This shows that the restructuring of the Government through the recent reshuffle will pave way for Zanu-PF to rediscover its purpose. Moreover, this will also make way for the party to reclaim the totality of its embracement of the visionary leadership creed of the President of Zimbabwe, Cde Mugabe.
As I raise this argument, I’m reminded of those other colleagues who have started making pronouncements of the post-Mugabe era. The follow of this cabal is that they selectively forget that President Mugabe is now an idea as once indicated by Professor Sabelo Ndlovu Gatsheni (2009):
What is termed “Mugabeism” is a summation of a constellation of political controversies, political behaviour, political ideas, utterances, rhetoric and actions that have crystallised around Mugabe’s political life.
It is a contested phenomenon with the nationalist aligned scholars understanding it as a pan-African redemptive ideology opposed to all forms of imperialism and colonialism and dedicated to a radical redistributive project predicated on redress of colonial injustices.
In explaining this site of contestation in the context of Mugabeism, Prof Ndlovu-Gtasheni states that:
A neoliberal-inspired perspective sees Mugabeism as a form of racial chauvinism and authoritarianism marked by antipathy towards norms of liberal governance and disdain for human rights and democracy (ibid).
Again, it is not new that the legacy of Mugabeism shall continue to be a reference of the liberation we anticipate as we brace to situate African at the centre away from the periphery.
Mayibuye!
– Richard Mahomva is an independent researcher and a literature aficionado interested in pan-Africanism, decoloniality and Afrocentricity. He is the Project Co-ordinator of Leaders for Africa Network; Convener of the Back to Pan-Africanism Conference and the annual Reading Pan-Africa Symposium. Feedback: [email protected]
