The Sunday News
President Mugabe’s rebuke of divided leadership in Zanu-PF should challenge our political leaders to reflect on the kind of legacy that they seek to bequeath to posterity. Of late the verbal attacks, indiscipline, unbridled ambition and downright malice have been exhibited in abundance in media reports, a mirror of the festering ill-feelings within the ruling party, just a month before its elective congress.
It is our hope that our political leaders take heed of the words of wisdom from President Mugabe regarding honouring a legacy, and also creating one.
The President challenged Zanu-PF leaders to stop spending most of their time on unnecessary infighting but instead seek innovative ways to spur socio-economic development of the country.
“We are wasting time insulting each other Cde Mutasa, yesterday I went home at 9pm because of the Politburo meeting and only managed to sleep at 2am,” said President Mugabe on Friday last week at the official opening of the Herbert Chitepo School of Law at the Great Zimbabwe University.
The law school, named in honour of the late national hero and Zimbabwe’s first black lawyer Cde Herbert Chitepo, should serve as a challenge to the party whose plans to honour Cde Chitepo were yet to take shape years after the idea was conceived, the President noted.
Could the delays in coming up with the Herbert Chitepo School of Ideology be part of the reason why some leaders in the party seem to have lost direction due to a lack of ideological orientation? Or maybe the President’s challenge also goes beyond Cde Mutasa and others to gather resources to build the School of Ideology but to prove their worth by seeing the project through thereby earning their place in our history as the generation that remembered to honour their forebears, and in the process also left a legacy.
Does the current crop of leaders want to be remembered for their love for positions more than their service to the people? I believe the President’s statement was pregnant with meaning and that those with ears heard his message loud and clear and are geared to put shoulder to the wheel to ensure the success of our economic programme, Zim Asset.
We would like to join the President in urging for unity of purpose within the ruling party so that Government programmes are not disrupted by differences of opinion linked to forthcoming events. The reason why the likes of Cde Chitepo are being honoured, and the President feels the party has not done enough to honour them, is because of their selfless contribution to the betterment of our people that were oppressed for ages.
Having received the baton from Cde Chitepo’s generation, the question is whether the current generation still takes pride in the principles of sacrifice and servant leadership that the likes of Chitepo drank from and were nourished by to spearhead the struggle.
Some analysts were quoted in the media noting that the forthcoming congress would “redirect the party away from compromised pursuit of selfish interests to promise of national economic prosperity of Zim Asset” but we believe the party’s DNA should always show, whether it is a season of contestation or not.
We cannot and should not have seasonal commitment to the core values of the party that embodies the collective hopes of the masses. We hope our leaders are listening, and challenged even, by those seeking to make a change in the development of the nation, far from the madding crowd.
