The Sunday News
Richard Runyararo Mahomva, The Pivot
The late national hero Retired Lieutenant General Dr Sibusiso Moyo will not only be reminisced for his role as an outstanding foot soldier of Zimbabwe’s struggle and in the execution of Operation Restore Legacy.
His sterling contributions as a top-notch diplomat will be forever attached to our national memory. Dr Moyo’s journey with African nationalist began in the late 1970s when he joined ZPRA among a cohort of equally politically conscious Manama Mission School radicals. The clarity of his cause in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle landed him in Zambia as a guerrilla conscript.
In post-independent Zimbabwe, Dr Moyo was part of the reintegrated structure of the nation’s first military formation — the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA). He rose through the ranks right up to his ascension as Lieutenant General upon retirement in 2017. Since then, he served the nation as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade up to the time of his death.
Prime to his role in the execution of Operation Restore Legacy, he will be recognised among many who paved way for Zimbabwe’s entry into an epoch of hope and the reigniting of the enduring values of the nationalist tradition.
Through his role in Operation Restore Legacy, General Sibusiso Moyo relived his teenage vocation which was pragmatically grounded in shaping the future of our nation. In a holistic perspective, Operation Restore Legacy ushered a resurgence impetus to the problematic national question which was in dire need of recalibration.
As such, the 2017 November revolution was anchored on reviving Zimbabwe’s economic development, upscaling good governance, heightening social equality and rejuvenating the levers of state power. At the heart of these key pillars of Operation Restore Legacy was the later pronounced: “Engagement and Re-Engagement Policy.” Operation Restore Legacy also lobbied for the realignment of the ruling Party to the tradition of the armed struggle. In other words, Operation Restore Legacy played a key role in reclaiming Zanu-PF’s revolutionary credence the face of factional charged contradictions. Through the inauguration of President Emmerson Mnangagwa as the leader of both Zanu-PF and the Government, the agenda of dignifying the withered nationalist spirit was clearly articulated as observed by the late Dr Moyo:
“The advent of the new dispensation in our country, Zimbabwe, was realised at the inauguration of HE President ED Mnangagwa. This new era was achieved by our people, at home and abroad, who demanded change for the better. Street manifestations, which were joyous and peaceful, were constructed by all our citizens in their colourful diversity without regard to political affiliation.”
Dr Moyo’s reflection on Operation Restore Legacy expressed the solidarity of Zimbabweans home and abroad in initiating the collective political direction Zimbabweans had taken. Operation Restore Legacy restored the dignity and status of Zanu-PF which had been disparaged by the factional dilemmas.
Therefore, the import of this project is to map the contours of reform which epitomised the “New-Dispensation” in the ruling Zanu-PF and the nation at large. History would be remiss to exclude Dr Moyo in recollecting the events which culminated in the birth of the Second-Republic. He was among the many patriots who laid the foundation for Zimbabwe’s transition from the first to the Second Republic.
He should be celebrated for not only contributing to the continuity of Zanu-PF’s mandate to govern Zimbabwe, but he must be remembered for his dedication to the triumph of national interest.
Through the Second Republic, the late national hero moulded Zimbabwe’s commitment to mutually transactional international relations, also making it clear that developing such relations did not equal compromising national economic development.
This emphasised Operation Restore Legacy’s appeal to transcend asymmetrical multilateral interactions that subjugate national interests to external domination.
As chief of foreign affairs, the guerrilla in Dr Moyo pushed for a foreign policy which was going to break the rigidities of linear diplomacy. In Cde Moyo’s tenure in office, Zimbabwe was and is still open for national interest sustained diplomacy. The legacy restored in November 2017 was informed by collective African interests in global dialogue and policy-making.
Even as Retired Lt General Moyo is gone, our Government must continue to inspire Africa as a leading example of practically carving the notion of post-colonial power matrices. As we remember Dr Sibusiso Moyo, Zimbabwe must initiate:
Direct Foreign policy-creation towards servicing enduring national values beyond competing and narrow political interests. It must also be underpinned on challenging the residues of colonialism;
Continuity of foreign policy overdrives which are largely enshrined in permanent national interests beyond political expediency. Likewise, it should be the prerogative of all political actors to rally towards national interest in pursuing external engagements and mediations; and
Political negotiation which transcends the narrow confines of securing partisan power privileges over broad-based national values and end-goals.
The late guerrilla diplomat will remain associated with Zimbabwe’s foreign policy paradigm shift as there must be a sustained effort to reconcile erstwhile diplomatic tensions with countries in the West — most of which had supported Zimbabwe’s isolation from the international community through the economic sanctions which were effected as a backlash to the Fast-Track Land Reform Programme.
Going forward, we must unravel the importance of Zimbabwe’s engagement and re-engagement policy framework and how it characterises a new philosophy to the culture of the country’s domestic and external politics. At a domestic level, the re-engagement latitude has been noted through various initiatives namely the consolidated framework for electoral reform initiated ahead of the 2018 Harmonised Elections; the establishment of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission, (NPRC) and the Political Actors Dialogue (Polad).
The engagement and re-engagement trajectory demonstrates Zimbabwe’s renewed political reconfiguration interests home and abroad. As Dr Moyo settles in his celestial resting place as a champion of engagement and re-engagement, he must be remembered for leading the forte of Zimbabwe’s transformation to modernity.
Richard Runyararo Mahomva (BSc-MSU, MSc-AU, MSc-UZ) is a Political-Scientist with an avid interest in political theory, liberation memory and architecture of governance in Africa. He is also a creative literature aficionado. Feedback: [email protected]
