The Sunday News
Richard Runyararo Mahomva
Before officiating the 339th Session of the Politburo last Wednesday at the Zanu-PF Headquarters, President Emmerson Mnangagwa was captured to a surprise.
Tonnes of Covid-19 hampers —all immeasurably massed to his sight. Revolutionary gratitude to the Zanu-PF Youth League, by now these crisis relief commodities are already being dispersed to all the ten corners of Zimbabwe.
The signification here is not only political, but it is humanitarian. This is a plausible response to a crisis which is not only facing Zimbabwe but has an unprecedented decimating effect to humanity at large. Through this national Covid-19 relief donation, the Zanu-PF Youth League has pragmatically demonstrated that this current global pandemic knows no boundaries and does not discriminate on partisan lines.
The leadership and wisdom demonstrated there is that the fight against Covid-19 requires intensive and combined determination. Today as Covid-19 unleashes its despicable anarchy to our socio-economic structures, politics must rationally give humanitarian succour to the threat of very being. As such, the Zanu-PF Youth League under the leadership of an organic revolutionary intellectual and “decolonial” Tendai Chirau has since established a radical turnaround from the yesteryear proclivities of slogans and many other rituals linked to the symbol of “youth” in political parties.
This made me reflect on a submission by my academic counterpart and a columnist in this esteemed weekly read, Micheal Mhlanga:
“There was the transference of responsibility in the formation of the 1957 Youth League in Zimbabwe from George Nyandoro, Robert Chikerema, Paul Mushonga up to the ‘almost legend’ Maurice Nyagumbo who played an important role in youth politics in Zimbabwe. To date, the Youth League stands as an amiable union of leaders whose primary vision is to safeguard the interest of tomorrow’s Zimbabwe.
Despicable movements such as Zanu Ndonga, Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM), (National Alliance for Good Governance) NAGG and of recent MDC formations are a classic semblance of mobile movements. History has quickly forgotten about them.”
The thought posited by Mhlanga here speaks to the shifting, but consistent mandates of each generation. The historical mapping of the nationalist cause of the mandate of “youth” by Mhlanga draws a diagnostic chasm between the revolutionary and the political convenience soliciting “youth”. In Mhlanga’s view, the revolutionary “youth” survives the catastrophe of the effects of being forgotten by history. The revolutionary “youth” is still remembered through tales of the exploits of Chris Hani, Kwame Nkrumah, Robert Mugabe, Walter Rodney, Buchi Emecheta, Malcolm X, Winnie Madikizela Mandela. These were revolutionary “youth” yesterday but to this day history can’t afford to forget their deep-rooted conviction and loyalty to decolonisation.
With the reorganisation of Zanu-PF as a nationalist movement founded on the decolonial treatise, the youth wing of the party must become a mobilising front of the post-colonial awakening in the face of the changing dimensions of imperialist surges to collapse the nationalist movement. This call is extended to the rest of Africa through Zimbabwe is just but a microcosm of the imperial masterplan to entangle the “youth” to the neo-liberal entanglements.
Nationalist Youth wings must now return to the African liberation plans to consolidate the gains of independence.
There must be a determined and collective cause by youth in Zimbabwe and in the whole of Africa to repossess the stolen land, restore the dignity of our people who continued to be displaced by neo-colonialism to acute economic desperation.
Through Civil Society Organisations, Western media and other vehicles of imperialist reason, African youths have been misled to desist from repossessing their natural resources. Instead, they have misguided and groomed to become labour commodities for colonial capital. On the other hand, employment opportunities seem to be vanishing in a deindustrialising Africa. With the emergence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, automated production will leave many with no means to run the economy. The immediate implications of neoliberalism on youths relate to failure to consolidate youths in the mainstream economic formations. Much to the disappointment of youths, informality becomes the means to circumvent unemployment.
This calls for decisive remodelling of the cause of the millennia youth and the generations ahead. This crisis fosters transcontinental economic competition, high rates of joblessness and economic recession. In all this, Africa remains at the disadvantaged slope of the uneven global order. Convincingly, this has a negative bearing upon youths as they try to survive in their communities. As such, the nationalist movement must be seen in the small-scale mines empowering youth. Innovation by youth must be incentivised outside partisan lines. There must be increased frameworks to support all pockets of excellence within the demography of youth.
The youth demographic dividend must be harnessed fully to pursue the shifting mandates of the nationalist movement as also observed by Dr Obert Mpofu, the Zanu-PF Secretary for Administration in one of his articles in this paper:
“The youth league is the cog of the Party’s continuity and all the values it represents. The institution of youth, in general, represents the successive generational mandate which it shares with those of my generation. This is why the inter-generational positionality of our values stands to be preserved as a key ingredient for the posterity of the continent’s future — which should be free from colonial dictates. In the spirit and letter of this given reality, the nationalist powerhouses of Africa (Zanu-PF mainly) must continue to rejuvenate, retrospect and introspect to lay a solid foundation for Africa’s future. “
Undeniably, after the protracted anti-imperialism struggles, the shortcomings of socio-economic genocide of Africa, there is a need to enhance the rationale of not replacing the imperialism with a becoming that does not arrive. The pitfalls of national consciousness must be recycled and regenerated to a new logic of political reforms which will utterly transform Zimbabwe and Africa’s political landscape. This is only possible if the nationalist movements use the foothold of “youth” to redefine future political cultures of the continent. From the peak of pan-Africanism to this era of post-independence, each generation of African remains bound by aspirations of a perennially beckoning call to liberate Africa from imperialism and its ever-changing forms. The youth remain in the continuity path of that cause. Therefore, they must be allowed to define the future of Africa. The reorganisation of Zanu-PF under the New Dispensation carries that desired precedence of continuity.
Richard Runyararo Mahomva 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]
