The Zanu PF annual party
It is a trait peculiar to politicians that evidence of abject poverty does not prick consciences in pursuit of their own happiness. The opulence flaunted by monarchs pales into insignificance when one recalls that monarchs are born blue bloods while politicians claim their wealth to election into public office ostensibly by claimed popular vote. Thus one has to think deep and taste the mood of very ordinary folks each time Zanu PF gets down to boogie in their annual shindigs. It is that time when the party that has claimed perpetual bankruptcy – both moral and financial – has its staunch loyalists lining up to make stupendous donations towards the hosting of these conferences. I have heard folks ask the moral philosophy questions such as why it has been found apt to give so generously to the party when constituencies claimed by the donor wallow in abject poverty, where that kind of wealth comes from, yet it also known how since independence, the line between party and the state has been blurred as Zanu PF used state resources as if they were their own. And while other Zimbabweans curse, it has been baffling that other equally ordinary folks have taken these shindigs with such gusto reminiscent of the 1980 independence euphoria.
Saw some young men and women last weekend milling outside the Zanu PF offices in Bulawayo and a friend quipped: “do these people really believe in what they are doing?” But then it was a question that has been answered before: “as long sisidla” – “as long as we are we eating” – (getting something from Zanu PF). It has become one huge farce that young people thrown into the ranks of loafing by bad governance and “voodoo” economic policies can still proudly hold their heads up and claim their place within the party machinery, when at the same time they are not at it because they believe in anything it stands for but rather like vultures wanting to pounce and reap where they did not sow.
Every amoral young person who wants to be an instant money-bag and own a small mining claim knows they simply have to extol the virtues of Savior (some name huh?) Kasukuwere and they got it made. Forget hard work, forget scruples, coz these are virtues that do not apply here! What then are these young lions being bequeathed as a legacy they will one day have to pass on to other young lions? Should we start worrying then that Zimbabwe will have an unending cycle of bad people coming and going, seeing that any hopes of an MDC-T political dispensation remain but a mirage on the horizon?