Zanu PF’s oppressive politics has cowed the populace

IT is time to put in place a new and different way of doing politics in Zimbabwe because Zanu PF has failed and brought us to the brink of ruin.

Zanu PF’s oppressive, exploitative and manipulative tactics have cowed the populace, conflated party and State and ensured that power and wealth are concentrated in the hands of party chefs and apparatchiks. The past 41 years have been a travesty of good governance.

Hope was born in 1999 with the emergence of Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change, but that hope was effectively stifled when Zanu PF stole the 2008 election and denied Tsvangirai and the MDC-T their right to rule.

The MDC has limped on since then and morphed into various manifestations which, instead of fighting the system, have been fighting one another, which does not make them any different from the system.

In the last 12 months, we have witnessed the recall from Parliament of MDC Alliance legislators, a move which many saw as a Zanu PF-inspired ploy by Thokozani Khupe and Douglas Mwonzora to crush the MDC Alliance.

In recent weeks, now that Mwonzora has displaced Khupe, he is moving to consolidate power by recalling more legislators from Parliament as well as councillors who continue to defy him.

Apart from making ineffectual addresses to the nation, MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa has largely disappeared from sight and has been emasculated.

It must be exceedingly painful for grassroots supporters who still share Tsvangirai’s 1999 vision and ideals to see what MDC Alliance has become. The “people’s project” has been destroyed.

It may seem that Zanu PF is tightening its grip yet again but that is not necessarily the case. Zanu PF is in peril.

The country is in an economic crisis that is exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and 40 years of looting, mismanagement and unbridled corruption which have impoverished this jewel of Africa.