Mugabe: A centenary of Zanu PF strength

Mugabe: Hero or villain?

HAVING contributed to “Re-membering the Robert Gabriel Mugabe” (Sabao, Mahomva and Mhandara, 2020) as guided by Homi Bhabha (1991)’s call to truthfully reconstructing Africa’s disjointed past and reaffirming her dignity in world affairs, for me, February 21 is just more than the birthday of Zimbabwe’s former President.

It is an annual reminiscent part of our calendar to honouring Cde Mugabe’s luminary role in the displacement of colonialism.

It is a day for all to recall his inspiring role in the decimation of neo-colonialism and his strategic genius in promoting the longevity of ZANU PF in the most turbulent turning points of our national revolution.

In all this, Cde Mugabe was never a saint, especially to those who were opposed to his relentless fight against the trappings of neo-liberal imperialism.

Given the surfeit of the mundane Mugabe-phobia perpetuated by regime change scholars and media, I am more concerned about Cde Mugabe the protagonist and not Cde Mugabe the Western-constructed “dictator” and leader of a (neo-colonial imagined) “pariah/crisis-ridden” state.

My re-membering of Cde Mugabe over the years has empirically focused on his indelible role as an unswerving nationalist,

Pan-Africanism devotee, doyen of Zimbabwe’s agrarian reform, great nation builder and arch-ideologue of our national liberation.

In joining the global anti-colonial community’s commemoration of the RG Mugabe centenary, it must be unequivocally stated that the late Head of State was a hero yesterday, a hero today and the centuries to come.

Happy belated birthday, Gushungo!

When Cde Mugabe left

Cde Mugabe’s negotiated exit in November 2017 was a bitter-sweet experience.

Bitter, in the sense that his legacy had been dented by the factional incongruences that had befallen ZANU PF.

Thanks to the civil-military aided transition, which salvaged Cde Mugabe from being deposed in a manner that was not commensurate with his iconic stature.

That way, ZANU PF was nursed back to its sanguine revolutionary status as the party of liberation as it had eliminated counter-reactionary elements.

Consequently, his protégé for five decades, Dr Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, took over from him as President of the Republic of Zimbabwe and the ruling party ZANU PF.

As part of President Mnangagwa’ s re-membering project, the late Cde Mugabe has been loftily immortalised through the multi-million-dollar refurbishment of our main national airport, named after him in the last days in office.

The revamped Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport is an evident symbol of the love which the current establishment has for Cde Mugabe — the hero, founding father of the nation and ideological steward of ZANU PF.

Even those who hated Cde Mugabe to the point of imposing sanctions on Zimbabwe go in and out of the titivated airport named after their ideological tormentor.

His memory is with us and history will never forget him.

His legacy remains imprinted in those who loved and hated him.

In affirming his prominence into the future, February 21 was designated the Robert Mugabe National Youth Day.

This way, all our youths will be motivated to emulate Cde Mugabe for his outstanding role in the defence of our national interests.

Party construction

Zimbabwe’s anti-colonial metamorphosis from the days of the National Democratic Party (NDP) right up to the formation of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and the subsequent formation of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in 1963 has demonstrated the resilient and sustained growth and strength of the present-day ZANU PF.

This owed to some cardinal principles of placing party polices ahead of individual interest.

To achieve this, internal discipline must take its course as it naturally “resolves the contradictions within an individual”.

Once that is achieved, Cde Mugabe further argued, “The pull to be selfish is counterbalanced by a greater pull to be selfless; the pull to drunkenness is countered by one to moderation; the pull to disobedience is negatived by that to obedience; the pull to sexual givenness yields to sexual restraint; deviationism is corrected by compliance and individualism by collectivism. The individual must comply with the order laid down by the group. Our group is the party called ZANU.” (Central Committee meeting address, August 1977).

According to Cde Mugabe, the then ZANU was the institutional convener of rules and regulations that produced a party-line guided conduct for its membership.

This principle has not changed. Therefore, both the party member and supporter are subjects of this order and its ideological standards.

Throughout his presidency, Cde Mugabe is reputed for constantly submitting himself to his party’s constitution and the entirety of the processes it demanded in the running of ZANU PF and its organs.

This is a virtue that has been absent in our opposition, particularly the Citizen Coalition for Change (CCC), formerly led by Advocate Nelson Chamisa.

The CCC still has no constitution to this day. This is embarrassingly ironic considering that Chamisa is a lawyer — not withstanding that most of his then appointees are lawyers too.

Surprisingly, Chamisa and his handpicked inner circle did not find anything abominable about being a constitutionless “government in waiting”.

It even becomes more preposterous when the same opposition party making unwarranted clamours for the rule of law has no self-governing laws.

Through its proxy social movements, the CCC and its unborn successor factional outfit demand the opposite of their inherent lawlessness from ZANU PF.

On the other hand, the same ZANU PF accused of circumventing the rule of law in Zimbabwe is a legally constituted body that operates under reasonable constitutional instruction.

To make matters worse, Chamisa, a lawyer himself, found nothing amiss about being a “lawless” operator of the same anarchical political formation he later abandoned.

To the convenience of his folly, he blamed ZANU PF infiltration for his anarchical elicited demise.

The perennial factional degeneration of the anti-Mugabe opposition movement, which originated from the penchant to discredit the land reform programme, failed to competitively challenge ZANU PF due to its strategic force.

The armed struggle tradition and respect for hierarchy has kept ZANU PF intact owing to the foundation linked to Cde Mugabe and his contemporaries within the nationalist movement.

The continued popularity of ZANU PF is a dividend of the party’s adherence to principles of discipline, constitutionalism and egalitarianism.

All these principles have served as ingredients of ZANU PF’s longevity in power.

Without doubt, all these are a product of Cde Mugabe’s outstanding political gamesmanship, which was pivoted on the power of mass mobilisation.

This principle was evoked in the run-up