No second place in politics

While President Mugabe is inspiring the youth, his political opponents are busy terrifying and rattling the old.

YOU cannot compare a dying movement and a floating revolution! One of the delightful things about ZANU-PF’s opponents is that they have absolutely no historical memory.

There has never been a political, social and economic idea the world over that has been defended by the elderly.

Ideas are defended always by the young, guided by the old.

Towards the end of Europe’s Second World War, then United States president Herbert Hoover remarked: “Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.”

The remnants of any war affect mostly the young as they have the duty to rebuild the foundations of their nations. Africa’s leaders today were yesteryear youths who devoted themselves to fighting colonialism militarily and/or ideologically. However, today’s wars are no longer military, but ideological, economic and political.

These wars are not fought as the Bolsheviks did in the 1917 October Revolution in Russia.

They are fought by putting ideas of economic empowerment where they are most needed.

That is why one Donald Trump is clamouring to “make America great”.

With a fragmented local opposition, President Mugabe should start preparing for his inauguration.

The opposition in Zimbabwe is functionally illiterate, politically, too!

Youths have defended the country’s values without hesitation.

While President Mugabe is inspiring the youth, his political opponents are busy terrifying and rattling the old.

It is time the “opposition alliance” realised, for the umpteenth time, that in politics, there is no second place.

To die for an idea is unquestionably noble, but how much nobler it would be if men died for the ideas that are true, said American journalist Henry Louis Mencken in 1919.

Architects of the MDC Alliance’s election policy need not waste time.

No premise will be tolerated by a conscious youth if one wants to reverse the social, political and economic progress registered so far in Zimbabwe.

One would dare say that the parties challenging ZANU-PF are exaggerating their capabilities.

They are a representation of the West locally. Next year’s elections are a final rejection of a dogmatic, arrogant and anti-people model by the perceived alliance leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Zimbabwean youths are not gullible. They are aware of what is good and bad for them.

They are yearning to replicate the sacrifices made by those who fought a settler colonial regime during the liberation struggle, the youthful population of the time.

Statistics show that the voting youth population stands between 4,6 million and 4,9 million.

ZANU-PF is doing the groundwork, mobilising this constituency to register to vote, and to defend the values of unity, peace and development.

Those between the ages 18 and 35 constitute 60 percent of the electorate and can tilt the election pendulum.

If the youth constitute the majority, the basic principle of democracy is that there should be wide participation by the people.

The larger the percentage of voters, the stronger the base of democracy becomes. The youth are the political muscle of any nation and involving them as ZANU-PF is doing prepares a nation’s future thinktanks. There is nothing called a half-revolution. ZANU-PF is completing its mandate, again, next year.

And that election will be a contest between the beautiful and ugly; the spiritual and profane in terms of political, social and economic ideology.