Demolitions a well-crafted political script

SO the demolitions have been suspended for the duration of the rainy season? is was expected as soon as the whole issue of demolitions made headlines.

Everyone must have known the script: bad guy versus good guy. In this case, the bad guys were the opposition-led councils who allegedly ordered the demolitions, although it has become clear the ruling party was more involved in the order to demolish than the councillors themselves.

e good guy obviously has become the ruling party which ordered the destruction to be stopped. e idea is that urban dwellers who have been victims of the demolitions would now view the ruling party as the real deal in the context of the coming 2023 elections.

Urban voters have in the past two decades voted overwhelmingly for the opposition, much to the embarrassment of the ruling party which has often been labelled a “rural party” for its dominance of the rural vote.

But if truth be told, all the known land barons belong to the ruling party; some of them even holding senior positions in Zanu PF. If they are not ruling party apparatchiks they’re mostly proxies of senior party officials. One trend has emerged, whenever an election is on the horizon, these party apparatchiks somehow get access to land on which they quickly resettle people and have them registered as voters. ey’re enrolled into the ruling party and coached on how to vote. ey become “property owners” and in order not to lose the newfound property, they vote for the ruling party. But this hasn’t been quite effective considering the party has continued to lose in urban settlements so the demolitions become revenge operations.

By now people ought to have seen through this and refused to be settled outside what is procedural. And how do those whose properties were destroyed feel when the close neighbours have been spared the horror? It’s so unfair!