12/27/2023 0 Comments Civil strife![]() The party remained consumed and narrowly focussed on power and not the people of Zimbabwe. Zanu PF appears to have failed to introspect both after the November 2017 coup as well as the July 2018 election. The state, as Dr Ibbo Mandaza often says, has become the biggest source of access to economic means and political power is simply a tool for rent seeking, influence peddling, deal making, nepotism and corruption. Change was not defined beyond parochial political interests. Zanu PF’s blundering is now coming to haunt the party. Mnangagwa had the opportunity to rise above the politics of self-serving power to set Zimbabwe on a new economic and political trajectory by pronouncing a broad-based agenda of economic, social and political reforms that reached out to all political, civil and business sectors. The definition of success within the ruling elite must go beyond the self to embrace the national. ![]() It is important to note that broad-based reforms are not synonymous with “Zimbabwe is open for business” sloganeering it is putting an end to systems and structures that have bred this malaise and that includes the state-and-party confluence, an end to undemocratic laws, abuse of the security sector for political ends, and an end to election cheating, corruption among other issues.īusiness cannot work nor can capital flow into Zimbabwe when we have such primitive modes of governance. This would have reset Zimbabwe on a new path. President Emmerson Mnagangwa had an opportunity to institute broad-based reforms twice, that is in 2017 when he came back from brief exile to take over from Mugabe and post the July 2018 election. And what they know is what was taught and practised by Mugabe. Zanu PF’s failure to reform and introspect has constrained the party’s ability to realistically think of politics and governance outside what the ruling elites know. While Mugabe is no longer Zanu PF and Zimbabwe’s leader, the new leadership in Zanu PF has in practice maintained his legacy even as they speak a different language in public. ![]() This is in the form of the continuation of what others now call Mugabeism, that is Zanu PF maintaining Mugabe’s style of governance, style of leadership and structures both in the government and party and security sectors. While Mugabe is off the scene, the legacy of his years in power is what is still obtaining. The key factors towards this stasis that we find ourselves in are a crisis of legitimacy and a crisis of expectations from citizens, wearied by years of misrule under former president Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF. THE events of the past few weeks indicate that Zimbabwe’s national risk remains high and that neither the coup of November 2017 nor the July 2018 elections have provided a lasting solution to our national political and economic crisis.
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