ANC: Things are not fine in Zimbabwe

Lindiwe Zulu, Chair of the ANC's Subcommittee on International Relations has conceded that things are not fine in Zimbabwe.

Zulu was part of a 10 ANC member delegate that met with the ZANU-PF Politburo on Wednesday in Harare.

"Things are not fine in Zimbabwe, we all agreed with ZANU-PF that things are not fine. What we have heard is not something we represent as revolutionary parties we have to do right by our people and do away with corruption and human rights violations as well as reviving the economy. We needed to say comrades let's be frank, and call things as they are. However, the issues are not as simple and as straight forward," said Zulu.

Moreso, Zulu said the meeting with ZANU-PF went well. She also said they were going to go back and meet up with other political parties.

"The meeting went very well. The meeting was upfront, open and very friendly. Moreover, we all agreed that we need to meet other political parties and we are going to go back and meet other political parties without any interference," added Zulu.

However, some of the country's opposition parties which include the country's main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) have since threatened to take legal action against the ANC for abusing state resources following the "lift" they took with the Falcon 900, which is a military jet but Zulu has since defended the move.

"The Defense Minister was already on a mission to Zimbabwe so we asked the Minister for a lift and she agreed so that's why we had to leave early because we had asked for a lift from the Minister who had to leave on Wednesday that's why we couldn't stay for more days," said Zulu.

However, Linda Masarira, leader of the Zimbabwean opposition LEAD political party, has since castigated the trip taken by the ANC delegates to Zimbabwe.

"The LEAD ideology is clear in using homegrown solutions to solve the problems bedevilling our nation. We don't believe in exporting our problems to other countries' governments. We have no intention of meeting the ANC delegation as we are busy working on a strategy and blue print on changing Zimbabwe's governance system.

Nevertheless, their visit is invaluable as there is no change they can effect except chowing allowances for their trip to Zimbabwe.

Moreso, the South African government knows exactly what is going on in Zimbabwe. They have a fully staffed embassy and their own secret service operating in Zimbabwe. Embassies report daily to their home countries. This farce visit to get facts on ground is just a formal waste of time.

Regardless, I don't think the delegation from South Africa will do a better job in finding the truth and creating a solution for the crisis in Zimbabwe. Thabo Mbeki did a shoddy job and reinstated Mugabe who had lost an election. Right now we need people like Paul Kagame who was in the same situation that we are in but managed to reconcile the people and build his nation even though he has got his shortcomings of puppetry.

The Rwandan genocide got over 800 000 people killed and the situation was worse than the one we have in Zimbabwe. Rwanda is the fastest growing economy in Africa and the ruling party ZANU-PF, should learn from those that experienced what we are experiencing now. Another person who could assist our government to make sober decisions is the leader of South Korea, they also had a similar situation and they managed to solve it," said Masarira.

@danielItai_zw