Let them go home, they have failed!

Put simply, failure is the opposite of success. Owing to three long decades of gross misgovernance, our beloved country has been reduced to a monumental failure. Indeed, everything that could go wrong has certainly gone wrong, under ZANU PF's iniquity of hegemony epitomised by corruption, looting violence, lawlessness, nepotism - in essence, all nature and form of vices one could think of!

It will be a sheer waste of precious editorial space as well as the reader's valuable time to delve into the detail or chronology of ZANU PF's failure that is lucidly inscribed on our hearts as well as vividly remembered in history. The water we drink, the air we breathe, the roads we use, the schools our kids go to, our hospitals, factories, farms, you name it, are all in a sorry state or at least dysfunctional. If this is not failure, what is? Even cattle dip tanks have crumbled. Welcome to our world, the world according to ZANU PF!!! In ZANU PF, we have a leadership with the shortest latency when it comes to unleashing violence on innocent citizens and yet the longest when it's time to respond to socio-economic issues.

Not long ago, I argued that ZANU PF's bag of lies was running empty. Today, this is no longer just another academic argument but a practical reality. First, they lied to the international community that they were well-meaning people who had best intentions and the interests of the nation at heart. In return, they received prodigious support; financial, material and morale. None of this benefitted the ordinary person as the rich became richer while the unsuspecting poor became poorer.

As we were busy tightening our belts in the 90s (year not age) owing to ESAP, they were busy loosening theirs. This was soon after most of them were unashamedly found with their fingers deep in the Willowvale cookie jar! A few of them with some semblance of conscience either resigned or took a deadly concoction of gin and gammatox. The rest stayed on or were redeployed and yet we continued to sing "Long live Comrade Mugabe" and vigorously shouted "Pamberi neZANU".

Later, they lied that finally, they were going to empower the people through land redistribution as well as other forms of indigenisation. The gullible believed this lie despite being warned several times by the emperor himself not to build permanent structures on illegally acquired pieces of land. The majority were dumped on land only fit for game.

As we speak, they are now going to take most of the arable land back and of course, redistribute it amongst themselves and their cronies, families and mistresses. Like baboons in a maize field, they would rather "harvest" everything, even what they don't need or can't carry. They would opt to use their armpits as carry bags than leave anything behind. What an invasion!

Today, they are busy lying to and amongst themselves; it is sanctions, we won the elections freely and fairly, Zim-ASSET will revive the economy, we will create 2 million jobs, unemployment is less than 11%, the youth conference didn't go well because of poor planning, the women's league conference might be affected by kidnappings, we will use gammatox to eradicate weevils and so on and so forth.

What they are denying is the fact that they have single-handedly destroyed one of Africa's most promising economies at independence, the jewel of Africa, to borrow some diction from the visionary Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. Incredibly, President Mugabe was recently shocked and angered that ZANU PF youths were going hungry because nobody had donated food to the conference. He ended up sending people to his own granary and cattle pen. This is what you get when leaders become richer than the countries they run. We have seen it before; at one time, Mobutu was richer than Zaire. Now this shameless art has been perfected in our beautiful Zimbabwe and yet they continue to blame everybody else for their prolific failure except themselves.

Isn't it so obvious to President Mugabe and ZANU PF that what they are now experiencing in their party is a microcosm of the national crisis they have created and presided over for years by systematically destroying our economy yet they pretended everything was normal? In the past, they would receive involuntary donations from the corporate world. Do they forget that factories have closed shop, only a few companies are still profitable, farming has been de-commercialised, reducing it mainly to subsistence business and the economy is literally comatose? As if he had just landed from the moon where he had been hibernating since farm invasions began more than a decade ago, President Mugabe told the youth conference that farming was not for everybody, really?

A long-time friend of mine couldn't have put it better when he said "Mugabe has no clue about economics and yet they say he studied it". If indeed President Mugabe attended a few lectures in economics or attempted a few assignments, then he is a very stubborn student. Everything his party stands for is a clear violation of basic economic fundamentals. Add to that, he buys sophisticated dairy equipment from Italy when he could have easily received something for free or at a token price from China, North Korea or Russia. Doesn't it make basic economic sense to get a product for free or at the lowest price from "our all-weather friends" than export scarce resources to the West? Alas, some of us thought Italy was in Europe!

Recently, Woolworths of South Africa acquired David Jones, Australia's house-hold retailer in a $2.2 billion deal that is likely to benefit both economies. And yet, in Zimbabwe, our ZANU PF "economists" believe that everything between the Zambezi and Limpopo must be owned by black Zimbabweans with ZANU PF connections even if those people cannot run a corner dairy or tuckshop. The results are there for all to see; an economy on its knees and an impoverished citizenry. Not only do they have undergraduate degrees in violence, they also have PhDs in penury creation and blame apportionment!

For a very long time, we have allowed clueless clowns or stubborn but dangerous hoodlums to run our affairs. Come 2018 if not earlier, we simply must say enough is enough – zvakwana, sokwanele! The long-awaited season for the convergence of progressive minds in Zimbabwe and around the world is finally upon us. It's now time for a new leadership, a new direction, and a new agenda. ZANU PF and the entirety of its current leadership have failed dismally, let them go home! As the late Byron Hove rightly said "I beg no favours from anyone, this country belongs to me as much as to anyone else".

Moses Chamboko is a pro-democracy activist and Interim Secretary General for Zimbabweans United for Democracy (ZUNDE). You may visit ZUNDE at www.zunde.org or email info@zunde.org