Gumbo mourns 'vultures' who took over Zanu PF when he too was one of them

In an interview with Daily News an angry Rugare Gumbo, former Zanu PF spokesman who has been banished from the party for five years, accuse the Mnangagwa faction of being "mercenaries and loser" who are destroying Zanu PF from within.

"As I have said before, the Tsholotsho vultures have taken over, they are in the process of staging a coup in Zanu-PF and I don't know why the leadership is blind to this obvious scenario," said Gumbo.

Rugare Gumbo is right in saying Zanu PF has lost its liberation war values and the "vultures" have taken over. He thinks the abandoning of values and the vultures taking over has happened in the last few months and culminated with him being unceremoniously booted out of the party and his friends in Mujuru faction being forced out of power and worse. His is wrong about the time Zanu PF abandoned its liberation war values.

Zanu PF abandoned all its freedom, justice, human right and humanity values when the vultures took over the party soon after independence, at the latest. Gumbo and the other Mujuru faction leaders were as much part of the vultures who have destroyed this nation as "Tsholotsho vultures" Gumbo is so contemptuous of. The only difference between the two groups is that in the dog-eat-dog fight the Tsholotsho vultures have prevailed over his Mujuru faction.  

"How do you have people who were overwhelmingly elected at primary elections all being dumped and this by the way includes people who fought for the country, people who sacrificed in the bush to liberate Zimbabwe," ranted Gumbo.

If he had been paying attention these last 34 years then he would have known that Zimbabwe has never held free, fair and credible elections and therefore for him to be talking of someone being "overwhelmingly elected" is nonsense. The overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans have been denied this most basic and fundamental right all these years and he has never notice it but only does so now because it affects him!

"We are going to make you jobless and this means you will no longer be able to get money to buy support,"  Grace Mugabe told Energy Minister Dzikamai Mavhaire and Provincial Affairs Minister Kudakwashe Bhasikiti in October. Mugabe told the latter last week that he was in the "wrong" Bhasikiti.

The two, like Gumbo and many other Mujuru supporters, have since been dumped by the party and are soon be jobless too!
There is never a good time to be unemployed still to do so when the country is going through a total economic meltdown with unemployment already sitting at 90% plus, basic necessities like clean running water and electricity are a rare treat, most basic services like health and education have all but collapsed, etc. is the worst nightmare. Under these conditions, being unemployed is being given an automatic sentence to a life of grinding poverty and despair.

Already 72% of Zimbabweans are poor which means they can barely afford the bare necessities of life and 16% or 2 million are living in abject poverty, they live on less than $1.25 a day.

Of course people like Rugare Gumbo have been aware of the country's economic problems and growing army of poor and destitute people. Indeed it was the realisation that increasing numbers of Zanu PF members had already joined this army and they would be next if they lost political power to the other faction that make the Zanu PF dog-eat-dog fight a take-no-prisoners affair.

For the last 34 years Zanu PF had become a rats' nest, the old members are still there and over the years the party has grown to accommodate them, their family and friends. Rats are not like birds whose young fledge and leave the nest, rats make the nest bigger. That is all very well whilst there is plenty of food. When the food supply drops; watch out, it is load shedding time. Many rats will be thrown out of the nest in an evict-or-be-evicted fight with nowhere else to go and nothing to eat.

Rugare Gumbo is hysterical about Zanu PF abandoning its values today because he is one of the unlucky rats was "baby dumped", as Grace Mugabe so cynically called it, and now faces the grim future of abject poverty. Seeing abject poverty through the tinted windows of a ministerial limo is not quite the same thing as living through it first-hand. Gumbo still has most of the looted wealth amassed over the years, still he is smart to know it will not last and he too will be living on less than $1.25 a day. No wonder he is hysterical!

Now with the certainty of a life in abject poverty looming large for him and the other Mujuru factional leaders, Gumbo has finally remembered the long forgotten Zanu PF values of freedom, liberty, justice and human dignity for all. He never gave them a second thought all these years he was in power and could have done something to have them implemented for his own good, the good of his fellow Mujuru faction leaders and for the good of us all.

 "Zanu-PF structures are being decimated and real Zanu-PF people are being marginalised. Look at Goche, he has been standing by the President and Zanu-PF and has been a pillar of strength, now he is being abused like this," mourned Rugare Gumbo.

Trust me Mr Gumbo, no freedom and justice loving Zimbabwean will ever mourn the destruction of this Zanu PF rats' nest that has brought nothing but suffering and despair to the nation. Not one!