Zanu-PF - Betray them before they betray you!

For once, Didymus Mutasa is right. Mugabe is a really scared man, but for other reasons Mutasa does not cite (dailynews.co.zw).

There are other, more direct, personal and on-the-person reasons now haunting all in Zanu-PF without, and without distinction as to rank, status or station. Betrayal looms large within and outside Zanu-PF, and nobody knows if they may well make a pep walk on a short and unplanned walk to captivity - which Zanu-PF ironically thought they had fended off with the Nikuved elections of 2013 - but which now seems to be a political grave they started digging themselves.

It's sweaty nights through and through for Zanu-PF people. 'Brave' and made-up faces during the day betray figures deformed by bone-eating fear and heart-freezing anxieties. Suddenly, what a wonderful feeling to be an ordinary person - povo - as our tormentors have called us!  

And the 2014 Congress - itself intended as a hatchet job by the conniving Mnangagwa faction against the Mujuru faction - is proving not to be the intended end but the beginning. As I write, a fresh wave of purges has only just started. There will soon be rivers of blood on the floor.

It's now all also hit the so-called securocrats, a group of shadowy very late-middle aged man who probably can't wear shoes for any reasonable length of time. There, is a tinder box that heralds a new chapter in this sad tragedy of 35 years mistaken for governance. In this theatre, it's about looking over both shoulders. And in this theatre, it's game on, whether they want to be part of the new game or not, otherwise they are a recycled product of it.

At the heart of political wrong-doing of the last 35 years, we now have the angry, the aggrieved, the hounded and wounded, the spited and slighted, the endangered and threatened, the afraid and running, and the maligned and dumped. It's now dog eat dog.

It is time to betray or be betrayed. Time to frame or be the framed, or even kill or be killed. Strike first or be struck first. Zanu-PF is open about its game. Zanu ndeyeropa!

Joyce Mujuru and her faction made an elementary error and snoozed. Here they are today. And, from what was always suspected and recently confirmed by utterances from Zanu-PF itself, someone inside Zanu-PF struck first before Solomon Mujuru struck. And to add salt to a gaping wound, Solomin Mujuru's will is now weaponised against her widow - Joyce Mujuru (herald.co.zw). For all you know, those now pointing cartoon fingers at her about her late husband's will probably 'helped' her do the wrong-doing on the will they now accuse her of, precisely so they could use that against her at the right moment.

The international community has always used the weapon of betrayal effectively when the time to use it has arrived. In Zimbabwe, too, finally, it has. And it is usually from those closest to the main actors - the previous untouchables - that the world turns to execute the betrayal. This is usually the all-powerful in the network - and close relatives of the main actors. Depending, each actor is a main actor or other actor. A cascading falls of betrayal, wheeling and dealing, but such a handy tool when the world needs it.

We saw betrayal by a close relative point to Saddam Hussein's 'hole-in-one' crawl-in in December 2003. The betrayer is said to have been waived good bye onto a waiting private plane - briefcase visible in hand - as he left for a life of bliss in distant exile.

In the former Yugoslavia, it was the betrayal of army general(s) that finally delivered the late Slobodan Milosevic to the 'Captivity Suite' of the Serbian State and eventually to The Hague. You can bet Nicolae Ceaușescu, Muammar Gaddafi, Laurent Gbagbo and many other dictators are trophies to this now perfected art of recovering long suppressed truth.

The unspoken message within Zanu-PF now is betray or be betrayed. Or if you can't, the idea is to at least wrest the initiative to do so from the 'other side(s)'. Disrupting the 'other side(s)' activities is fair play here. And being one's 'equalizator' of things is an imperative of safety - however temporary that safety.

While Joyce Mujuru and scores of others in her faction and other emerging camps procrastinate and waste precious time evangelising about their new-found 'goodness' they know nobody believes in - because they are all Zanu-PF - the 'other side(s)' and emerging camps are ready to strike again. And again … and again!    

There can be no doubt that Zanu-PF people are walking dead, all of them. But it would be foolhardy to take that for granted. Zanu-PF must be 'encouraged' to be angrier and more ruthless with itself. The people must feed the furnace of betrayal and distrust now eating Zanu-PF away. Zanu-PF can't do anything about it anymore, too many of them are now virtually condemned as agents of America and Britain and part of the 'regime change' from within. But it must be about more than stocking the fires of disintegration.

The people must deny Zanu-PF the opportunity to unleash organized disorder with which they would want to cover their escape routes. It is time to watch out for scapegoats and scapegoating. The people must now be on the lookout for the usual and favourite scapegoat - tribalism - and shoot it down quickly.

And people must watch out for the other favourite one too - that of trying to assassinate Mr Mugabe. Zanu-PF neither tires nor is embarrassed of it. And these days you can even be accused of using witchcraft for 'regime change' and be subjected to all manner abuse. Even one-man protest 'movements' are not safe!

In short, the people must now take away Zanu-PF's power and capacity to distribute harm and violence against the population at will.

To those in equal guilt of past crimes and misbehaviours, betraying is also not about financial reward. More importantly, it may literally mean a choice between freedom and jail.

All legal systems of the world use this method, in different forms and names. In some formal court processes, it is called plea bargaining. But before court - during investigations - turning informer and witness against a former co-perpetrator can literally be the ticket to freedom - sometimes regardless of the gravity of the crime. All usually depends on the criticality, gravity and scope of your expose. If it leads to the biggest fish being caught, the benefits to the informer increase correspondingly.

Zanu-PF is headed in one direction. The risk of sinking with it is high, but the opportunities to be exorcised of it and rehabilitated are equally good. Fools will wait until it is too late, and they face the world from the wrong side of truth.

Figuratively speaking - some might even suggest, literally speaking - the 'real' Zanu-PF people are walking - daily - with boarding passes in hand, just in case. Homes in exile have been agreed and are ready for them. For the rest - the foolish and small fish - they will still be right in the middle of the fire when a long tormented people finally say it's time for the 'African Savannah' in Zimbabwe. Then they will have no other recourse than face truth at its angriest - alone. Eugene de Kock in South Africa now knows a thing or two about being alone and facing the truth alone.

As for MDC-T - and having failed on all fronts and for all this long - they can now assist the people in one way at this stage: they should remove themselves as a ready and easy excuse for Zanu-PF's shenanigans.

I think they should accept the suggestion made to them by one of their member in South Africa and pull out of Zimbabwe's parliament altogether. That act alone will accentuate the in-fighting in Zanu-PF and accelerate the criss-crossing 'purges'. But crucially, now that they are where they are with the 21 'recalled' former MDC-T members, this will remove any legitimacy the Zanu-PF government claims to have after the stolen 2013 election. In other words, MDC-T must increase the army of the angry and hungry, and the people will do the rest. With all democratic avenues closed, a popular uprising is the only option now left for the people of Zimbabwe. It is the people's right and the people must exercise it.

And the trigger for it, no one ever knows, not even where popular uprisings have happened. In Zimbabwe, the conditions for a popular uprising now exist and everybody tired of oppression and repression must be on the right side of that popular revolution.

No GPAs this time - and people must resist offers for similar political things when the drums of a popular revolution start beating.
On November 5, 2014, a popular rising in Burkina Faso finally saw the back of its former president, Blaise Compaore. Burkina Faso is not the first nor last oppressive regime to fall to the will of the people.

In Zimbabwe, clearly, it is now up to the people of Zimbabwe to make Mr Mugabe and Zanu-PF bow to their will. It was never a political fiction after all that - ultimately - political power and authority belong to and rest with the people. And Mr Mugabe and Zanu-PF, too, may well soon find out just how true that is, and that, that rule admits no exceptions.

Let them keep pushing the people with their 'succession' games. No Zimbabwean ever said they want Mugabe and Zanu-PF succeeded. For the people of Zimbabwe, the future is and remains as they shall determine post- their popular putsch.