Hope for Zimbabweans as Mugabe's Zanu-PF implodes

Zimbabweans are learning more and more about Zanu-PF's ugly modus operandi - thanks to the party's worsening internal wars and its purged senior officials who are singing like canaries.

And at the rate at which things are going in the ruling party, it is surely a matter of time before some really dirty linen hangs out - what with the "original" Zanu-PF now giving President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF formation as good as it is getting in the public domain!

Which can never be said to be a bad thing in the long-term if Zimbabwe is ever to come right.

That the centre can no longer hold in Zanu-PF is not a matter of conjecture anymore - if events of the past few months in the party are anything to go by.

In the short-term, many Zimbabweans will naturally be concerned by both the escalating level and brutal tone of factionalism between the two distinct party formations that now obtain.

This is so because Zanu-PF is not just our country's long-misruling party, it is also the rag-tag political entity that currently informs the country's policy and one of whose leader, Mugabe, has previously boasted of having "degrees in violence".

As many fearful Zimbabweans know, that ugly boast saw the ruling party's supporters going on to savagely act on their leader's threats, as happened again in 2008 and after the nonagenarian lost to Morgan Tsvangirai in that year's disputed presidential election.

But that's a short-term perspective.

In the long-term, Zanu-PF's inexorable weakening can only be good for the country's nascent democracy, as evidenced during the government of national unity era.

Then, the country's fortunes improved, with the quality of life for most Zimbabweans markedly improving tangibly after years of sliding backwards.

As was revealed by former Presidential Affairs minister Didymus Mutasa in his blockbuster interview with the Daily News yesterday, Zimbabweans now also know affirmatively that Mugabe takes all the decisions in government, often unilaterally - as exemplified by his public humiliation of Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa over civil servants bonuses.

This is very important as borne out by the fact that desperate Cabinet ministers have attempted to justify this crass bonus decree by saying that the Zanu-PF leader is entitled to "rubbish" his ministers even when they make prudent decisions because "the buck stops with him".

Indeed, the buck stops with this man in all matters of State as the all-powerful head of State and government, and commander-in-chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, as his praise-singers love to tell us.

But by the same token, and using the same Zanu-PF logic - notwithstanding that Zimbabweans now have a better insight into the inner workings of government, and the ruling party - the nonagenarian CANNOT pick and choose when the buck stops with him.

This means that the dear leader and his lackeys must make up their minds about the "internal sanctions", and real cause of our problems - and not their heretic gospel that opposition forces, and white commercial farmers were the authors of all our never-ending socio-political problems over the past 35 years.

While Mugabe and his rudderless group have often ranted about the "racist" West and their "evil" sanctions, they are very happy to receive food aid and medicines from the same British, and American regimes.

And now it is former Vice President Joice Mujuru's so-called "putschist cabal", which is at the heart of all our nation's perennial political and economic crises! It boggles the mind.

Surely, if the buck stops with Mugabe - as Zanu-PF has expediently told us - this means that our wretched socio-economic conditions are on his shoulders, if not head.

It also means that all Zimbabweans agree that our miserable lot has everything to do with the well-documented corruption in Zanu-PF, legendary ineptitude and murderous acts.

Which in turn would mean that there is hope for the country after all, even though, events of the past few months have suggested that Zimbabwe, under Mugabe and Zanu-PF's continued misrule, is more and more feeling like a fatal combination of the fabled Animal Farm and the ill-fated luxury ocean liner Titanic.

The Titanic, as many Zimbabweans know, was a disaster of epic proportions back in 1912 - all thanks to the hubris of its owners and managers who behaved just like Zanu-PF leaders, causing the needless loss of more than 1 500 lives.

Penned by renowned author George Orwell and published at the end of World War II, the Animal Farm fable is a cautionary tale for democracy-deficient countries like Zimbabwe of the dangers of misplaced nationalism, the deifying of so-called liberators such as those in Zanu-PF as well as the pitfalls of totalitarianism.

But as the end-game in Zanu-PF approaches, the pertinent question of who exactly among the party's senior officials wants Mugabe as leader still haunts both formations of the former liberation movement.

A decade ago, the "new" crown prince of Zanu-PF Mugabe, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his supporters were decimated under the same sorry claim that they wanted to oust the nonagenarian from power under what came to be known as the "Tsholotsho Declaration" - just as is happening with members of the "original" Zanu-PF today.

Which all begs the question of who exactly in Zanu-PF is loyal to Mugabe and wants the nonagenarian to be the government's head - as it appears that every senior member of the ruling party has been accused of treason at one point or the other, including the current supposed "victors"?

The sad reality, though, in all this - which many Zanu-PF minions and praise-singers miss - is that Zimbabwe's biggest undoing is Mugabe's and his controversial wife Grace's strange belief that the country would cease to exist if the nonagenarian were not on the throne.

What claptrap.

The fact is that Mugabe has become the single biggest impediment to progress and development in this country, with our only enduring memories of him having to do with his ineptitude as a leader; the endemic corruption in the country that is synonymous with Zanu-PF; Gukurahundi; Murambatsvina; record poverty and unemployment; as well as a million other things that have gone wrong since 1980.

That is why there is hope for all Zimbabweans as Zanu-PF implodes and the sun sets on Mugabe.