Zanu-PF's greatest failure

ZUNDE is appalled by the Zanu-PF government's move to fire 25 000 civil servants, cut off allowances and withhold bonuses for both the years 2016 and 2017. Civil servants in Zimbabwe have been on the windward side of history, being forced to work in terrible conditions and with no hope of receiving a sensible pension when they retire - not to mention the lack of health care services.

This comes against the background of severe cash shortages in the country, rising levels of food insecurity and mounting civil unrest. The greatest failure of the Zanu-PF administration has been in failing to acknowledge that they have failed. Instead of dealing with the problems of corruption, incompetence, maladministration and kleptomania, Zanu-PF has adopted behavior that echoes the infantilism they were exposed to by their colonial masters in erstwhile times.

Zanu-PF is spending outrageous amounts of money on individuals instead of paying civil servants. Mugabe can afford to go to Singapore more than 8 times a year for medical checkups and treatment. Zanu-PF can even afford to pay for Mphoko's two-year stay in a hotel or set aside over US$200 million to purchase luxury vehicles for ministers while civil servants wallow in poverty. The party sponsors lavish birthday parties for its leader costing millions while genuine war veterans are reduced to the status of beggars and squatters.

They should save millions by calling a halt to all unnecessary trips to foreign countries and use the country's ambassadors to represent them as is their proper role. They should trim the excessively large cabinet which is tired from continuous recycling. Grace is not a member of cabinet and yet millions are spent on sponsoring her meaningless rallies which require the use of helicopters and ferrying people from faraway places. All this wastes scarce state resources that could be used to remunerate the hardworking men and women in the civil service and buy basic drugs for our hospitals and clinics.

ZUNDE is watching with growing concern the blunders Zanu-PF continues to make in the face of the economic tsunami that has inundated our country. Instead of unveiling a working solution to the country's problems, the country's leader unveils a statue of himself. The Zanu-PF administration has repeatedly failed to offer lasting remedies to Zimbabwean's crisis and have resorted to intimidation, election rigging and outright theft. In the face of looming disasters, opposition political parties must unite against their one common enemy — the Zanu-PF administration.

This is because the ruling party has over the years devised a strategy meant to selfishly maintain their dominance of the local political sphere. The Zanu-PF system involves aligning themselves with the country's repressive state apparatus with a view to arm-twist them to further their agenda. In the Zanu-PF system of control, alliances are won through corrupt means; elections are won by any means necessary and at any cost; voices of dissent are silenced; the truth is bluntly denied; state media is continually abused; opposition is not tolerated; and criminals are protected as long as they are sympathetic to the ruling party. The law is applied to restrict the opposition and never to restrain Zanu-PF. Zanu-PF is identified with Zimbabwe and vice versa. In their view, whoever opposes Zanu-PF opposes the state. Their leader is an eternal ruler. Fresh ideas and reforms are regarded as regime change and regime change is treasonous.

It is this childish reasoning that has made Zimbabwe a pariah state at a time when other countries are entering into strategic business alliances. This mentality has seen the country's economy plunge to immeasurable depths with no hope of redemption. ZUNDE urges all Zimbabweans to regard the disaster bedeviling the civil servants as a national catastrophe. It is but a tip of the iceberg, a symptom of the malady; the very collapse of the economy.

The fact that many Zanu-PF leaders send their children to study overseas indicates that education in the country has gone to the dogs. That Zanu-PF chefs have money stashed away in foreign banks points to their lack of confidence in the country's banking sector and seeking medical treatment outside the country highlights the decay in our health care services.

The selfishness of Zanu-PF leadership manifests itself in the fact that after ruining this country's economy, they retreat to better economies to safeguard their ill-gotten gains. It would be outrageous if a man set his own house on fire and, instead of putting out the fire, retreated to safety in his neighbor's house. Yet, this is exactly the mentality in Zanu-PF.

In Shona we say "Nerimwe zuva gava richadambura musungo". Zanu-PF has fallen into a trap of its own making. The growing unrest among the masses bears testimony to this. ZUNDE will never support blatant incompetence in the guise of revolutionary leadership. It is time to put our hands together and create the Zimbabwe we want. It takes you and me to make that happen.

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Moses Chamboko <chambokom@gmail.com