Tendai Biti's take on Mugabe's Cabinet

Wananchi, the delay in the announcement of a new Cabinet is clearly exacerbating the state of fear and anxiety in the country.

I have made the point before that for the whole of 2013 ,the economy has been on freeze, incapable of movement because of the election factor. With the election having come and gone, it still remains on auto freeze.

Every indicator points to a material down ward revision of all projections in the 2013 Budget. Clearly GDP growth will be less than 3% given the slow down in the economy and the slump in commodity prices.

Let me restate that those who "won" must and will govern on their own. A position that has been made very clear over and over again. The vacuum of information has created a frenzy of unintelligible speculation and wishful thinking.

As I have stated before, there is no such thing as a vacuum, something else will have to fill that empty space.  Typical Zimbabwean style, rumour and gossip have taken over.

Everyone knows someone who is close to the system who knows what is happening. Everyone is an expert in everything. Everyone has the dominant opinion which is always right.

And if you do not have data, or can not answer back logically, you can always abuse, use verbiage and vitriol. You simply give a dog a bad name then you hang same.

But the reality of the matter is that leadership and bold leadership is required in these times of crises.

Even though everyone knows that nothing will change, and the same old faces, many who have been there since 1980 will be recycled once again.

Then we begin yet another cycle of sterility, excuse creation, retrogression and stagnation. The same cycle of oligarchy, and exhausted nationalism.

When history repeats itself ,its a farce, Karl Marx once stated. But the major challenge facing this country and the economy in particular, is that there needs to be a fundamental Rethink of the State, Economics and Development.

Such a major rethink demands an honest appraisal of the record of the last thirty three years, an honest introspection of the keeps and drops, and an articulation of a way forward defined with clarity and alacrity.

The business of business as usual in not an option. Further time is not on Zimbabwe's side. And this thing called time is very unkind. Once you lose it, it is not recoverable .

Rethinking the State demands expanding the horizons, thinking beyond boxes of mediocrity and defining new paradigms of the State. This processes offers those, with a duty to protect their legacies to do so, in these late summers of their lives.

How do they want to be remembered. What will they live behind. How will history judge them. These are key questions and relevant to a generation in its late sixties, that is fast becoming extinct.

The funerals at the Heroes Acre of the last few days must frighten this generation. It is an endangered species. You can rig everything else but not age. Botox, face lifts, steroids and the gym are temporal artificial refugees. So what are those things that needs rethink .

I submit that naturally the first issue to be examined is the sustainability of the State itself. The key question of stability, peace and state reproduction.

The thing is so much division, hatred and exclusion dominates current discourse. In "the ruling party "itself, the succession battle is a self consuming hydra.

Never mind conflicts indeed serious conflicts brought about the competition of the control of national resources, particularly diamonds and platinum.

How does Zimbabwe build a sustainable, State capable of withstanding the shock to be brought by the internal and increasing explosive contradictions in the elite ruling class?

The Constitution and Strong institutions might offer some temporal relief but the thing is de facto power, as we saw in this last election is stronger than de jure power.

The court room battles fought recently in the Constitutional Court point clearly to the reality, yet again of a constitution without constitutionalism.

Yet national stability is not solely determined by what happens inside an aged contradictory liberation movement.

It is what will happen outside it. That is the existence of a powerful civic society and of course the movement. If ever there was a time that this country and its history needed the MDC, its now.

To protect our democracy and to act as a buffer and counter foil to pending insanity and to protect the right of the State to reproduce itself.

These are heavy statements not to be taken lightly, for it will be strange to many why more than ever the MDC will be critical to the salvation of this country.

In short democracy, functional substantive democracy is an integral part of ensuring state sustainability. If not the only part.

Democracy itself is a challenged concept, but like it or not there are no sustainable alternatives to it. Artificial alternative edifices may last, even for seventy years but they will always fall.

Therefore stolen elections do not produce sustainability. A return to legitimacy must surely be the starting point.

The point therefore is that it is the national duty of all Zimbabweans to ensure that the new paradigm becomes a reality.

Wananchi can not be innocent by standers. That was the tragedy of the last thirty three years.

The citizen was an innocent bystander whilst those without craft competence and the capacity to put the country first played God with people's lives.

This time no. Zimbabwe is for all of us. Moreso future generations unable to intervene in the deficit of present times.

The way I see it, Rethinking Zimbabwe, starts with rethinking the attitude and mindset of the present Zimbabwean. How long does one remain peripheral and on the margins. How long does one continue to be a footnote.

It is time to move this country forward. It is time to bend our collective pain into the fuel of a great Zimbabwe.

That is the way I see it.

Zikomo.