ZUNDE will work with every sector including security and the diaspora

Zimbabweans United for Democracy (ZUNDE) has come onto the political platform when the nation is utterly broken. Our people have lost everything they ever hoped for; their souls, hopes and aspirations are gone. Families have been torn apart with almost 6 million living in the diaspora. The majority of those at home are merely surviving with over 90% unemployed. There is little hope of ever finding decent employment.

A good number of those in the diaspora are having to do with the lowest menial jobs known today derogatorily as dotcom jobs. As they work every day to send money back to their parents and families, they wish they were home doing what they were trained to do when their parents sent them to get an education. Certainly, for them, there is no place like being home sharing your life with your loved ones together, with dignity.

This is a life that money cannot ever buy. ZANU PF has robbed them of their only chance at life, of living dignified, decent and fulfilling lives. Even the lucky ones in professional and well remunerated jobs wish they could be home, only if things were normal. Zunde has a clear plan for repatriation or attraction of diaspora talent that Zimbabwe badly needs to recover from decades of mismanagement. The diaspora community is a very special constituency that has kept Zimbabwe's micro-economy ticking for years. Now is the time to be involved with bigger things. All you need is an enabling environment. Your usefulness must go beyond remittances which is what ZANU PF thinks is the only reason for your existence. Zunde has a plan for you.

It is no secret that Zanu PF has always run to the security sector to do its dirty work. We now know that in 2008 when Zanu PF lost the presidential vote, they called upon the army to intervene. The presidential run-off became deadly, bloody and violent, and indeed lives were lost. This was with the blessing of some uncouth commanders who felt they could not salute someone without liberation war credentials. Today, ZANU PF is at war with itself and no one knows to which faction one belongs. There is hate, fear and mistrust among each other all the time. When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.

When leaders are fighting each other, what can an ordinary soldier do? The dynamics of what has to happen today have changed. Zunde believes that the nation has no option but to find a mechanism of joining hands with all progressive forces and start working together as one. We have to decide how we want to move forward from here. First we have to unite and together we need to commit ourselves to free ourselves of this fear that has consumed us. Fear has incapacitated us and we don't have the strength to stand up for what we really value, our right to freedom, dignity and humanity.

Zunde believes that we all have a responsibility to each other and to every one of us without exception. We cannot be creating enemies of each other and that includes the security sector. We understand that once a person has become a soldier, you have an obligation to obey the command. A soldier is trained to follow orders. He or she does not have to like what he/she is doing. If you are a soldier and you are ordered to shoot to kill, that's exactly what you will do otherwise you will be facing a serious charge for which you will pay dearly, sometimes with your life. What this means, therefore, is that there are many a soldier out there who are ordered to execute illegal orders including committing atrocious acts on their own people. In a normal and non-partisan environment, a good number of our professional soldiers would not be subjected to this shameful abuse.

At some stage, we have to accept that even soldiers are our own brothers who need our understanding and acceptance. We really have no choice but to bring them closer to us and work with them. Mugabe would not be rigging elections today if he was aware that a professional, impartial and apolitical army was out there waiting to defend the constitution and the flag.

Zunde believes that the time to put our heads together is now. On the political front, we increase our chances of winning a democratic revolution than if we are divided as we are today. It is time to pick up the positives in us in every one of us regardless of what political party, affiliation or religion you belong to. Let's bury our petty differences because these will divide our people and our vote and walk forward hand in hand to our destiny. Let us keep dreaming because dreams do come true. It is good to have many political parties. For Zunde this is a good sign that everyone has something to contribute. We cannot think alike and therefore the more ideas we have the better. If we all can add value to our struggle in our own way, that is the way to go. Let us reach out to each other and establish common ground and move forward in harmony towards victory, as one entity driven by values. Zunde seeks to unite everyone, every player, into one family that will bring down Zanu PF's iniquity of hegemony.

 Each one of us must realise that it is only us who shall bring back the Zimbabwe we have always dreamt of. Zanu PF have accomplished their dream. Our entire world is broken because of Zanu PF. They created a world of plunder and pain, wealth for themselves and abject poverty for everyone else. They have stolen from us and have murdered our people. Look around you and tell yourself whether you will ever be happy in your own country. Poverty has become normal. The sacrifices your parents made, educating you, your hard work studying for a better tomorrow, has all gone to waste. Sadly, today, because of Zanu PF misrule, a good life comes through corruption and not hard work or education. You have to be Zanu PF or a praise singer for you to have those diamonds, those farms and those benefits which will see you better off than everyone else. What a life? What a paradox! How painful!

To our professional people in the civil service, in the army, police force and the entire security sector, Zunde doesn't have to fight you to bring about that change that we all so desperately want. Each and every one of us has a brother or sister somewhere in the army, the CIO or the police. We do not have to kill each other to restore our own dignity or to remove Zanu PF. We cannot today start fighting each other simply because a despot has hung onto power for his own enrichment while we all suffer in abject poverty and pain.

Unity will take away the fear that has ruined us and condemned posterity to penury. The nation is afraid of Zanu PF. The CIO are afraid of each other and they kill each other every other day. In the army, a soldier does not trust his/her comrades. Civil servants are the same. They fear their own shadows. The person in the street feels he or she is being watched all the time. So who is not afraid? We are a people wrapped in a cloud of fear of just living a normal life. Even in Zanu PF itself they are afraid of each other because they do not know what will happen next. Amos Midzi has just died in a locked car and before they open it someone is shouting out suicide. Mai Mujuru is afraid of Mugabe and has declared she will not stand up to him anytime soon. Though we are told she is popular in Zanu PF we all know what can happen to her if she dares to openly challenge the master. Someone in CIO knows exactly where Itai Dzamara is but what can he/she do?

After years in exile, we have missed many things. We miss our people and our country. We miss the smell of the mupani tree; eating the mupani worm, the dried vegetables mufushwa, the round nuts nyimo and ground nuts; that rare sip of the "scud" or rukweza traditional beer. We miss telling stories sitting by the fire in the moonlight under those clear skies with all our siblings and cousins laughing endlessly at nothing, passing that soothing tasty cup of "7 days" around. We miss going to our local church, singing in our own language, dancing our dance.

ZANU PF has done it many times over, this business of using us. We call upon you to refuse to be used again against your own people. Somehow it seems we don't learn from it. The time we spent in the armed struggle was a time of devotion, commitment and sacrifice. Our spirits were always high.  Death was just another inconvenience which one of us were not afraid of and did not even think about. Yet up there in the Central Committee and High Command, Mugabe and his present day cronies were crafting their own vision.

On military parade, we sang "Ndiro Gidi vakomana" (the Gun will rule our country forever). They meant every word of it. We were just soldiers and had no clue this was what they meant. While we thought we were fighting for democratic governance by our people, they made us sing the opposite; rule by the military. Unsurprisingly, today we hear, "The pen cannot be mightier than the gun".  Really? We never ever agreed that the people's vote is not important! We thought we were fighting for one man one vote. Alas, we were wrong!

That is exactly what they did in 2008. What a sad indictment and insult on people's democratic rights and freedom and the sacrifices we made in fighting for freedom. Am I entirely proud of having sacrificed my life to go to war? Were it not that I was fighting another evil, another apartheid, I would be thoroughly ashamed.
We came back from war to pick up our lives from where we had left. But that was not to be. Most of the fighters were not even integrated into the army at independence especially those with little education. Some commanders were taken and those are today's present day cronies.  For years, the Zanu PF government did absolutely nothing to improve the lives of ex-combatants in both ZANLA and ZIPRA until they arm-twisted Mugabe into doing something 17 years after the war. Not even counselling for the trauma they suffered blowing those bazookas and bombs. And when a few disgruntled ZIPRA cadres fired a few guns, no one even cared to find out what their concerns were. The result was Gukurahundi genocide chasing after a hundred disgruntled rebels. That is what Zanu PF does all the time. They use people and dump or crush them to die in the cold.

When Zanu PF realised they were no longer popular with the masses anymore, they again used the MDC's. I have said this before. Zanu PF does not do anything for no reason. There is always a catch somewhere. And the MDC was caught unaware. If only they had listened to their people or consulted with those who knew better they would have been warned of the dangers of trusting Zanu PF. Negotiations for the GNU had to have their own cost and now where is the MDC? They continue to crumble and crumble creating more rubble, something they strangely call "renewal"

Zunde wants to advise the army, the police and the security sector at large that we are not going to create enemies out of you. Politics is not about creating enemies like what Zanu PF and MDC are doing today. It is about creating partnerships and networks that push the people's agenda forward. Politics is not about me or you but it's about us and how we put our hopes and aspirations together as a nation into policies that move our country forward.

We are not going to demand anything from you, except to say as soldiers you must remain soldiers with a clear mandate to defend the constitution and our country. You do not fight your own people, poor defenceless vendors who are trying to make an honest living.

A few bad apples do not require us to condemn the whole consignment of our security establishment. It is ZANU PF that wants you to look bad. We in Zunde are not trying to appease anyone. Those few who have committed crimes will be held to account, within the framework of peace, justice and reconciliation. Zunde will not stand for impunity. Commanders must be appointed on merit, not on political affiliation. The rule of law must stand. It is a solid pillar of democracy.

You are better off with the people than with corrupt despots who will not be here tomorrow and who feed you on trinkets. So when 2018 comes and we go to the vote, your role as soldiers is to keep the peace so that a free and fair election is conducted and the people's will carries the day. If you do that as soldiers, then you are winners. Remember, Zunde stands for winners.