'Zanu-PF undergoing renewal process'

As Zanu-PF continues its restructuring exercise, the party claims to be aware of the ongoing demographic changes and is actively working to recruit more members to enhance its organizational and mobilization capabilities.

In an interview with the Zimpapers Politics Hub's Gibson Nyikadzino (GN), Zanu-PF Secretary-General Obert Mpofu (OM) discusses the implications of this exercise and its potential impact on Zanu-PF's performance in the upcoming general elections.

GN: How is the ongoing restructuring exercise in Zanu-PF likely to influence the party's performance in the next election?

OM: Since the New Dispensation under His Excellency, President Mnangagwa, the party has done a lot to renew itself. This renewal is done through a process of professionalising the party.

You recall that we started having full-time members in the party at the beginning of our New Dispensation. And now we have former ministers, senior members of the party, most of whom are in the Politburo, who were appointed by President Mnangagwa to run the party.

And I was appointed as the secretary-general to run the party with departments and their heads.

In so doing, we wanted to renew the operations of the party and improve its operations. We have departments that are fully staffed by highly-qualified and skilled professionals attending to specific issues relevant to what their departments are supposed to do.

GN: What are some of these skilled professionals doing?

OM: We are currently working on a systematic registration of our members through cell restructuring. We are creating a database for all our members from the village, which we call cell, to the Politburo or to the Presidium. Everybody belonging to Zanu-PF should be identified with the cell.

For us to account for our membership, we should come up with a programme of recording our membership through the cells. This will capture everybody who is a member of Zanu-PF. That membership should be supported by a card.

When that exercise is done, we will actually know how many members we have in the party, through a data capture system, and compile them into a database.

GN: How will the database be interpreted, explained or evaluated?

OM: From that database, we will now promote our structures or create structures. As a party, we grow from cells to branches, and we create districts and District Coordinating Committees (DCCs) from that database.

This will ensure that there is no duplication of one member holding several positions within those structures. From the DCCs we have provinces, then the Central Committee.

From the Central Committee, the President now has the leeway of identifying those that are going to be in the Politburo, which is a committee of the Central Committee.

So that is really how we intend to achieve a proper recording of our members. The President, who is our leader in the party, belongs to a cell. If you want to identify where his membership is, you can actually, through a database, locate him in a cell.

GN: How will the Chitepo School of Ideology complement the organisational structure that you have laid out?

OM: Zanu-PF, as a revolutionary party, is guided by its revolutionary principles drawn from the war of liberation, where we were guided by ideology, by our beliefs that we needed to liberate ourselves.

If you did not have that sense of freedom, you would not go to war. Those that joined the liberation struggle were convinced by the situation then that Zimbabwe belongs to us, the owners of this country.

And in doing so, or even enhancing this belief or understanding, there was conscientisation of our people through lectures from revolutionary countries such as China, Russia, East Germany, Cuba and others that had liberated themselves through fighting in their country's liberation war.

So that spirit was developed even after independence to make our people understand why we fought for this country, what we believed we should do when we freed ourselves through creation of schools of ideology.

GN: How crucial is the Chitepo School of Ideology to the administration of the party and its relevance to the members?

OM: The Chitepo School of Ideology here in Zimbabwe is one of our prominent departments in the party, where from time-to-time we keep educating our people about how we should conduct ourselves as a ruling party.

We have even put up a new structure in town, which will be an epicentre for the conscientisation of our people. And the school is part of the regional school of ideology, which is called the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School in Kibaha, Tanzania.

That is a process that we really hold dearly, because it produces a patriotic cadre. So that is one policy that the party really holds dear, because it changes one's thinking about how the country should be run, how the party should run or should be run, and how a true cadre should be when it gets into leadership.

GN: What is the party doing to capture the new generation considering the progression from the Pan-Africanist, nationalist, globalist and now the Generation Z. How is Zanu-PF modelling itself to incorporate them to be intergenerational?

OM: The party is run through its constitution. All these structures I spoke to you about are guided by the constitution of Zanu-PF, whose preface is that of creating a revolutionary cadre.

We explain to those that aspire for leadership on the quality that is expected of the party and for those that want to be in leadership.

This is done at the level of our structure. Leaders are told or are prepared to lead according to the party's beliefs, according to the constitution as well.

And it starts from the lower levels right up to the upper level. It is also our intention that we even apply this policy to schools, to all our educational institutions, including the primary, secondary and up to university.

This is a process that we are working on now. If you look at the Ministry of Education, both the higher and lower, there is now talk of innovation, creativity, as opposed to the theoretical system that we were accustomed to.

Because you produce a proper cadre. Our biggest slogan now, by His Excellency, 'Nyika Inovakwa Nevene Vayo/Ilizwe Lakhiwa Ngabanikazi Balo'. And you cannot actually build your country if you have no objective, if you really do not know the role that you should play as a citizen, or as a patriotic member of the party.

GN: There are changing political dynamics in the region. How do you see these developments and what is your assessment?

OM: That is really one area which seems to be of great concern to us. We have been meeting as former liberation movements and coming up with new ideas of protecting ourselves from infiltration and from the colonial, irrational and detractive countries which are against us.

We will soon be meeting to look at whether or not the region is still safe from infiltration. We have some member states within the region that will be holding elections in the next two, three months. And we have keen interest in seeing and monitoring what is happening.

We just had some elections recently in South Africa. We have learned  from those elections. We expect some elections in Mozambique, Namibia and Botswana.

We are learning from those elections. It is clear that the enemy's hand is in the region.

And we have to be more careful that this hand does not stir problems within the region. Our leaders are aware of these issues and are currently trying to address those issues.