The sidekicks’ growl show

Zanu PF sidekick of the first order of merit Reason Panganayi Wafawarova

When the howling in the State media starts and gets louder the expectation is for the sidekicks outside the institution of the State media to add value with growls from across the globe with their tails firmly tucked between their feet.

Former Zanu PF militia (Green Bombers) trainer now ensconced in Australia and watching the show from the sidelines growled “The revolution will not allow itself to be hijacked.”

“If those in Government and in the leadership of political parties will choose not to support the land reform revolution or to fight it, then the revolution will have no option but to defend itself,” he pontificated.

He was obviously referring to the intervention in the Gono/Tomana saga playing out in the coalition government by military chiefs spokesman Air Vice Marshall Muchena wherein he had declared that the military was firmly behind Dr Gono’s continued disputed tenure as RBZ governor and prepared to defend it militantly if need be.
“In this vein, those after Dr Gono's demise and Mr. Tomana's removal must be reminded that the revolution will not falter because of the elimination of two of its members,” Wafawarova declared with unmistakeable confidence.

“The real outstanding issues in this GPA and its subsequent inclusive Government are issues of governance, service delivery, employment creation, reviving industry, commerce, education, health, agriculture and bringing happiness to the people of Zimbabwe,” he chuckled further.

“Those who think Dr Gono and Mr. Tomana are the outstanding issues are a mockery to the hopes and aspirations that characterised the formation of this inclusive Government.

Is it not easier to draft a desired code of conduct for these two officials and then make sure that this code is adhered to instead of simply reducing a whole Government structure to two men?”

Three days before the 29 March 2008 harmonised elections where sitting President was walloped by Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC but refused to accept the electoral verdict Wafawarova wrote an article in which he questioned “who are enemies of the people?”
In that article Wafawarova did not hint that the election was over issues of governance, service delivery, employment creation, reviving commerce, education, health, agriculture and bringing happiness to the people of Zimbabwe which he now says are outstanding resolution by the coalition government.

Back then he argued the election was about uprooting enemies of the State whom he laboriously endeavoured to expose.

“IF one were to rely on what is said by Zimbabwean opposition politicians at political rallies, Press conferences and to Western media, there is every reason to forgive that person if they concluded that President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party are the enemies of the people of Zimbabwe,” said Wafawarova then and added.

“One also gets the impression that the opposition, particularly the MDC, is just an unfortunate bunch of well meaning and blameless advocates for democracy at the mercy of a ruthless dictatorship. The MDC is hardly ever presented as that obnoxious party of intolerant goons that believe more in violent street marches than reason.”

Wafawarova argued then that Robert Gabriel Mugabe who was a co-leader of his people alongside the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo at the Lancaster House conference notwithstanding having languished behind Rhodesian prison walls for 11 years for the country’s liberation from British colonial rule.

For that reason alone, Wafawarova agued a Mugabe who enunciated the policy of reconciliation with his colonial adversaries in 1980 after witnessing the “heartless butchers of Nyadzonia and Chimoio in Mozambique “could not logically turn out “into the monster being created out of President Mugabe by the Western rulers through their lackeys in the Western media and their surrogates in the opposition MDC and to a lesser extent through the renegade Simba Makoni.”

Coupled to that, Wafawarova exonerated Mugabe of any wrongdoing because in his first decade as Zimbabwe’s ruler Mugabe had channelled “75% of the fiscus towards social projects meant to directly benefit his people an enemy of those same people,” which of course was a blatant exaggeration of facts.

According to Wafawarova the major stain in saintly President Mugabe’s revolutionary life that he has to regret must be his government’s foolishness in adopting the IMF’s Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP).

“The belt-tightening process meant that the civil service had to be downsized, something Morgan Tsvangirai and Simba Makoni are promising to do if elected in this election. There are of course no contingent measures for those to be retrenched, as there were none when many were retrenched in the early nineties. The IMF also ordered that essential services like power supplies, public transport, education and communication be privatised with new job evaluations sidelining thousands of workers,” Wafawarova stated.

He unbelievably said by the time government abandoned ESAP in 1995 average life expectancy in the country had fallen from 62 years to 46.

“We are supposed to live in a naïve world where a Mugabe government allowing the ruinous effect of IMF policies on its people is praised as progressive and another Mugabe government is being ruthlessly punished through sanctions for abandoning IMF’s ESAP as well as engaging on a people oriented agrarian reform programme,” said Wafawarova in exonerating Mugabe and convicting the imperialists and their MDC surrogates as enemies of the State.

“Morgan Tsvangirai was ordered to embark on all manner of missions, from threatening violent removal of the sitting government, organising futile and abortive mass actions to openly calling for sanctions from everyone and the idea was to isolate Zimbabwe until the "return of the rule of (imperialist) law." For his trouble Morgan Tsvangirai got himself isolation from Africa, particularly from Sadc and of course he found himself brushing with the real law of Zimbabwe on a few occasions — needless to say, always coming second best,” bragged Wafawarova.

He then went on to ask the questions he believed the electorate will use to choose the president in the March 2008 election. Nothing can replace reproduction of those questions to show why the issues Wafawarova now says are outstanding for the inclusive government are not at all the real issues but rather a discordant political volte face on the part of the Zanu PF sidekick.

“Now who are the enemies of the people? Is it those who call for sanctions and then go ahead to dangle rescue packages in exchange for votes or is it those who stand by the people in empowering the masses at the expense of imperialist vultures?

Who is the enemy of the people? Is it the long suffering Mugabe who has given so much documented sacrifice and commitment for his country or Morgan Tsvangirai, a man who ignored the call to fight for his own country during the armed struggle only to turn up as a willing agent for imperialism in the fight against the gains of the very independence brought about by the war that Tsvangirai despised and ignored in his youthful days?

Who are the enemies of the people? Is it the war veterans seeking to defend the nationalism, freedom, sovereignty and independence for which they sacrificed lives and limbs or the Western sponsored associations and civic organisations coming to the Zimbabwean people in the name of good governance and human rights?

Who is the enemy of the people? Is it President Mugabe, who has embarked on a ten-phase agricultural mechanisation programme or Simba Makoni who scoffs at the idea and promises those sitting on repossessed land a "gnashing of teeth?"

Who are the enemies of the people? Is it those who want to make sure that the country takes itself out of the current suffering through a successful agricultural tenure and through indigenous economic policies or those who are surrendering and eying the economic packages that come with a restoration of the old imperial set up of the pre-2000 era?

Who is the enemy of the people? Is it this writer who writes in defence of a people’s revolution or any of those other writers pre-occupying themselves with writing perfidious and slanderous pieces solely based on their sense of imagination and their irrational hatred for President Mugabe?

The people of Zimbabwe are clear of where they are coming from and where they are going, even in the wake of all this suffering.

The election on the 29th of March is just but an opportunity for the masses of Zimbabwe to show the world who exactly is the enemy of the people. They showed the world who this enemy was in 2000, in 2002 and in 2005 – each time the enemy refusing the tag and crying aloud that Zanu-PF and Cde Mugabe were electoral thieves.

It seems this time they have not bothered to wait to do their crying after the announcement of the election result.

Morgan Tsvangirai has already unwittingly conceded defeat by announcing that he is busy preparing for a fight after the election instead of psyching up his team for governance — something anyone with a hope to win the elections would be doing. May be Tsvangirai does not want a repeat of the 2002 embarrassment when some people within the MDC fought for diplomatic postings that were supposed to come through a government that never was.

It is this writer’s wish to make an appeal for tranquillity and peace during and after the election because no amount of threats or rebellion will ever get anyone to rule Zimbabwe. This is a very special country with a special people — a country whose history will show anyone that external meddling is but a futile exercise. Not even the mighty United States can establish their will on Zimbabwe and that position will not change. The US and her Western allies can do absolutely nothing about it.

The only Zimbabwe that can be ungovernable is one presided over by imperialist stooges and that message has already been sent out loud and clear and the people are ready. After the people have spoken on 29 March, the voice of the majority has to be respected and Morgan Tsvangirai is behaving in an extremely dangerous manner by trying to pre-empt the will of the people in his bizarre claims for a victory ahead of an election.

Tsvangirai seems to think that he is so invincible that the only way he can lose an election is through some rigging process — that despite the fact that he has lost the vote in his own MDC on more than one occasion. He lost the vote on the Senate issue in 2005 and he lost it on the Matibenga issue in 2007. One wonders what makes Morgan Tsvangirai think that he has to win the national vote when he struggles to be supported within his own party.”

It is not surprising that now the Zanu PF sidekick thinks the very issues that were top of the MDC election agenda are the outstanding issues and not the annihilation of the enemies of the people he campaigned for before the March elections.

The reason why Gono and Tomana must make way for progress is not because they are door keepers of any revolution no nut because they are impediments to the country’s reintegration within the global village which will increase the chances of the economic turnaround of the country after the decade long onslaught anchored by the duo in support of Zanu PF has failed and collapsed beyond resuscitation.

Only then will it be possible to address the pertinent issues affecting the quality of life of ordinary Zimbabweans without international fears that any help rendered will not reach its destination after the duo diverts it midstream to Zanu PF bigwigs’ benefit.