Saviour Kasukuwere a slow learner

Minister Kasukuwere a a dangerous slow learner wallowing in past Zanu PF glory

Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere is a slow leaner or more derisively a retard.

The joy he reportedly derives from spiting Premier Minister Morgan Tsvangirai over the gazetting of the controversial Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment (General) Regulations (IEER), shortly after the Indigenisation and Empowerment Act was signed off by President Mugabe is a case in point.

When in 1980 President Mugabe announced the reconciliation policies that his government would pursue, he averted the catastrophe of retributive violence and an exodus of skills that manned the public service and private sector institutions with a magnificent pay-back to his leadership and the populace at large.

The economy grew faster than any other in Africa as productivity soared and national unity and consensus gelled resulting in improved quality of life for the hitherto disadvantaged Black majority of the populace without dispossessing the privileged White minorities of their extravagant lifestyles.

Minister Kasukuwere may have been too young to understand why Mugabe’s popularity was so instantaneous and how he managed to get the entire nation behind his Party and how that support enabled him to enjoy the best times of his leadership of the country.

Then as Premier Mugabe not only managed to capture national imagination and promised a country flowing of milk and honey for its entire populace but he lived his word by restraining his retributive inner self and that of his top aides and thereby confounded his detractors at the same time he retained the faith of his grassroots support.

When he turned against Ian Smith after the first elections under his rule and went after UANC leader Bishop Abel Muzorewa via the retrogressive PERM initiative to eliminate political competition the skeptics ent on the offensive and started demonizing Mugabe for what he truly has lived up to be – An intolerant and ruthless political dictator.

Still the critical mass he had pulled onto his side among the populace defended him vigorously notwithstanding the obvious start of departure from the enunciated reconciliation policies he had lived with throughout his first term of office.

When towards the end of his first decade in power Premier Mugabe, as he then was, publicly and unambiguously revoked the reconciliation policies by decimating PF ZAPU and declaring the One Party State dogma in place of national reconciliation he courted unforgiving hatred and instilled fear and mistrust from and in the people of Matabeleland and the Midlands most of whom were at the receiving end of the ruthlessness with which Zanu PF was gunning for monolithic political supremacy.

Minister Kasukuwere who by this time was in his late teens and an overzealous Johnny-come-by-lately defender of Zanu PF and member of the secretive and notorious CIO jovially participated in the vicious campaigns and tasted the virtues of bloody riches that has formulated his adult conduct.

He learned nothing from the vicious murders other than that survival hinges on impunity and suppression and is living by that early experience in his stewardship of a critical government function.

The violence he participated in had as had happened in 1980 re-asserted Zanu PF political supremacy as it swallowed PF ZAPU leaving political opponents of the party in total disarray as they hoped from insignificant opposition political formations such as ZUM ZUD and Forum party in a vain search for counterstrategies to halt the Zanu PF juggernaut that was moving uncontrollably towards a crash landing for the country while Zanu PF zealots cheered on.

The formation of the more formidable MDC opposition from the ashes of the disjointed opposition formations re-captured the imagination of a populace under siege and the protest vote in the 2000 Constitutional referendum galvanized the new party and propelled it to dizzy heights hitherto never witnessed when it narrowly failed to topple Zanu PF because of systematic vote rigging that was to form the hallmark of Zanu PF political survival in every election thereafter.

By now Minister Kasukuwere had become so blinded and indoctrinated by Zanu PF that he could not see life outside the party and thus he learned nothing from the 2000 landmark electoral results.

If anything he became resolute that survival hinged on violent and or treacherous conquest. Impunity became the foundation of his survival instincts notwithstanding negative consequences that befell his victims.

When after the Zanu PF 2000 elections Houdini Act it unleashed an orgy of violence in the name of correcting Land distribution distortions of our Colonial past Kasukuwere was there at the forefront of dispossessing titled land owners in a haphazard and vicious revolution that disrupted a highly organised and efficient Agricultural sector and reduced it to disorganized and redundant sector with disastrous consequences on food security for the nation that had been used to surpluses.

The poverty the unplanned Land Invasions induced on the larger populace was inconsequential to Minister Kasukuwere who in the melee gained immensely from the spoils of the chaos on the farms.

He not only expropriated land but being closely linked to the top of government he secured lucrative business pickings from shortages that ensued to built a vast empire in the oil and petroleum industry that suffered from shortages of foreign earnings as a result of critical agricultural productivity collapse.

The collapse of the economy opened doors for the connected Minister who had unlimited access to scarce trickles of foreign earnings at preferential sub economic exchange rates that were later to be perfected into Forex-for-printed-valueless Zimbabwe currency that was not worth the paper it was printed on.

Using this method, loathed Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono, and reduced all life savers who had banked in liquid securities to paupers while he transferred their savings to privileged Zanu PF zealots like Kasukuwere in stable hard currencies for a song.

By this time Minister Kasukuwere had matured enough to enjoy his cheap pickings silently and stable enough to distance himself from Phillip Chiyangwa who had introduced him to vociferous Indigenisation Empowerment by impunity.

That Zanu PF was too weak and tired to win elections was evident to all in the party not least of them Party leader Robert Mugabe who after facing stiff resistance to the intention he held to defer Presidential elections to 2010 and harmonize them with Parliamentary and Local Authority elections to ensure he would not fight a losing battle alone he dissolved a Parliament in the third year of its term and ordered fresh elections harmonised to his Constitutionally mandatory 2008 term renewal.

The obvious reason for that stroke of political ingenuity failure by the unpopular Zanu PF President was to ensure his disenchanted supporters would rally behind him and the Party to retain Government positions that had guaranteed a life of extravagance and splendor in a country where the rest of the populace was writhing in abject poverty.

Unfortunately it did not work as planned and for the first ever time in its history Zanu PF lost Local Authority and Parliamentary elections to the opposition and worse its leader was soundly defeated in the Presidential elections of March 2008.

Only the ruthless and vicious intervention of a Zanu PF compromised Military
Command averted the imminent dislodgement of the party from government and all hell broke loose as the Military fought the unarmed civilian populace to retain the defeated dictator in power.

During campaigning for the Presidency, Commander of the Defence Forces’ wife Jocelyn Chiwenga-herself a retard of the worst order had displayed the same symptoms of disdain towards Premier Tsvangirai in a Price Wars chance altercation at Makro.

She charged at the Premier seeking to taste his manhood but was left stranded and livid when the decorous Premier who was sure to win the election simply turned his back on her only to hit back by defeating the candidate the General’s wife was rooting for.

But the important lesson appears to have been missed by slow learner Minister Kasukuwere who gazetted controversial Indigenization and Empowerment regulations without consulting the Premier tasked with formulating and implementing the government in which he is a Minister.

The defiant act by the Minister, who is at the center of controversy in the role he played in irregularly recruiting Border Gezi graduates as Youth Officers in his Ministry without seeking approval for the establishment of the positions appears to have been motivated by an obnoxious directive sent to Ministers by Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Dr Misheck Sibanda.

The circular purportedly ordered Ministers to sidestep the Premier and report to the President via the Vice Presidents in contravention of Constitution Amendment No 19.

It now turns out that the directive was set aside by the coalition government principals on account of its unconstitutionality and yet Kasukuwere hand pounced on it to promulgate regulations that are not supported by the Premier overally responsible for formulating and implementing such regulations.

Now that the basis upon which the regulations were gazette has been annulled the next obvious thing should be the Minister apologizing to the Premier and taking appropriate steps to regularize the regulations whose operation the Premier has Constitutional powers to veto.

But no the slow learning Minister remains adamant he has followed procedures and will push through implementation of the regulations with or without the Premier’s support.

Obviously Minister Kasukuwere believes he can use the compromised AG’s office to implement the regulations oblivious of the backlash of political sanctions attendant in taking that misguided route from the coalition government partners opposed to the impunity inherent in the regulations.

The obvious blemish and spite to the goodwill that the coalition government is desperately clamouring for is to the daft and tactless Minister nigh.
He will only learn the ramifications when he is fatally hurt as happened to the Minister who steered the controversial Act through fast track methods to beat elections deadline Paul Mangwana who was dropped from Cabinet after outliving his usefulness to Zanu PF following the party’s defeat at the March 2008 harmonised elections.

The same fate awaits Kasukuwere but before that he will have to overcome vigorous opposition to his ill advised regulations not just from the Premier he despises but the business community he intends to dispossess of their investment and the backlash of discontent with Zanu PF as jobs in the expropriated companies are lost in like manner to the backlash Zanu PF suffered from farm workers it deprived of jobs and places of residence during the chaotic land reforms.

For his part the Premier must simply refuse the implementation of the rules in the Council of ministers and continue to oppose them at Cabinet level until such time they are made compliant with the national desire to revive the economy through attracting foreign direct investment.

No sane foreign investor other than a charitable organization would opt to invest in a country where indigenous people will claim rights to 51% of his capital injection when in the region other countries are offering tax relief incentives to attract such investors regardless of how poor the neighbourly countries may be natural resources wise.

As for Minister Kasukuwere’s failure to learn from past mistakes all we can do is remind him that the people of Zimbabwe will have their day to pass judgement on him and his party in elections looming as the coalition teeters on collapse.

It will not be a pleasing verdict for his efforts we can assure him of that.