Harare, Zimbabwe (News of the South)-With a record unemployment rate, a comatose economy and a political sore that is refusing the ameliorating power of nature or elections to end, Zimbabwe has found itself saddled with showboating politicians.
Come 25 May and ZANU PF is set to have the march dubbed Million Man March. Save for the name there is nothing epic about the march as its agenda is a nebulous swirl of solidarity and jobs and the West.
It’s a mish mash of everything and a whole course of nothing.
After the hugely successful MDC-T demonstration, the ZANU PF march is an egoistic reverse punch to show the world that they can still draw the numbers too, and in the meantime the economy can go to hell and back.
It’s a frightening picture that at a time of much grief and pain the ruling party is still seeking to fight ego wars with the opposition.
By their very name demonstrations are just that, showy protests.
In Africa they usually amount to nothing as the MDC-T knows and has just been reminded of by the ruling government.
Like sex, it was good while it lasted.
The opposition has the right to demonstrate and it’s acceptable that they have done so as a sign of frustration at the Mugabe regime, holding onto power whilst the country burns.
A march has as explanatory words, terms like hike, walk, tramp, trudge, picket and protest.
Why ZANU PF has seen it fit to take a hike or tramp costing nearly a million dollars is surprising, giving way to conspiracy theories that it’s merely part of the factional battles in the creaking movement.
Defending the march the Herald produced had a bale of hay.
“The Million Man March organized by the Zanu pf Youth League in solidarity with President Mugabe tomorrow is a piece of history as it testifies to the longevity of the values and ethos of Africa’s founding fathers who pioneered the total decolonization of the continent”, it said.
The justification is a banal drool of the same sludge scraped and slobbered out in defense of anything whose localized use is non existant.
Who is really worried about some dead Kwame Nkrumah when bond notes are coming and banks are not giving out money deposited there?
We cherish Kwame and his ilk all the time for the freedom to rape and corruptly abuse each other today but when it’s time to mend the broken let dry bones be.
Rugare Gumbo of People First was dismissive.
“The march is about creating an impression to the outside world that Zanu PF and its government, that is short of ideas on how to resuscitate an economy that is already on life support, should be trusted and supported,” he said recently.
MDC was dismissive again.
“The march is a waste of time and resources and should be dismissed with the contempt it deserves”, Kurauone Chihwayi its spokesperson said.
The march isn’t going to change one thing about the current debacle serve only to show the world that Zimbabweans for all the hunger and unemployment, still have excess energy to waste.
As the ruling party ZANU PF, for all its rights to have a hike through the CBD, should be seized with larger problems bedeviling the nation and not fighting petty wars with the opposition.
From its position as the opposition the MDC-T is fully justified in carrying out a demonstration as it’s one of the weapons available to them in the fight for change in the country.
ZANU PF no longer has the justified right to carry a hike since it’s the ruling party with larger battles to fight, larger fires to stop other than showboating to the world that they can still command numbers.
They can hold the march and do have constitutional justifications but morally they are way off the mark.
What’s the morality of wasting money having man and woman singing in the street instead of creating jobs for them through that money?
Or is this a case of creating images of power to reassure each other that Zimbabwe is still within their grip.
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