Zanu PF youths have lost dignity

Source: Zanu PF youths have lost dignity – DailyNews Live

Eddie Zvinonzwa  31 August 2017

HARARE – It is getting evident that the leadership of Zanu PF has created,
for use at times opportune to them, desperate youths who are always
willing to do their bidding because essentially they have nothing to do.

Over the years, Zanu PF’s skewed policy framework has continued to churn
out from schools and tertiary institutions, hungry and desperate young men
and women whose zeal and ambition would have been deliberately and
systematically destroyed by system.

Now and gain, they are bussed to specific ruling party functions at times
without even an idea of why they are there in the first place.

A case in point is yesterday’s march in Harare, purportedly held in
solidarity with First Lady Grace Mugabe.

At this juncture, it may not be important to go back into available
details on what had taken place when the first lady visited her sons in
South Africa.

But perhaps it is necessary to point out that the first lady was accused
of bashing a 20-year-old South African model she found in the company of
her two sons Robert Junior and Chatunga Bellarmine – then resident at an
upmarket Sandton hotel.

Eventually being granted diplomatic immunity by South African authorities,
it then puzzles the mind how right-thinking Zimbabweans would want to
associate themselves with such a despicable act.

When people have so much time to idle around the city, it is reflective of
the deplorable state of the national economy for which the leadership of
the ruling party is largely to blame.

It is their poor policies that got us where we are today, together with
these unfortunate youths.

Yes, Grace may have acted in the heat of the moment but that does not
sanitise the act at all. Fair and fine, the first lady herself and even
her husband President Robert Mugabe never mentioned the South African
fracas when they appeared in public after the incident.

Now, to have party youths being bussed in to march in solidarity with the
first lady invites all sorts of questions. For what reason, really? To
tell whoever cares to listen that she was right in the first place?

By seeking diplomatic immunity, there must have been some degree of
acceptance of guilt by the first lady. Demonstrating in support of a case
someone accepts has been committed makes clowns of the participants.

Mugabe and his wife did not attend the solidarity march as they have done
with previous demonstrations.

Previously, Zanu PF youths have been part of the notorious bases the
ruling party set up in the run-up to the June 27, 2008 presidential
run-off. During that period, they could even mount roadblocks along the
country’s highways, forcing people to chant pro-Mugabe slogans.

This feeling of self-importance on the youths has not deserted them and
they take pleasure in being part of any gathering for crumbs.

They got bussed for the first lady’s “meet the people” rallies a couple of
years ago and they have become central in youth interface rallies Mugabe’s
pre-election runners have unfurled in all the country’s administrative
provinces.

Government business sometimes grinds to a halt as top officials make a
bee-line to rallies addressed by Mugabe and his wife. Mugabe is scheduled
to visit the Midlands capital of Gweru.

While the rallies have drawn huge crowds in most of the venues, it appears
the unsuspecting youths do not even understand the real essence of the
rallies.

Youth leaders obviously benefit from looting part of the donations they
get for the staging of the rallies as well as services like hiring of
public address systems and T-shirt printing.

What is of major concern, however, remains the fact that after they have
been used, the jobless youths will return home to face the usual problems
consistent with their desperation.

The rallies do not help them get jobs, they do not improve their
day-to-day lives, they do not bring food on their family tables except
empty sloganeering. Being used leads them into losing their self-worth and
dignity, attributes they should be asserting instead.