Gang of Four — Threat to national security

via Gang of Four — Threat to national security – DailyNews Live 20 January 2015 by Jealousy Mawarire

HARARE – Last week’s events panning out in the print and electronic media made interesting revelations that need to be explained to the generality of the public and our body politic.

The first expos? was that President Robert Mugabe has completely lost control of the party and different groupings within Zanu PF are organising themselves, outside his command and influence, and are now seeking to take over control of the party and the country and are now trying to shape the direction and destiny of the nation, and more importantly, succession politics in the ruling party.

According to The Herald, a group of 12 which calls itself “a committee” and interestingly includes a quartet that is now known by the moniker “Gang of Four,” was formed at the behest of Jonathan Moyo and Savior Kasukuwere, to run the affairs of the party outside the structures put in place by Congress in 2009 and any politburo resolution made in between the 2009 congress and the December 2014 gathering that some creative social media commentators are describing as “a congress” only in the American colloquial meaning of the word “congress”— a gathering of baboons.

That the so-called “committee” has no provision in the Zanu PF constitution, politburo resolution, or central committee recommendation makes it a parallel structure — a faction, and therefore an illegal gathering of mischievous, power-hungry political opportunists, who like vultures that have smelt some human carrion, are circling around the 90-year-old leader cunningly masquerading as comrades, relatives, loyal sons and most trusted spin doctors yet they are nothing but political vultures angling to feed on the Zanu PF carcass once they squeeze the last breath from its system.

The second revelation is that it has now become clear that forming a faction in Zanu PF is not a crime and all those purported votes of no-confidence on perceived faction members late last year were part of some political skulduggery to annihilate former vice president Joice Mujuru through a charge that Moyo and his media cabal knew very well was not contrary to party regulations.

If it was criminal to belong to a faction, why is it that no attempts have been made to suspend or expel Moyo, Kasukuwere, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Oppah Muchinguri, Edna Madzongwe, Prisca Mupfumira, Monica Mutsvangwa, Ignatius Chombo, Josiah Hungwe, Makhosini Hlongwane, Philip Chiyangwa and Patrick Zhuwao whom The Herald exposed as proud members of the Moyo-Kasukuwere faction, or simply Moyo faction, Moyo being Jonathan’s surname and also Kasukuwere’s totem.

While it is now clear that being a faction member or leader is not a crime according to Zanu PF regulations, what is only surprising is that the Moyo faction cries loudest when others of a different opinion gather themselves and try to express an opinion about a Zanu PF that they did not join in 2000, but formed and under whose auspices and direction they went out of the country to prosecute a liberation struggle that brought independence and civil and political rights that the same faction wants to deny them today.

It is clear that Didymus Mutasa, Rugare Gumbo and other victimised Zanu PF cadres who include elected provincial chairpersons have found themselves and decided to mount a united front to challenge their unfair dismissals and political victimisation at the behest of the Moyo faction.

What is surprising is that when these victimised cadres gather and strategise their political trajectory, they are labelled would-be assassins, dissidents, counter-revolutionaries and a threat to national security yet others used to meet at restaurants replete with regime change connotations outside the formal party structures planning on how to usurp power from congress-elected office bearers and legitimate Mugabe appointees but still call themselves super-patriots.

Is it a question of some animals being more equal than others?

But surely, what is good for the geese should also be good for the gander.

The third revelation is that Mutasa and his colleagues’ statement has shaken Zanu PF to the core and has driven some of its spin doctors into paranoia, delusion, outright madness and desperation.

Stories coming out of The Herald and ZBC, and ideas solicited from some so-called “political” and “legal” experts and some columnists shadowing for well-known political schemers in Zanu PF, betray the state of confusion in the party and how mentally bankrupt the party’s spin doctors have become.

While seeing shadows almost everywhere is a right that every mental patient is allowed to enjoy, it is totally unacceptable to entrust the running of government and party to these people and more so, allowing them to purportedly shape the destiny of this country.

The delusion I am talking about emanates from the attempts being made by the Moyo faction in the media through a cabal of its so-called media, social and political commentators, to drag Mujuru into the current pay dispute between government and its servants.

The so-called analysts have taken their madness to the level of seeing the shadow of Mujuru in whatever thing goes wrong in the country, economy or Zanu PF.

If Mujuru has loyalists among civil servants, haven’t these supposedly apolitical servants become political and therefore deserve to be fired?

Zimbabwe has an unemployment rate of 80 percent, why can’t the Moyo faction just fire all the civil servants aligned to Mujuru and employ several graduates from the 80 percent unemployed?

Wouldn’t it be one of the sure ways of creating some of the two million jobs which ZimAsset purports to avail?

It is a fact, that civil servants are poorly remunerated and have been threatening to go on strike even during the tenure of the Government of National Unity (GNU).

It is also a fact that the same servants’ pay dates have been erratic since Patrick Chinamasa became minister of Finance and chose to borrow money, millions of United States dollars, to buy Mercedes Benz luxury cars for ministers, their deputies and every Tom, Dick and Jerry on the Zanu PF gravy train.

It is also true that the same civil servants are literate, some degreed and therefore have the craft competence to see through the hypocrisy of our leaders who choose to cry more than the bereaved yet their bulging tummies are threatening to burst with ill-gotten wealth when the same servants are starving to the point of death.

The stories we read in The Herald, watch on ZBC and other state-controlled media outlets show us that the Zanu PF leadership, fronted by the Moyo faction, is completely ignorant of the reasons why civil servants want to strike and why it is likely that the unemployed would choose to join them if they decide on staging some demonstrations to protest against their current plight.

The reason is not a Mujuru underhand that is trying to coerce these servants to strike but the hypocrisy exhibited by the political leaders is driving every sane Zimbabwean to the limit.

Surely, you don’t want to be undergoing these turbulent economic times and wake up to the news that the president and his sons are feasting in a far-away country.

Not that the president should not enjoy his holiday, but the posting and pasting of pictures of these feasts on Instagram accompanied by uncouth statements by the president’s son implying that if you are Zimbabwean and not rich like him you are some lazy bones, are the things that incite people to insurrection.

If there are things that are a threat to national security, it is such behaviour by people who are at the centre of power and whose opinions are taken seriously.

Remember, some country had a whole tribe almost wiped out because someone had chosen to describe it as cockroaches through radio.

The media, if left in the hands of excitable and very impressionable characters, sadly Instagram is available to anyone who wants to use it, can pose a real national security threat especially when uncouth statements are directed against the public by those who should be grateful to the same public for voting their family into power.

Royalty comes with great responsibility and if that responsibility is abused, it becomes a real security threat to the country.

Real threats to national security emanate from some delusional decision to burn down villagers’ huts despite a court order to the contrary and render them homeless in drivelling rain to pave way for baboons, lizards, lions and other wild animals at the expense of the lives of women and children whose parents voted you into power.

It becomes even worse if the callous, inhuman and wanton destruction of property is ordered by the First Lady who hypocritically masquerades as a philanthropist.

People see through this hypocrisy and the resultant anger that simmers within them poses a threat to national stability if such things are allowed to go on without government stamping its authority to safeguard the rule of law and basic and reasoned human behaviour.

The threat to national security is not posed by Mutasa who is fighting for his democratic rights within Zanu PF, through a letter he writes to his president, as some political opportunists fronting some government minister’s quest to own a radio station for political expediency suggests in a long piece in the Herald, but the real threat comes from a directionless yet vindictive leadership which thinks it is God-ordained to trample on people’s rights with impunity.

What poses a threat to the security of our nation is a confused government which purports to reduce import duty on fuel by five (5) cents per litre today and the following morning increases the same by 38 cents.

It is such confusion and madness that pose a threat to national security if people begin to see that their leaders are confused and mentally-deranged then decide to take matters into their own hands.