By Charles T.M.J. Dube

I WOULD have wanted to finish off my project document preparation contribution, but could not help being diverted back to politics by the demonstrations that have seen Zimbabweans gathering all the way from Mbabane to New York.
Two things struck me in this demonstration saga and succeeded to divert me back to the demonstrations or is it ‘destabilisations’.
First to appear in social media was Patson Dzamara, flashing his pictures at the World Bank offices, indicating he had given a petition to the World Bank, urging them not to lend money to Zimbabwe.
Part of his argument was that by lending money to the Zimbabwe Government, they would be ‘giving the regime a lifeline’.
They could even have some spare change to buy teargas and riot control water.
To him, the regime must completely fail and shut down, thereby giving room for a new Government.
There must be no money to buy drugs, to pay civil servants and/or even to meet any Government obligations.
If that happens, then the regime will fall and preferred party (ies) will take over, cut and simple.
Then there was another social media post of an excited Pastor Evan Mawarire, bragging he had just met Aliko Dangote and advised him not to invest in Zimbabwe.
Well, according to him, his investment was going to be vulnerable to looting by ZANU PF Ministers.
Was the ‘pastor’ concerned about the safety of Dangote’s investment and did he really imagine he could teach him how to make and protect his investments and did he even know how Dangote had made his first billion?
Now this set of Zimbabweans gave me something to really think about.
I am sure if it was within their power, they would have advocated a stay-away in both Washington and New York for the world to pay attention to their misgivings about their own Government.
I would agree with Patson, we certainly do not need another World Bank loan.
We obviously differ on why we do not need it and hence can at this rate never be of a common worldview.
He wants World Bank loans to wait until there is a new Government in Harare as otherwise this could give breathing space to a regime which must be gone by yesterday.
I do not like financing from the Bretton Woods institutions because they dis-empower the working class and peasants and entrench the interests of international capital.
According to the flag-tajamuka script, things should grind to a halt before international finance or capital should join in.
Even a complete descent into anarchy and lawlessness and some NATO, Southern African Development Community (SADC) or African Union (AU) forces would be a welcome idea.
Zimbabwe could be reduced to ashes, yes, even some Iraq, Libya or Syria, but then our international friends will then come in when it has been razed to the ground.
That is the price of the revolution which Zimbabweans must be prepared to pay.
Every revolution has its own costs, so they contend.
I have a problem with this kind of approach.
There is so much concern about the safety of white capital and very little regard for the livelihoods of the emerging black entrepreneurship class, let alone peasants and workers’ interests.
That is why all the protest, looting and destruction is directed against indigenous sources of livelihood.
In the indigenous category they will include black, which includes Dangote’s empire and/or even investors from SADC region, which is why Choppies will be the only supermarket chain looted because its investors are from the region.
I am here reminded of the saying: ‘n’anga inoona’ does not necessarily prescribe the correct antidote nor is he necessarily the best to deal with your malady.
There is always also the danger that this divining interventionist could be fraternal comrades with the very witch who could have caused the malady in the first place and hence just seemingly soothsaying, while in fact reading from the manual.
I will therefore not trust and be comrades with everybody who sings to my maladies unless I can be privy to his proposed solutions to my problems and be satisfied he is not part of the Quisling Fifth Column bent on using our plight to prop foreign interests.
The devil uses familiar territory when attacking your interests.
He will even hit you from your own front.
Let us face it, there is no way in which the greedy and corrupt could be part of the forces of progress.
Not everyone who attacks greed and corruption will be on the peoples’ side.
No wonder Christ says of them, you will know them by their fruits, mark and not by what they say.
Not everyone who brings you sleazy pictures of your husband and his ‘small-house’ is up to saving your marriage.
Some bring such pictures to earn your confidence, get emotionally attached to you, enter your undergarments and destroy it from there.
As much as we must guard our hard-won independence, we must also be as wise as a serpent and as humble as a dove in the manner in which we will relate with all and sundry.
We must also use our wisdom to be able to read the fruits of our compatriots or party buddies and build forth from there.
The enemy is defined, not by which party he belongs to, but by the ideology, philosophies and actions he subscribes to.
Vamwe muchadya uroyi nokunyara.
It’s not about your belonging to the ruling or opposition forces together.
It should be about what you do.
Being ruling or opposition does not prescribe the support of evil, greed, corruption or national subversion even in the name of supporting the Government or whatever revolution.
You must be attracted by causes and principles.
Based on your causes and principles, you should get to a point where you say, we agree up to here, but thereafter, let us go our separate ways.
The sad part about it all, though, is that, no foreigner will ever destroy our land, let alone rob us, without the active participation of one of us.
This was the case, even during the slave trade.
We must refuse to be dozing passengers in travel to a destiny we are not sure about or one we are bound not to have nodded to had we been informed from the onset.