THERE was a disturbing article on Friday, April 15 2016 by Trevor Ncube in The Zimbabwe Independent.
Titled “Only a ‘Third Way’ will fix Zimbabwe”, the article cannot go unchallenged, lest Zimbabweans’ wonderful minds are corrupted.
Yes, the country might be facing challenges, but the image of our country is not in tatters as he says.
Preaching his gospel from the rooftops of South Africa, Ncube says: “For those who are still in denial, it is worth restating: Zimbabwe is broken.
“Its people are broken.
“Their minds and spirits are broken.
“The infrastructure is broken – rotting, in fact.
“And, unsurprisingly, the image of the country is in tatters.
“It is reckless to have any faith that a political stalwart will emerge from the shadows of ZANU PF and fix Zimbabwe.”
Is Ncube being objective?
Zimbabwe is not broken.
Zimbabwe’s peoples’ hearts and minds are not broken.
Our country’s image is not in tatters.
The examples are actually too many to mention.
How can Zimbabwe’s image be in tatters when it is presently considered the best tourism destination in the world?
How can anyone who has driven along that newly constructed road from Plumtree to Mutare say the country’s infrastructure is rotting?
If Zimbabwe is broken, why did South Africa’s biggest supermarket chain, Pick and Pay run to our country at break-neck speed to put up supermarkets in this country?
How is it possible for a country whose economy is broken, that for the first time in the entire history of modern Zimbabwe, almost every household in the urban areas – cities in particular, ordinary households, can afford to buy cars using precious foreign currency, the US-dollar?
Cars are practically overflowing in Zimbabwe.
How is it possible in a country with a so-called broken economy that ordinary folk are constructing mansions in big and small towns?
The houses are even bigger and smarter than those you find in developed countries?
How can anyone say Zimbabwe is broken when all its supermarkets, general dealer shops, tuckshops etc are overflowing with goods of all varieties?
How can people in a broken country be able to buy bales upon bales of clothes which are clogging our pavements?
How can people in a broken country flood the tobacco auction floors and smile all the way to the bank?
Is it not reckless journalism to describe Zimbabwe as broken?
Is Ncube telling us that the peace and tranquillity prevailing in the country has spoiled him so badly that he wishes he stayed in some failed state somewhere, where the explosions of guns, bombs and kidnappings are the order of the day?
The peace and stability in the country did not simply fall from the sky.
How can Zimbabwe be broken when our crime rate is very low compared to other nations, South Africa included?
In some countries, well known to Ncube, women are raped every three minutes while shootings, stabbings and gangsterism are the order of the day.
So how can Zimbabwe be broken?
Again I say Zimbabwe is the world’s best tourism destination.
Many Western film-makers are falling over each other making documentaries of wildlife in Zimbabwe’s iconic game reserves such as Hwange and Gonarezhou.
Such things would not be happening in a broken country.
Then Ncube talks about politics and says Zimbabwe has been run in two ways, the ZANU PF way and the so-called opposition way.
He opines: “We need a plan that ends the sense of paralysis that has turned the hopes of so many Zimbabweans.
“I have argued before for a ‘third way’ in Zimbabwean politics.
“Today I am more convinced than ever that this is what the country badly needs: A third way representing a rejection of ZANU PF politics.”
First there has never been two ways in Zimbabwe.
The pathetic performance of the various MDC formations during the Government of National Unity (GNU) cannot be considered a second way.
There is no doubt Ncube is attacking the ZANU PF way.
He begrudgingly accepts ZANU PF brought about the country’s independence, but suddenly runs away to hide in a hole from where he shouts: “No one from the shadows of ZANU PF can fix Zimbabwe!”
How can Ncube doubt someone from ZANU PF fixing Zimbabwe when it was ZANU PF who found Zimbabwe broken by the Rhodesian racist regimes of yester-year and fixed it?
In Rhodesia, the peoples’ minds and spirits were broken.
Blacks lost their dignity in their motherland.
They lost their fertile land, livestock, rights and everything that made them owners and custodians of this land called Zimbabwe.
Yes, it was ZANU PF who found our country broken by racist oppression and fixed it by waging a protracted war to liberate it.
It was ZANU PF who found the education system broken in Rhodesia and fixed it.
Dr Tony Monda says in the 1970s, despite the fact that white settlers represented less than one percent of the country’s total population, the annual budget for their education was at least 10 times more than that spent on indigenous children who represented 99 percent of the school population.
And after 1980 great strides were made in education as black people took centre stage.
Today the country boasts the highest literacy rate in Africa; higher than some European countries by the way.
It is ZANU PF who found the land question totally broken by the racists and fixed it.
The whites had all the fertile land, while blacks wallowed in poverty.
Today there has been equitable distribution of land through the Land Reform Programme that saw over 400 000 black households acquiring land and the majority of Zimbabweans are happy. Before the historic exercise, about 4 000 white farmers owned the country’s prime land.
It must be noted that it was also ZANU PF who built a lot of houses for urban dwellers.
In Rhodesia, the so-called locations were very tiny, with people having no houses at all.
Today the high density suburbs are 10-times bigger and black people now own houses.
Now what is nauseating is for one to say: Ok ZANU PF, you liberated the country, fixed the broken Rhodesian economy, did all the donkey work, but you must now give way for a ‘third way’ because that is what we want.
Why should ZANU PF give up their legacy to losers?
What is this so-called ‘third way’ anyway?
Whose politics is it?
Is this so-called ‘third way’ not a ‘mischievous’ way of bringing back Western governments to colonise Zimbabwe?
One is tempted to think the likes of Ncube do not exactly ‘miss’ Rhodesia like the Rhodies do, but are merely singing for their supper!