By Davet Muzwidzwa

ALL political parties in Zimbabwe are opposition parties.
Even the political party that wins election becomes a ruling party by opposing the ideologies of other parties.
The electorate shops around these antagonistic political formations and reward the party that identifies with their aspirations.
ZANU PF is a political party that has an agenda that has been largely favoured by the electorate.
Many political formations some of which have folded and others still in the race have justified their existence to wanting to dismantle ZANU PF.
In my opinion, opposition politics is human abuse.
This type of political dispensation survives by denying the electorate the opportunity to chart a national vision.
In other words, the nation will be polarised into micro-agendas that in their uniqueness does not guarantee total sovereignty, nationalism and common heritage.
Rather, in their uniqueness, these opposition political parties will scavenge on ills such as hate, tribalism, foreign sponsored ideologies such as socialism, communism, capitalism, liberalism and many other isms.
In their polarised uniqueness, these opposition political parties will stop at nothing in their quest to snatch the opportunity to rule from each other.
This political model largely borrowed from the West that preach it, but do not practice it holds the demise of the African self-determination and destiny.
While America and Britain preach unqualified pluralism as a package for good political governance in Africa, how many political parties are in United States and Britain?
United States has two political parties so is Britain.
These political parties have no ideological differences.
All they differ in is in methodology.
The national vision is a given and a straight jacket that a winning political party will execute without questions.
When these political parties change in government the national vision does not change.
When any change is proposed in the national vision, a national referendum is carried out for people to agree or disagree.
The political parties are therefore left with a very simple task, that of governing the national vision.
Irrespective of which political party wins, the national vision will be executed with the same soul and spirit.
Because political parties in Zimbabwe have been allowed to create their own agendas or micro-national visions, they have robbed the nation the opportunity to chat the desperately needed national vision replacing it with perennial political bickering.
Under such a dispensation, no national consensus can be reached on any policy, agenda or plan.
Unfortunately, that is the state Zimbabwe finds herself trapped and strangled.
The competition among political parties has been removed from the competence level focus to ideological level focus.
The danger with this approach is that political parties are going to be judged not on competence and performance, but rather on ideology and sponsorship.
This is only natural because these political parties are not going to be evaluated by the electorate using the same template because they have nothing in common.
Thus a political party will dig in on ideological framework that is perceived to be the right one by the electorate and win elections.
Whether or not performance will take place is another matter.
Those opposing will dig in on ideological frameworks that seek to discredit the winning ideology.
They will get seats in parliament being rewarded for simply providing opposition to the ruling party.
The next dimension exploited by opposing parties is sponsorship.
Whether or not the ideology is wrong or ideal to the electorate, the parties can simply sponsor their ideology and win elections.
If the party can provide elections-related handouts which is normally referred to as vote buying, they can win elections without proffering any sound political ideology and government plan.
The dilemma here is that those with money can win elections without any sound government plan and the much needed patriotism.
This political window allows foreigners to have an influence into domestic politics.
Foreign interests simply identify a strategic partner into the domestic politics and sponsor that candidate to win.
When a sponsored candidate wins, then the sponsor will dictate the course and direction of the country’s economy and politics.
The sponsor seeks to be rewarded through corrupt means for making the candidate win elections in the first place.
Thus the country is derailed further from its desire to chat a national vision; the vision which will achieve self determination prestige and status in the league of nations.
Because there are so many external interests wanting a stake in our resources and politics, polarisations of the nation takes place as foreign interests flood the political arena overwhelming the national interests.
Under this dispensation, Zimbabwe will remain a dormitory nation as well as a warehouse of foreign interests and products.
Our desire to self actualise will be fought at all costs by foreign interests.
The difference between genuine foreign friends and foes will be difficult to decipher as all foreign interests will tend to be spotted cats.
Calling them leopards, or tigers will be neither here nor there.
Zimbabwe needs to take a bold stand, one that will see its political landscape reformed.
Zimbabwe has tried to reform the economic landscape, but without reforming the political landscape, the economic landscape will remain choked by political ambiguity.
Zimbabwe cannot afford a free for all ideological race.
In fact, there is no country on earth that has a free for all ideological race other than Zimbabwe for now.
Americans have a national consensus on capitalism and the pillars of the economy are constructed on it on a sustainable basis.
Because Zimbabwe has no ideological consensus, it cannot build any sustainable economic pillars in the economy.
This party is putting a brick, that party is removing a brick.
If we love our country as we seem to imply, let the existing political parties demonstrate by agreeing to put up for consideration by citizens, a National Vision telling where we want to take our Zimbabwe in the next 50 years, producing a template for competing political parties and declaring how precious Zimbabwe blood is.
The National Vision should declare a Zimbabwean as a priceless jewel whose blood shall not be shed for any reason by anyone.
Thirdly Zimbabwe should eradicate the need for foreign sponsorship of political parties in two ways.
It should limit the number of political parties to a reasonable number of say two or three political parties and then provide these parties with an administrative budget provided for by the state.
This will eliminate or minimise foreign interference in the domestic affairs of Zimbabwe.
Once the national ideology is agreed at the National Convention called for the purpose, the agreed parameters should be enshrined in the national constitution. All political parties will then be required to remove all ideological issues from their manifestos as that will be outside their terms of reference as the national ideology will not be debatable at list over the next 50 years.
Once a political party wins an election, its president will swear that he will abide by the Constitution and the National Vision in soul and spirit.
If Zimbabwe achieves this milestone, it will have created an environment politically, economically and socially conducive for growth.
This will be the Zimbabwe every Zimbabwean will be proud of living in.