15 January 2008
Posted to the web 15 January 2008

Reason Wafawarova
Sydney

NOW that any Zimbabwean worthy of the description of having something called common sense is convinced that the opposition MDC, united or divided, under any measure of favourable electoral conditions - cannot win an election in Zimbabwe - we now see many of the opposition supporters placing hope in the possibility of someone from within Zanu-PF stealing the revolution from the ruling party.

The agrarian reform-based revolution of Zimbabwe is, like any other revolution, a process of pain and sacrifice.

Such pain and sacrifice creates resilience towards victory in others and an environment of opportunism for others. Traitors are basically opportunists who see a gateway to personal gain through the pain and suffering that a revolution has to pass through before the final victory. They try to short circuit the route to the attainment of their personal ambitions by proposing shortcuts and compromises towards victory -- and this they do by parroting the ideology of the revolution on one hand and suggesting compromises with the enemy as a solution on the other.

These people are called reformists in imperialist terms and sellouts in revolutionary terms. Mobutu Sese Seko of Congo stole the revolution from Patrice Lumumba this way but as history will record he never saw peace on that throne of treachery. Zanu-PF is not new to opportunist counterrevolutionaries at all. As Thomas Sankara said on October 4 1987, just 11 days before his assassination, "Opportunism, just like the counterrevolution, is a thornbush habitually found in the path of any revolution."

For Zanu-PF, then Zanu, one is reminded of the days of the revolution when it was still in its liberation stage in 1974. The elections for the Zanu leadership in 1973 in Lusaka, Zambia did not go down well with some people whose personal aspirations were not accommodated in the outcome of the vote -- perhaps pretty much the same way the endorsement of President Mugabe as the party's candidate might not have gone down well with some within the ranks of the ruling party.

Then the result was an attempt by some comrades to steal the revolution away from those who had been voted into leadership, the likes of Josiah Tongogara, Kumbirai Kangai and Rugare Gumbo among others.

Two of the former leaders who had been ousted in the 1973 election, Noel Mukono and Simpson Mutambanengwe, decided to front a young man by the name Thomas Nhari in a revolt against the new leadership. The Nhari-led rebels attempted to kidnap the Zanu High Command and they killed 59 loyal comrades before the mutiny was put down on Cde Herbert Chitepo's orders. This was in December 1974.

What is of interest is the motivation behind this mutiny. Multinational companies owned by the very people who were denying Zimbabweans the right to self-rule were financing the mutinous anti-revolutionaries.

The multinationals provided money for cars, food and payment of guerrillas - a new development given that the liberation struggle was not driven by monetary considerations but by the patriotic desire to free Zimbabwe from colonial oppression.

The link between the Nhari rebellion renegades and the multinationals was said to have been formed through Cornelius Sanyanga, a company secretary for Lonhro and Nelson Dziruni, an executive of Shell, according to a Zanu document prepared after the rebellion had been thwarted.

According to the report, the Mukono-Mutambanengwe group feared that the revolution was now "in radical hands" and if the new leadership took power in an independent Zimbabwe it would irrevocably put Zimbabwe alone on the line of socialist development that the group openly opposed.

There is a striking similarity in this claim and what one Retired Major Mbudzi advocated in a letter published by The Zimbabwe Independent on January 11. The self-proclaimed learned soldier argues that Zimbabwe is alone on a path that he sees as a path of no victory and he claims that "victory is certain" if Zimbabwe bows down to what he calls the global family -- a reference to the imperial philosophy of locals having to be satisfied with the crumbs falling off from the table of multinational profiteers. This is the centre-periphery theory where global capital has to flow from the Western centre to the Southern periphery with southerners meant to celebrate the creation of jobs and "buying fuel at $5 per litre" as the good Rtd Major would put it.

Rtd Major Mbudzi sees no anomaly, irrationality nor stupidity in condemning Cuba as not having known independence since 1959. To him the only understandable independence for Cuba is conformity to the US-led world order. All that nationalisation of sugar plantations and industry is hogwash in Rtd Major Mbudzi's eyes. That super model health sector for Cuba is nothing but a lack of independence in the learned Major's eyes. Is this the Rtd Major Mbudzi who once ran around all government departments related to uniformed forces hunting for tenders to supply shoes in the name of indigenous empowerment? How times change.

Anyway, the Zanu document already cited reveals that there were contacts between the Mukono-Mutambanengwe rebels and colonels in Ian Smith's forces and those contacts were in the interest of Détente, that idea of internal settlement independence in the interest of Ian Smith and his apartheid South African friend, Vorster. Heaven knows who Rtd Major Mbudzi and his colleagues are in contact with in the misguided resolve to fulfil "the agreements made in Mozambique" - agreements he claims are being violated and him alone can now stand as the custodian of those agreements on behalf of the revolution. There is always a problem with people who anoint themselves as custodians of other people's memory. They are often liars.

The Rtd Major would be doing the revolution a great favour if he guarded its principles from within the revolution as opposed to trying another Nhari-style attempt at stealing the revolution. Rtd Major Mbudzi might lack the necessary insight into the Thomas Nhari misadventure because by the time he joined the struggle as a Form 3 school leaver; that is in 1977 - Nhari had already been dealt his punishment by the revolution.

The Nhari rebellion stood to benefit Détente and its advocates much the same way a rebellion from Zanu-PF is meant to benefit imperial forces and their surrogates in the opposition MDC.

It is clear that while Rtd Major Mbudzi is playing Nhari reincarnate there are others playing Mukono, Mutambanengwe, Sanyanga and Dziruni. If the rebellion proceeds as speculated in the Press and the letter by Rtd Major Mbudzi then there is every chance of a replay of the Nhari rebellion. The revolution will just take the rebels in its stride just because one cannot steal a people's revolution.

The revolution itself might be spared the trouble of swallowing the rebels given that Rtd Major Mbudzi thinks the man from whose pocket the revolution should be stolen is Nathaniel Manheru, whom he has no qualms calling George Charamba.

That alone, shows how much orientation the good Rtd Major commands. If the Zimbabwe revolution is kept in Charamba's pocket then this writer will have to dismiss it for child's play.

The revolution belongs to those peasants who own no cars to fuel at $5 per litre. It belongs to the oppressed that want to control their own destiny and it is these owners of the revolution who will speak loud and clear in March 2008. Their voice has already started to reach the ears of neo-colonial liberals whose liberality is at the expense of the national heritage.

This is why any one in their right senses is very clear that the MDC cannot win this coming election and maybe any election for that. It is because they can hear the voice of the people. It is this voice that some will want to capture as their own by attempting to run away with the revolution in the name of liberation credentials.

The Zimbabwe revolution, for having chosen to follow the path of emancipation rather than the easier path of neo-liberalism, has been subjected to ever more slanderous attacks from both the traditional imperial enemies and from elements who have come out of the ranks of the revolution. These elements are either impatient or smitten with the unfortunate zeal of the novice, or else they are frantically and openly pursuing personal ambitions.

They come up with ideas quiet harmful to the revolution. These are the appalling about-faces who in the name of globalisation want to tell the revolution to surrender to imperial powers in the name of respecting what they call market forces.

Indeed the ultimate victory for the revolution is the happiness of the ordinary Zimbabweans, but not through submission to outside imperial forces. Those who are currently benefiting and enriching themselves through the crisis caused by the hardships of pushing the revolutionary agenda are basically part of the enemy. There is need to rid the revolutionary forest of all the bad trees before someone burns the whole forest in irritation.

That has happened elsewhere, in Bolivia, in Somalia, and other places but even then the revolutionary seed will always germinate again as is happening with the Evo Morales led revolution in Bolivia right now. The same goes for the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela.

Zimbabweans have for the past eight years shocked many in the other world of imperial perceptions by not only refusing to be stirred into an uprising but also continually voting into power the very party they are told is presiding over their suffering.

Some have allowed their frustration to make them conclude that Zimbabweans are docile and stupid and yet it's clear that wherever Zimbabweans go across the world they rank among the most competent minds always.

It is this level of rationality, which makes it almost impossible to fool Zimbabweans into seeing an enemy where there is none.

Zimbabweans in the majority are aware of the route cause of their problems just like they are well versed with the context of their suffering. One cannot therefore use this suffering to hijack the revolution, let alone attempting to steal it from a member's pocket. This writer has asserted time after time that the revolution is greater than all its members and that it runs on revolutionary ideas and that ideas are immortal and cannot be killed.

Children of Zimbabwe, victory is certain. Together we will overcome.