By Hopewell Chin’ono
I was talking to a South African friend last week who asked me why Zimbabweans accept the political nonsense happening in Zimbabwe.
I told her that Zimbabwe’s former Vice President, Simon Muzenda, once said that even if ZANUPF put up a baboon, Zimbabweans would still vote for that baboon. This is not an opinion, it is a fact. Those were his exact words. “If we give you a baboon, you vote for that baboon.”
Muzenda’s assessment was very correct. He was very right. The oppression of Zimbabweans is aided by the oppressed themselves.
They go and buy fuel from service stations owned by Mnangagwa and his criminal cartels. They go and shop in supermarkets owned by Mnangagwa’s people.
They bank with institutions owned by Mnangagwa and his cronies.
They knowingly buy goods from businesses controlled by Mnangagwa’s criminal cartels. They have alternatives, yet they choose to aid their own oppression.
You can never truly assist such a people, a people who cannot even do the bare minimum for themselves to immobilise the cruel political system that suffocates them.
The system survives and thrives on money, but the political elites in the opposition will never talk about these things because they too have been co-opted.
In the end, the cycle of oppression continues; not just through the power of the oppressor, but through the compliance and complicity of the oppressed.
Zimbabwe is a lost cause, no leadership on both ends, no hope for the future as the oppressed aid their oppression!
You will never hear a leader of any purportedly big opposition party in Zimbabwe openly saying that Mnangagwa is a thief, or that Mnangagwa is corrupt and that he leads criminal cartels — calling him by name. You will never hear that in Zimbabwe.
The only people who say such things are those on the periphery. But as the old African saying goes, you do not talk when you are eating and when you have food in your mouth. It is considered bad table manners.
Their silence is not born of caution or strategy, but of complicity and comfort. Once they are allowed a seat at the table, they stop speaking truth to power.
Instead of challenging the system head-on, they become part of the performance, pretending to oppose while carefully avoiding any words that might jeopardise their place at the feast. They just share empty and vague political statements.
And so the suffering of ordinary Zimbabweans continues, while the ruling elite and their so-called opponents share the spoils in silence.
The ordinary people don’t help the situation on the other hand. They will go and buy their fuel from ZUVA. They will go and bank with FBC or CBZ.
They will go and patronise in businesses that are owned by the ZANUPF elites. That’s where they take their money to and buy goods.
And as I said, they have got alternatives, but they choose to participate in their oppression.
They can go and buy elsewhere, but they actually knowingly go and buy from those who oppress them. Such a people can’t be helped, my friends, until they wake up. There is zero political consciousness, if you remind them of these things, they actually turn against you in defence of the opposition ZANUPF puppets.
If you look at countries like South Africa, people boycotted businesses linked to the apartheid system wherever they could. They deliberately refused to patronise those businesses. The masses were also led by leaders in the ANC and the PAC to do exactly that.
But in Zimbabwe, you will never see such a thing. And I am telling you this — I will donate $1,000 if any senior Zimbabwean opposition leader dares to lead a boycott campaign.
It will never happen, because they are co-opted, they are captured. If any of these so-called opposition leaders ever do it, I will give $1,000 to a charity of your choice. I can tell you here and now, my money is safe!
So I want to declare unequivocally that South African citizens are right when they say ZIMBABWEANS ARE COWARDS. We are, denying a self evident truth makes us dishonest cowards!
As Dr Nkosana Moyo said; Zimbabwean opposition politicians are not fighting for change, they are fighting to be included in the looting.