Opposition politics in Zimbabwe is increasingly imitating foreign political models rather than addressing the unique social and economic conditions the country is currently experiencing, the ruling ZANU PF has said.
Speaking to 263Chat, ZANU PF information director Farai Mararpira expressed that opposition politics lacks targets and deliverables to the masses due to foreign interest servitude.
“It is a forgone fact that the opposition is in the doldrums. Their politics has been mainly premised on divisionism, hatred and intolerance. However, such a cocktail of toxicity can only create a creature that will eventually rise to ingest its maker.
“Their politics has no talk of targets and deliverables to the masses and how they have served in the offices they have been elected into. This is the hallmark sign that their politics is not ideologically rooted in the people but in agenderism, foreign interest servitude and a mercenary approach. The opposition has thus become fossilized,” said Marapira.
Presidential spokesperson George Charamba echoed these sentiments in his weekly blog, @Jamwanda2 on Saturday. In it, he criticised the opposition for its reliance on external influences, suggesting that it lacks organic roots in the country’s socio-political environment.
Charamba pointed out that many opposition movements seem to spring up in response to international trends or directives from foreign entities rather than arising from genuine grassroots concerns within Zimbabwe
“Today, we look in vain for a home-grown opposition, only to be met by externally generated imitative spurts, only bedecked and beguiled by local colour and faces.
“There is never any prologue to politics which are not home grown. Namatai Kwekweza — is that her name? — does not need a national profile. Or her peers in ZINASU or ARTUZ.
“They only need a SADC Summit to be launched and catapulted into sudden, national visibility. Such is the nature of inorganic politics,” said Charamba arguing this leads to a politics that is not only inauthentic but also disconnected from the needs and aspirations of ordinary Zimbabweans.
According to Charamba, the current opposition’s grievances and agendas are often crafted abroad and imported into Zimbabwe.
“The armed Liberation Struggle was launched and fought on National Grievances. These spoke to the felt needs of the oppressed. The land, basic freedoms, the right to vote, forced de-stocking, forced labour, you name it. No one invented these, so the struggle resonated with the broad masses.
“Today, we face a very strange situation. When men and women from afar create grievances, organizations and institutions for another society so far away from their own, a crisis of legitimacy hits the opposition created to execute such an agenda. Concrete social conditions breed tendencies, causes, politics and organizations. Social conditions cannot be borrowed from other societies or even from earlier times in the same societies.
“Romantic movements in history arise from the urge to push the clock against the forward march of social conditions,” he added.
This comes amidst claims of planned opposition protests to disrupt the ongoing 44th SADC summit.
