Gawula ngezembe

When members assemble for an event as momentous as the 23rd ZANU PF National People's Conference, the expectation is singular and solemn: to articulate policy, to outline programmes, and to chart the developmental trajectory. It is not, and has never been, a forum for the exhumation of settled matters or the resurrection of staid grievances long disposed of by the Party through appropriate channels. For the Party, the Conference is a strategic pedestal, a showcase to the nation and the world of a united, disciplined, and progressive revolutionary movement. Outside Congress, it is the highest theatre of ideological clarity and purpose. It is therefore alarming, how at a time when the country is registering positive indicators as so demonstrated by President Mnangagwa's address which focused on production and development, one could craft a speech so corrosive and so discordant with the national mood as that read by VP Chiwenga. Such a contradiction in messaging from the Presidency itself raises serious questions of discipline and coordination. If indeed it is Charamba penning speeches that fundamentally contradict each other from the same Presidency, then he has ceased to be an asset and has become a constant and existential danger to the coherence of the State. If he is not, the team around VP Chiwenga must be held culpable and be reconstituted for the sheer dereliction of allowing such a shocking and ill-timed diatribe on a platform engineered for unity and developmental focus. President Mnangagwa was exemplary. His was a mature, measured and modernist speech anchored on national development, economic consolidation and livelihoods. That is what the people, true owners of the Party are interested in. Not theatrical genuflections in public over matters that have already been addressed by the appropriate organs, and which, if they still require ventilation, have alternative and more appropriate internal platforms from which to be addressed. It is precisely such theatrics that provoke some of us to posit that if one finds himself so irreconcilably at odds with the prevailing order, would not honour demand that he, as a matter of principle, stand down?