ZANU PF Accused Of Interacting With Other Neighbouring Revolutionary Movements

By Dr Masimba Mavaza | ZANU PF has been labelled as the great interference party in other countries. ZANUPF is a Nationalist movement, a Liberation movement, and is entitled to help any Liberation movement where-ever it might. Liberation movements in Africa are nationalist movements that have resorted to armed struggle to overthrow colonialism, white minority rule, or oppressive postcolonial governments.

The Revolutionary parties do represent the national will. African countries had to form liberation movements to remove apartheid and oppression. These movements had to unite so that they could drive colonialists from Africa. Colonialists had never stopped to try and influence liberated countries to remain under the oppression. To achieve their end they formed and financially support them. ZANU PF as a Revolutionary party willingly accepts invitations to assist fellow revolutionary movements under siege. The complaints that ZANU PF IS INTERFERING in the region are unfounded but they expose the intention behind the complaint and protest.

The protests that ZANU PF has come to rig elections is laughable. It is simply a blatant attempt to demonise a party which is simply acting in solidarity. Elections in the neighbouring states are not counted by ZANU PF or its officers. ZANU P PF cannot Stand by while its friends need help. ZANU PF is not synonymous with loss buy its presence carries a signature of winning. It is moronic to accuse ZANU PF of rigging elections. The accusations by Ian Khama the former President of Botswana was unfortunate. Zanu pf. The losing parties which are puppets of the West must stop blaming ZANU Pf for their losses. ZANU PF simply gives solidarity and support.
We should remember that united REvolutionary movements were triggered into action from longstanding grievances against colonial labor exploitation, taxation, racist and paternalist practices, arbitrary violence, and political illegitimacy. Pan-Africanism can be traced back to the 19th century United States, where people like Martin Delany argued that since Black people were unlikely to prosper in the US, they should leave and form their own nation. Early Pan-Africanism sought to establish a common identity amongst people of African descent. Pan-Africanism is an ideology rooted in African nationalism or the idea that there is a common identity amongst people of African descent, based on shared qualities such as culture, institutions, and a similar history. Historically, many African people have been subject to slavery, displacement, or oppression by colonial powers. The Pan-African movement is intended to serve as a vehicle to unite the African people, whether abroad or still living in their homeland.

As a political movement, Pan-Africanism aims to ensure self-determination for African people, or the right to direct their own fates, socially, culturally, politically, and economically. It developed through the lens of colonialism and slavery, and the resulting African diaspora, people displaced from their homes, often due to the transatlantic slave trade, and colonial oppression and exploitation.

Pan-Africanism had a significant impact both inside of Africa and among the African diaspora by creating a shared identity and sense of community. In Africa, the movement helped African countries throw off the yoke of colonial oppression through independence and promote self-determination.

It also brought global awareness to the atrocities of slavery and colonialism, and helped make the socio-political and economic challenges faced by African countries more prominent at the international level.

As a result the movements which came out of Pan Africanism have remained united even beyond independence. The comradeship they have developed has remained intact to this day.

So the liberation movements have become continent wide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidaritybetween all indigenous peoplesand diasporas of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic slave trade, the movement extends beyond continental Africa.

Their love to unite makes others to conclude that the parties are dubious of the legitimacy of multiparty democracy: this difference is a reflection of whether the military wing of the liberation movement dominates the political movement or whether the reverse situation applies.
Liberation movements can be defined as diverse socio-political movements that aim to establish an independent state for their nation within internationally recognized borders.

The Liberation parties or movements must not forget that the masters are as powerful as they praise them, and as weak as they don’t buy what they sell. These former masters still sell the idea of division and have found active destroyers in the opposition. The kind of power they have is extractive, destructive, toxic, and unilateral.

So the collective liberation of our countries beyond colonialism is greatly dependent on uniting with organisations who think alike and not internalizing this abusive power. The liberation movements most of them now governments must unite and fight to dismantle the power asymmetries that have kept the black majority from enjoying their basic rights and freedoms for too long.

Despite the pressure and divisive techniques applied by the former colonialists the Liberation movements are hungry for being oppressors because they fought against the oppressive system and won. So liberation movements are not apt for the excessive force that some may think make them “glorious”.

The liberation movements are not equal with the cruelty of the oppressors. They are not our masters; we are not their slaves. Liberation movements will not let them patronize us with their false entitlement, democracy speeches, and tantalising us with donations and loans.

Liberation movements are united so they won’t thank too much; they won’t apologize too much. They are getting rid of the culture and beliefs that were inherently engraved in our mindsets that they are our saviours.

Fighting this internalization among the oppressed is imperative to reshaping the narratives and rhetoric that are soaked by ideologies of indoctrination based on white supremacy and domination. The generations of the colonizers are, by default and intention, growing up to a sense of entitlement.

They were, and are, raised to believe they are noble and we are inhuman; they are the patron and we are the labour; they are the absolute and we are the other. They have been inherently indoctrinated that their excessive use of force is a need for protection, while the use of force by the oppressed, even if ultimately not identical in magnitude and impact, is an act of “terrorism”.

This false equation has opened space for a conversation on what are the legitimate forms of resistance. And in this disposition, it is improbable to turn a blind eye to the liberation movements and thinkers in Africa who come together to defend our freedom. It is also the cultural assimilation, false narratives, misinformation, and it certainly is weaponizing democracy and use their puppets to sow disunity and separation.

Only later did we find that this is not the bodily autonomy that we envisioned. Being in the opposition has been culturally imperative as a product of capitalist hypocrisy. We have inherently believed that allowing the opposition to sow seeds of division nobly makes a country whole. We have been unconsciously forced to internalize oppression in disguise. Today, we see any solidarity action by another liberation movement towards another defined as political interference.

They demonise any other liberation movement which stands by another party. Capitalism is a vacuum; it will not cease swallowing everything in its way until we cut the power off. It has manipulated democracy and democratic governance as much as it distorted the value of the liberation movements.

Our collective liberation is dependent on a world revolution. As liberation movements, we need to radicalize our minds and tools and build intersectional cross regional liberatory approaches where we learn from each other’s lessons and struggles, co-shape our own meaningful ways of engagement and being, and most importantly speak about ourselves, our history, our ancestors fighting colonial supremacist orientalist sources of knowledge, oral history, and storytelling.

We need to strengthen the ways we have each other’s backs because many of us are constantly operating in survival mode; we need to bring more joy and dance into each other’s spaces because many of us are struggling with trauma in its different shades.

And we need to speak and listen more to each other’s politics- not on a panel, not in a session, but create south-south consistent spaces of informal political education. We need to center critical consciousness and radical revolutionary love as foundations for every transformative action.

If a liberation movement is to survive as a political act and liberation project, it must genuinely self-ground in unity and pursue beyond borders. A liberation movement should join other like minded movements in any country they might be and open political radical conversations on patriarchy and connected oppressive systems that limit the spectrum of options and self-defined autonomous choices among liberation movements.

Revolutionary Parties must help each other to consolidate power and assist girls, young people and marginalized communities. Liberation movements need to invest in politicising and radicalizing generations of young persons. It must act together and not tire.
If the liberation and Revolutionary movements unite beyond borders there will be so much hope for a better world. We are as good as how much hope fills our hearts and minds. Hope is the driving force for us to criticize, question, revisit, doubt, recontextualize, analyze, mobilize, pushback, resist, love, and emancipate.

The unity the revolutionary parties have is overwhelmingly contagious and we cannot spare any chance to explain that this was the Africa magic!

So the colonialists dressed as opposition may continue talking while we move on as a united front.

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