ZIMBABWE National Army commander Lieutenant General Anselem Sanyatwe recently hoisted his colours and openly declared that the defence forces are a part of the ruling party.
By implication, the reverse is also true. This is nothing new.
Successive senior defence forces officers have over the years made it clear that they are, even if it is ultra vires their constitutional role, first and foremost the Zanu PF institution and secondarily a national one.
The general went on to declare that consequent to the foregoing, Zanu PF will rule forever. These sentiments are well worn, but spine chilling.
They can either be construed as a dangerous misunderstanding of the processes of politics or dismissed as political gamesmanship. Either way, they warrant further analysis.
Given the entropic dynamics of African political developments, this is not only an impractical statement, but also a dangerous one.
Added to this Zanu PF’s own incredible ineptitude and corruption, literal and figurative, makes this impossible.
This is not to say that the general’s sentiments can be taken lightly, far from it.
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Any man with thousands of men and women armed at his beck and call cannot be taken lightly.
Besides, they really do believe that Zanu PF ought to, can and will rule forever.
This statement, not by the general per se, but Zanu PF through him is a statement of intent.
Zanu PF does intend to rule for ever. It intends to do this by doing whatever it takes to stay in power.
The past 44 years have shown us and the world just how terrible and diabolical this can be.
That is why the nexus between Zanu PF and the defence forces is paraded, celebrated and bragged about.
It is an implicit threat and statement that declares to all and sundry on pain of death that the wherewithal to remain in power is there.
The will to use it has been demonstrated time and time again. Zanu PF will, if its hold on power is threatened, resort to unimaginable atrocity.
The statement from Zanu PF is that the elections we periodically hold are a show for the powers-that-be to be seen to be democratic.
The general was in effect warning the people of Zimbabwe not to forget who they are, where they are and take the elections seriously.
Everyone, Sadc, the African Union, European Union, United Nations and anyone else who could be bothered to, knows that Zanu PF could never so respect the ballot as to cede power owing to one.
Zimbabwean elections are a political masquerade party with everyone wearing ill-fitting masks of democracy.
Over the years, Zanu PF has been allowed to repeatedly get away with crimes against humanity: including murder, rape, torture and the displacement of thousands.
Zanu PF has morphed over the years into a sprawling criminal enterprise. It has acquired a sense of being supranormal.
It has defied principles of political science as we know them and live to boast about it. It seems as if what Zanu PF wants it gets and get away with it.
When things do not go its way, the ruling party will always revert to its default mode, which is to perpetrate atrocities against the people of Zimbabwe.
This is the import of the military’s partisan declarations.
Being allowed to get away with such brutality has given the ruling party an aura of omnipotence and invincibility topped off by a deep-seated contempt for just about everyone and everything that is not Zanu PF.
The African National Congress of South Africa is quite naturally the useful idiot for whom the most contempt is reserved.
During Gukurahundi, the Zanu PF government massacred thousands of Ndebeles.
Thereafter, it has detained, tortured and even “disappeared” dozens of opposition activists.
The year 2008 saw the greatest and most brazen attack on the rule of law and constitutionalism with the refusal to cede a lost election.
It was also a coming out of Zanu PF in all of its dictatorial infamy.
This was quickly followed by the killing of hundreds of opposition supporters, torture, rape and displacement of thousands during the June 27 run-off election campaign.
The people, who perpetrated all these crimes, are in power and untouchable.
They are feted in global capitals with little care for the blood and tears that washed them into those privileges and positions.
Zanu PF, therefore, really does believe that it can, if necessary, launch another Gukurahundi or June 27 and get away with it.
That is why it can declare that it will rule forever. The world has watched all these crimes and stood by.
Most importantly, South Africa has given the regime its tacit support in whatever it deems necessary to remain in power by providing political and economic cover.
Then Prime Minister Ian Smith arrogantly declared that there would never be black majority rule in Rhodesia.
History quickly disillusioned him within a decade. The reason is simple; Rhodesians were never masters of their own destiny, their power lay in Washington, Whitehall and Pretoria.
Smith made the mistake of mistaking localised power for control and dominance of all socio-economic and political-military dynamics.
The Rhodesians, living in a small landlocked country, as a racial minority at both the national and continental levels, never stood a chance given the international geo-political landscape.
Zanu PF is repeating the arrogance of Smith. It has done so over the years.
The international dynamics have moved little since then. Zimbabwe is still landlocked, still dependent on the goodwill of South Africa.
So, in effect, Sanyatwe should have said Zanu PF will rule for as long as South African cynicism permits.
This cynicism that sees Pretoria accord its own citizens every democratic right due to a people, but will not see the same right accorded to the people of Zimbabwe.
Zanu PF is incredibly incompetent. Zanu PF is corrupt. Zanu PF is unbearably arrogant. Zanu PF in short does not have a single redeeming factor.
But Zanu PF does not care because it relies only on brute force to stay in power.
Out of the multitudinous factors and dynamics that go into the sustenance and development of a nation, Zanu PF has isolated and mastered only force.
But force can only keep it in power so long as the international community allows it.
If South Africa had called out the atrocities and mayhem of June 27, 2008, hundreds would still be alive, thousands unscarred by torture, rape and/or displacement.
Instead, Thabo Mbeki provided the Robert Mugabe regime the political and diplomatic cover it needed to carry out its widespread and indiscriminate crimes against humanity and democracy.
South Africa, in effect, underwrote the electoral heist of June 27, 2008. Without the brotherly love of the disingenuously labelled “liberation movements”, Zimbabwe would be a democracy.
After the historic June 2024 elections in South Africa, the political dynamics in that country have been altered forever. Zanu PF cannot continue to take its patron for granted.
It must plan for the unexpected, including its shenanigans being called out. South Africa has all of a sudden become an unknown dynamic in the Zimbabwean political landscape.
This shows that no one in Zanu PF can declare that it will rule forever.
Even internally, Zanu PF has deluded itself into thinking that it controls all the socio-economic, politico-military dynamics that determine the political outcomes of a nation.
No political scientist predicted the Arab Spring, none even remotely conjured that the self-immolation of a young man in Tunisia would lead to the Arab Spring.
Who could have believed that the US Capitol would be stormed by a rabble instigated by a twice impeached President?
Examples of unexpected and unpredictable political changes are too many to enumerate.
Reason being that human society is just too complex and for that reason, human political history is replete with revolutions, unexpected downfalls and elevations.
Bangladesh has most recently provided another example of just how complex power retention is. You can kill hundreds, but this still might not work in putting down an uprising.
Unfortunately, no political scientist has been able to isolate the dynamics that push a people beyond fear and none can say it does not or cannot exist in Zimbabwe.
Zanu PF does not and cannot control all socio-political and military dynamics at play in Zimbabwe.
These for the information of Zanu PF shape Zimbabwe’s political development.
It cannot, as the succession fulminations have shown, even control its own intra-party dynamics.
Smith made the same assumption and history was only too happy to show him just how naïve and arrogant he had been.
Zanu PF’s reckoning with history undoubtedly awaits.
There will be an end to Zanu PF hegemony, its type of rule is ultimately self-destructive.
The only question is how? No one dares look into the crystal ball because the visions therein might just be too ghastly to view.
When Zanu PF feels threatened, it resorts to violence to put down the threat, to deter any such future impertinence and also out of indignation that anyone could dare conceive of a Zimbabwe freed from its rule.
Change will come, but as most likely as not, it will be bloody that is the ominous import of the general’s speech.
- Rigid Kondongwe is a political commentator. He writes here in his personal capcity.
