ZANU PF and the French Bourbons “learn nothing and forget nothing”, as historians write.
Plans to have President Emmerson Mnangagwa be a life president can potentially lead Zimbabwe to experience a second coup within a decade, if things degenerate further.
Blessed Runesu Geza, a war veteran and former member of the intelligence services, was expelled from Zanu PF recently for leading the charge to have Mnangagwa step down immediately.
Popularly known as Bombshell, Geza, among other things, accuses Mnangagwa of nepotism and corruption.
He also has made allegations against the First Family that it became filthy rich since Mnangagwa came into office via a November 2017 coup.
While the accusations, at face value, resonate with many Zimbabweans as the economy continues to tank, things have not been made any better by the President’s association with shady characters.
The same shady characters actually love to flaunt their association with Mnangagwa and plaster their pictures with the President on social media for all and sundry to know of their proximity to the leader.
It is interesting that when tensions get high in Zanu PF, history is revised.
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In 2017, the late former President Robert Gabriel Mugabe was accused of being associated with seedy characters and having amassed wealth for his family at the State’s expense.
Mugabe’s war history was shredded, leaving many wondering if he was the same venerated leader of the 1980s.
We have learnt a few things from Zanu PF feuds, but two stand out: failure by politicians to write the memoirs and centralisation of political power in one individual is a recipe for disaster.
Very few politicians have written their stories.
These include Didymus Mutasa, Maurice Nyagumbo, Edgar Tekere, Joshua Nkomo and Tshinga Dube.
Mutasa and Nyagumbo wrote their books before independence, capturing their thoughts and struggles for independence.
They also wrote quite interesting anecdotes about Zanu PF leaders they interacted with.
On the other hand, Tekere, Nkomo and Dube wrote their memoirs post-independence.
They wrote clearly about Zanu PF internal contradictions and put their undiluted thoughts into the public sphere.
One cannot speculate their thoughts on say the leadership code or one-party State policies that Zanu PF collectively wanted to pursue.
Zanu PF has not learnt that centralising power and curtailing individual freedom to contest for power are corrosive to democratic ethos.
Since the 1970s, Zanu PF has never had an open contestation for the party leadership.
It always manages to create some pseudo consensus, thus shutting up ambitious people.
Actually, ambition is a swear word in Zanu PF lingua franca.
While Zimbabwe has tried to borrow from both London and Washington political systems, it has never attempted to implement leadership renewal at intervals.
In London, political parties have more power than the government and they have open contestation for power.
At every elective congress, there are three or more people openly contesting to be party leader.
This is a bit different in Washington, where party leadership is usually different from its public representatives or elected public officials.
In United States, they have intensive internal primary elections for public office run by the party leadership.
There is no prize for guessing that centralisation of power has killed naked ambition.
Many party members are afraid to state their interest in public office for fear of offending the incumbents and hurting their future chances.
This has become a Zimbabwean thing.
Its neighbours — South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia — have been changing leaders periodically and consistently.
This has given them stability and a pressure valve to control things internally and avoid situations where the military intervenes to remove leaders.
This phenomenon has not been limited to Zanu PF, but extends to Zimbabwean opposition parties.
The opposition leaders think and believe they should stay at the helm of their political parties until they assume the State presidency.
Secondly, across the political divide, Zimbabweans are fixated with personalities rather than ideas.
This has generally bred the politics of cults.
Politics become a religion of some sort and the leader is all powerful and can anoint successors.
Zimbabwe is slowly moving to the edge.
Tensions are rising and social media has not made things any easier.
Citizens are bombarded by information overflow and at times cannot fully process the available facts.
As the country is gripped by fear or excitement of a second coup, there are some important issues that remain unaddressed.
These, inter alia, include what is the national question and the quest to create a political establishment.
Zimbabweans over the years have been overawed by their daily grinds to an extent of discussing national questions being an unnecessary luxury.
Those privileged to be in positions of trust have their minds pre-occupied by how they can transfer their wealth offshore.
No one seems to care about what the country should be like in 50 or 100 years from now or what should be the enduring national values.
Things have not been made easier by the attitude of public intellectuals.
Very little debates have been done in public or written in the media on the unfolding drama, but with real consequences on citizens’ lives.
Public intellectuals must step out and process this for the generality of Zimbabweans.
As events unfold, Zimbabweans in general and Zanu PF in particular, like the French Bourbons — the house made famous by Napoleon Bonaparte — have proved that they learnt nothing and forgot nothing.
They are stuck in their old ways and see no reason why they should change or adapt to new ways of doing things.
