Zanu PF Politicisation Of Food Aid, Violates Zimbabwe’s Constitution.

Mugabe led government has and continues to manipulate the rural vote, which constitutes as much as 70% of the entire vote and has been traditionally been his main power bloc. The Zanu solution is to spread terror throughout the rural areas and neutralize opposition parties and political dissent. This trend is set to continue to 2018 Elections as opposition parties fail to close in on the political gap, represented by the country’s majority voter base; the rural areas

Human rights watchdog, Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) has expressed concern over the politicisation of food aid, saying this was in violation of provisions of the national Constitution.

“It is actually the role of the government to protect and promote the rights of every citizen. As ZPP, we are saying this is what is happening in the communities and unless the government intervenes and follows up on this matter targeted people are really going to starve,” Jestina Mukoko, the ZPP director said in the organisations’ Friday 22 January report on food violations being recorded across the country.

The deindustrialisation of the country has seen a large number of Zimbabweans uprooted from urban to rural areas while the rest were forced to emigrate as matter of economic survival. This socio-economic scenario;on a backdrop of a failed and corrupt government; was followed up by Zanu government, by reducing urban voting constituencies and increasing rural voting constituencies.

There are 1958 wards of which of 389 are urban and 1569 rural. These figures then presents the current government with a ’’reason’’ to have more polling stations in the rural than urban areas; a sinister political move with hidden agendas. Therefore this presents a fertile political platform to coerce the rural population into submission by the Zanu card for food schemes, a too familiar tactic that must be countered and condemned to the strongest of all terms.

The Zanu political strategy goes an extra length to blackout the media from the rural areas; for the sole purpose of maintaining an iron grip and shielding local & international media through poor rural infrastructure making rural population inaccessible. This poor rural infrastructure extends to Elections Observer Missions who are also faced by the same dilapidated conditions and opt to for urban monitoring and verification. The inability by opposition, pressure groups and civic organisations to reach and spread political consciousness to rural areas; which has majority voters; has been Zanu’s triumph card, election after election.

As usual, people have always been forced to buy the Zanu PF cards, danced and sloganeered for the grain, but exercised their right the ballot box. However, this time around Zanu is requiring $5 head per household a sudden turn from their ’’tradition’’ of “registering” rural citizens by force and issuing them with a Zanu card. An exercise that has been and likely to be presided over by the National Youth Service graduates. This is a sign of a predatory bankrupt party squeezing an already economically bleeding citizenry to the core; without any conscience.

THE ruling Zanu PF has reportedly ordered underprivileged villagers in drought-stricken Matabeleland North province to produce party membership cards before they could access food aid. The government, through the Social Services Department, is distributing food aid to the elderly and disabled, but Zanu PF is taking advantage of the food and economic crisis in the country to demand party cards from the villagers who are supposed to benefit from the programme.

Recently in Bubi district’s wards 2, 3, 4, 7 and 22, there is serious partisan distribution of food taking place. Maize has become a campaign tool in rural Matabeleland and other drought stricken provinces. The councillors,the government’s foot soldiers; have now become too partisan such that they are no longer representing everybody, but their party. They do not tolerate non-Zanu PF members and are already using food in preparation for the 2018 elections.

Zanu government officials are now a bunch of abstract “intellectual” utopia stuck in ivory tower offices detached from the masses or without active participation in the key sites of the struggle for economic emancipation and the rule of law. Guided by Capitalist-Imperialist theory, Zanu elites have not taken action as per principles and expectations of the revolutionary struggle, in which Zimbabwe lost thousands of its finest men and women; in a fight for a better life for all.

The scenario leaves serious questions and points to ponder for the ever fragmenting opposition parties. The on-going debate as to whether democracy has in fact been good for the average Zimbabwean leads to the next logical questions: Is Zimbabwe really ready for democracy? Do people who vote for dictatorship in the fear-plagued rural areas each election fully understand sound economic policy, international law, the independent pillars of the State, the protection of the individual and property rights? Do they understand the implications of continuously voting – albeit under duress – for a dictatorship which has no concern for the masses and uses food aid as a weapon of control?

Lets built a better Zimbabwe together!

By Bekithemba Ngwenya