Exiled former Zimbabwean Cabinet Minister, Patrick Zhuwao who is also the nephew of the late founding member of the ruling ZANU PF, Robert Mugabe, has joined a long list of people previously aligned to the party to have demanded that it relinquishes or be forced to leave power.
We present his statement in full below.
Although Zimbabwe is staring down the barrel of a gun, the country is experiencing the emergence of a truly national movement which transcends political partisan lines calling for ZANU PF to go. The hashtag #ZanupfMustGo has become so viral on Twitter that all progressives forces are using it as a signoff. #ZanupfMustGo was started by Thandekile Moyo, a young Zimbabwean woman with no discernible political links. Moyo cautioned against supporting the November 2017 coup. Why has the hashtag #ZanupfMustGo found so much resonance amongst progressive Zimbabweans including most of my former colleagues in ZANU PF and government?
Zimbabwe is faced with a myriad of political, economic, social and cultural challenges. Although Zimbabwe is blessed with an abundance of natural resources, these resources are being looted and spirited out of the country. Zimbabwe’s biggest resource is its educated people who constantly display tremendous talent, resilience and fortitude. Unfortunately, Zimbabwe’s talent pool has been denied the opportunity to contribute to the country’s development. There is no room for Zimbabweans to assist in correcting the country’s trajectories because the country’s so-called ruling party, ZANU PF, is dysfunctional. Worse still, those in control of the moribund ZANU PF are actively working to disable any viable opposition in Zimbabwe.
ZANU PF no longer exists as a functional political party with a clear ideological position. ZANU PF has been captured by a small cabal of ideologically vacuous kleptomaniacs who stand for nothing beyond securing power for the purpose of self-enrichment. This became so abundantly clear when characters who previously paraded themselves as democracy activists were co-opted into the regime’s structures such as PAC and POLAD. Thankfully some of them are withdrawing. ZANU PF kleptomaniacs operate with a business model which uses the military as an enforcement mechanism for their criminal activities and intentions. ZANU PF has become a parasitic virus that has captured the nation’s military to act as mafia-style enforcers. Most of the people who have remained within ZANU PF are merely being used as a cover to create a veneer of legitimacy; vari kuitiswa.
Furthermore, ZANU PF has effectively destroyed the democratic space by capturing and using state institutions to destabilise opposition political parties. ZANU PF functionaries facilitated the recall of MDC Alliance Members of Parliament by a totally different political party indicating the extent to which ZANU PF will seek to destroy any genuine opposition. ZANU PF will not only tolerate but will promote and support surrogate puppet political parties for the express purpose of hoodwinking the rest of the world into thinking that Zimbabwe has some semblance of multi-party democracy. The political charade labelled POLAD seeks to disillusion Zimbabweans from participating in opposition politics.
It is extremely clear that ZANU PF is now a fully-fledged terrorist organisation which has perfected the use of terror and violence to subjugate Zimbabweans. The massacres of 1st August 2018 and those committed during January and February 2019 were blatantly used to send a message to Zimbabweans that ZANU PF will continue to use the military as an instrument of repression. Even the individual soldiers involved in those atrocities knew and recognized that they were committing crimes and therefore made every effort to hide their identity behind masks.
ZANU PF has become a vampire institution that is sucking the lifeblood out of all Zimbabweans. I feel sorry for a few of my colleagues who, despite being lucky to have been jettisoned from ZANU PF, still feel that they can negotiate themselves back onto the vampire state of ZANU PF. Drunk with dreams of power, they are not aware that the vampires that still remain in ZANU PF will not allow them back. The rot in ZANU PF has become so toxic and gangrenous that the only solution for Zimbabwe is that ZANU PF must go.
Asante Sana. Iwe Neni Tine Basa. Umsebenzi lo Umkhulu.