Every political party is like a bird of prey, for it be functional, it must have two opposed wings. Without any wings, it cannot fly. Even our flightless fowl, emu and ostrich have wings. Harmony between the wings is essential for any normal bird. When the wings are at war with each other, folks, that bird of prey is in trouble.
In Zimbabwe, we have a political party whose emblem is a fowl. As with all birds, figurative and otherwise, that chicken must always have two opposite wings attached to its body. It shall always be that way because it is the natural order of any bird whether it can fly or not. You doubt me, right? Think about it:
1. We had ZAPU with two wings; the negotiator wing and the agitator wing. The factions fractured the party, and out of it came ZANU, a party of elements that embraced confrontations as a path to independence or, as it has since turned out, grabbing power for itself. After independence, that faction that became ZANU mercilessly finished off the remnants of what had been ZAPU.
2. On its own, ZANU soon developed two wings due to the reaction of the Rhodesian Establishment. Some of the leaders were sent to prisoners as the rest took flight into exile in Zambia. Inevitably, two opposed factions emerged; the Exiles and the Prisoners. Upon being released from prison, deadly quarrels erupted between the two factions. The Exiles were butchered; Tongogara and Chitepo, think about their tragic deaths. Wilfred Mhanda intimates they were victims of factionalism. Curiously, the same fatal convulsions visited ZAPU, with Jason Moyo and Nikita Mangena going the way of Chitepo and Tongogara.
3. With the Prisoners in charge, we saw that new bird develop a pair of new wings. On one side was the Vashandi faction and, on the other, the Zvigananda faction. The two clashed, a deadly and mortal battle between the proletariat faction and the bourgeoisie faction. The former were armed with brawns and the latter with the brains. Using hired thugs, the bourgeoisie Zvigananda overwhelmed the gun-totting but brainless proletariat faction of Vashandi. That is how we ended with concepts like: "Politics leads the gun, but not the other way!" The pockets of resisting Vashandi were either thrown into dungeons or left too broken down to offer any serious resistance. That was the state of affairs at the moment of the rebirth of the truncated ancient nation of Zimbabwe.
4. Independence brought what must have been a feast of opportunities for the famished "liberators" to gorge themselves with "freely" available food. It was not long before we saw two wings emerge, yet again. Edgar Tekere became the de facto leader of the Idealist faction whose driving principle based on maintaining the bonds of solidarity between the peasantry and and party leadership. This faction sought the forging of the new nation in conformity with fundamentals that had propelled the oppressed people to win a great war. The other wing was about accumulating wealth, even by corrupt means. This is the wing that made a habit of trotting nice speeches by day while engaging in cancerous corruption by night. The Idealists tried to destroy corruption by writing on a piece of paper, using crayons, some kind of a Hammurabi Code of Conduct. A piece of paper with a pitiful imitation of some information that only belongs to a museum was never going to stop hungry pigs from dipping their flat-ended snouts in the nations's feeding troughs. The Corrupt faction was briefly humiliated when it was caught stealing cars for sale. It responded by chasing away the Idealists.
5. Even among thieves, there might not be much honour, but a schism still emerges. We saw pacifist thieves in contention with thieves that behaved as if brutality was essential if thievery was to be sustained. The pacifist thieves of the Gamatox brands were humiliatingly chased away from the feeding troughs by a coalition of brutal team of thieves and that of an ancient group with origins in the brutal suppression and decapitation of the Vashandi faction.
6. Invariably, there is one big problem with unreplenished feeding troughs, the sloops will eventually get depleted. The feeding pigs end up jousting for the prime spots at the troughs. As a child, I witnessed what happens when famished pigs are on a feeding frenzy. One of my uncles had a piggery, thus giving me a wonderful opportunity to witness pigs at troughs. It is an unsightly scene. There is grunting, squealing and the sniping and counter-sniping of jaws armed with dangerous teeth. Porcine feaces are sent flying allover the place, too. At the magumo end, the pigs more muscular jaws and sharper teeth prevail. So, that fate visited Zimbabwe during sacred month of November.
Now that we have ourselves a new bird, what wings does it have?
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