By Patrick Guramatunhu- Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) members meet at Mnangagwa’s Sherwood farm, near Kwekwe. The grouping will never come up with any solution to the nation’s many teething problems!
“It was a request made by POLAD members. The programme is very simple, a couple of hours of business and then another couple of hours touring the farm. So it is almost like a farmers’ field day after the serious business of talks,” explained George Charamba.
“It does clinch the notion of productivity which has been the President’s watchword that we should work, work and work for our economy to grow.”
Charamba is Mnangagwa’s spokesperson and spin doctors. He is never short of an explanation, often irrational as is the case here.
Zimbabwe is a banana republic complete with Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland type institutions and characters.
Here is what we know about POLAD; it is a gathering of individuals, exact number is unknown, mostly presidential candidates in last year’s rigged elections.
All who join are required to public affirm the elections were free, fair and credible and that one Emerson Mnangagwa is the legitimate President of the banana republic.
POLAD is a talk-shop with not rules, no minutes are taken, no quorum, no power to call anyone to appear before gathering and no one is expected to tell the truth or talk sense.
Most important of all, Mnangagwa, the chairperson of POLAD by virtue of being the founder and funder, will, as a rule of thumb, ignore everything said in the talk-shop.
This compares very favourably with Lewis Carroll’s fairytale.
“Alice and the other animals are still wet, prompting the Dodo to suggest a Caucus race. The Dodo marks out a course, sets everyone in place, and yells “go.” explained sparknotes.
“The animals run around haphazardly until the Dodo declares half an hour later that the race is over. The Dodo says that all of them have won the Caucus race and elects Alice to confer prizes.
“Alice passes mints to all the animals, leaving herself without a prize. Finding a thimble, she hands it to the Dodo, who in turn presents it back to her as her prize. Alice solemnly accepts the thimble but cannot help feeling that the gesture is absurd.”
Zimbabwe is a country in serious, serious economic trouble. Unemployment has been 80% plus for the last two decades now. 34% of the population are now living in extreme poverty, according to a recent WB report.
The country’s health care has all but completely collapsed, hundreds are dying everyday of easily treatable ailments. If the country is ever going to get out of this mess and end the tragic human suffering and deaths, it needs a forum where there is going to be serious debate.
The root cause of the country’s economic meltdown is the failure by key state institutions like parliament and cabinet to come up with solutions to the nations many problems.
The Zanu PF dictatorship has usurped the people’s power to elect competent MPs and parliament is now full of party loyalists whose primary concern is to please and appease the dictator. There is no quality debate in parliament. Cabinet is not any better!
Whatever little parliamentary and cabinet debates there was still, it is all going as POLAD, the talk-shop, takes over as the supreme policy and decision making body in the land.
“It is almost like a farmers’ field day after the serious business of talks!” Yeah, right! Name one “serious business” POLAD has accomplished; one year after it was launched and with millions of taxpayers’ money spent on its talk-shops?
If Zimbabwe is to ever get out of the economic and political mess, four decades of Zanu PF dictatorship have landed the nation in; we must end the curse of rigged elections, the foundation on which the dictatorship stands, and restore good governance.
POLAD seeks to stifle all meaningful debate and democratic discourse under the pretext of unity. It is just another foolish “caucus race” from the Dodo Mnangagwa at a time the country is desperate for a way out of this man-made hell-on-earth.