First Lady Grace Mugabe is believed to be the spirited “mouse” behind the 1635 Generation Consensus movement. The organisation spearheaded by her G40 faction’s Acie Lumbumba, who features in a carefully edited motion video released last week(below), is said to be a protest group.
But opposition analysts dismiss it with one saying, “it doesn’t add up when youths who belong to the very system which is oppressing the people purport to be interested in finding solutions to the current problems bedeviling our country. The people’s enemy in Zimbabwe is ZANU PF and its leader. The youths in ZANU PF form the backborne of that evil regime. CONTINUE READING BELOW –

So whatever generational consensus (16-35) they are talking about is nothing but an already failed ploy to divert the attention of our hungry and unemployed youths from rising and fighting the oppressor.  Leave ZANU PF, then afterwards we can start talking about the future from a common view point because as it stands, you are part of the problem,” wrote one only identified as Juice Card.

Zimbabwe: The Generation Consensus

By Maurine Kademaunga|Zimbabwe has become a perfect graveyard of buried hopes. Although hunger is a stark reality, the real tragedy is not going for a day without a meal, the real tragedy is the poverty of our aspirations and the death of our hope. It is easy for those who are eating on behalf of us to romanticise poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. More often than not those in higher places have blamed the ordinary young person for failing to be entrepreneurial and to take charge of their sorry state. It is indeed a sorry state, with an unemployment rate as high as 90% and the majority of the affected being young people. And with an Executive that is incompetent and shameless to publicly admit that an estimated 15 billion of revenue from diamond industry was stolen by “investors” under its nose, a figure way beyond the country’s public and publicly guaranteed debt which as at the end of June 2015 stood at 8, 4 billion.
A strained fiscus, an under-performing economy, hunger due to poor disaster-responsiveness, tragic health care system, a disgruntled civil service and a whole generation robbed of its future all make a lethal cocktail for revolutionary actions. Some have put forth the beautiful and irresistible word unity/generational consensus, and in their call they start with the presupposition that young people have been quiet for too long and therefore must speak. Engaged further, those who carry this message of unity seem to be prepared to blame all other leaders from across the political divide save for one, the “iconic and infallible” President of the Republic.
Perhaps I should start by addressing the treacherous and misplaced conjecture that young people have been quiet for too long, it needs to be rectified. Many young people have confronted the powers that be, either as political leaders, political activists, civil society or just concerned citizens like Itai Dzamara.
Dzamara whose unnerving disappearance is a mystery yet to be solved. The students under the banner of the Zimbabwe National Students Union have continuously organised and agitated their lot to confront the party in government on critical issues that affect students and young people in general. Throughout these struggles of being the voices of the voiceless, limp and life was lost. Their issues well-articulated and their solutions clear, to get our economy working again our politics must be right, democracy, sound economic policies and respect of human dignity must be implemented. They defended their position fearlessly through violent repressions, irregular elections and abject poverty. Others such as Tonderai Ndira, Rebecca Mafikeni and others paid the ultimate price of death. The repressive and despotic regime exploited every resource at its disposal to impede any form of resistance. Some young people willingly participated in these terror campaigns, as perpetrators of violence against our vulnerable elderly populace in the rural areas and as repressors of actions of young urbanites who dared to speak up against the incompetent and corrupt regime of the day. And I think that these young people are the most perilous feature of the matrix because the most dangerous people are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them. My point here is not to dismiss the essence of the message they carry, my point is that not only must the message be correctly delivered, but the messenger themself must be such as to recommend it to acceptance. The narrative as is fails to acknowledge that young people have and continue to speak out although in fewer numbers due to the curtailing political environment which builds fear of being violently subdued and gagged. The young people of Zimbabwe have never been an inarticulate and ignorant lot but are mere victims of enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.
For unity to be achieved and for it to be useful as a scheme to find solutions to the many problems bedeviling our country, some form of grounded consensus need to be reached. First, we need to come to an agreement on the root cause of our economic woes. The uncomplicated logic and common-sense of it is to hold to account the current government and its leader, on all issues and more specifically on their election promise of creating 1, 5 million jobs. The second and perhaps most central detail is to acknowledge that there is no progress to be realised without the change of leadership, that 36 years of incompetence, avarice and unbridled tyranny is more than enough grounds for our dear leader to hand in his notice and pave way for a younger, agile leader who must be chosen by the people in a free and fair election to take over and work with a competent team while being guided by the wishes and aspirations of the majority to get Zimbabwe working again. The sort of consensus that will bring results must acknowledge our ugly political history and have its foundation in an uncompromising commitment to non-violence including a robust national healing and reconciliation program. This commitment must be backed by clear demands for electoral reforms as precursory steps to a free and fair election where international observers will oversee. All these demands must be made with the understanding that democratic space must be opened up and that there must be non-partisan and non-factional inclusivity in nation building and all political processes. Any young person who is patriotic enough must be able to stand by this truth and defend it! Anything that falls short of these preconditions is not worth giving a second thought. As John Lindsay puts it those who profess to favour freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are (wo)men who want rain without thunder or lighting. To be dare, that is the whole essence of the revolution!
Perhaps I should end by making one thing clear, that I am not saying there are greater or lesser persons in the search for a solution to bring an end to these grinding times, we are all equals with a common pulse to survive that stems from the same law of becoming and dying and for this reason differences of habit and political persuasion are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts open. My reflections aim to simply drive home the point that while unity is a beautiful word it must be approached with caution and due diligence must apply so as to build a formidable force whose actions are sustainable and profitable. The question whose interests is this unity serving must have one clear unambiguous answer, the people of Zimbabwe and at no point should it appear (as is the case at present unfortunately) to be serving the interests of the tyrannical leader of one political party unless of course the unity is an internal housekeeping issue between those in ZANU PF and their estranged comrades. Lastly while poverty and our painful reality of privation and despair are great rallying points for us as young people, they also function with the logic of the zipper, the thing that brings us together also pulls us apart.