December's big, political decision-making moment has come around once again for ZANU PF.
Who will rule the party and the country? Which of the favoured sons - or daughters - will prevail in positions of wealth, power and authority? Asset grabbing of what is left of a destroyed economy is so much easier when the generals salute your leader and the CIO directs provincial and traditional leaders to obey him.
The factional infighting has reached epic proportions and for the weary and cynical but still half-interested observer nothing is so hard to believe as the re-emergence of Jonathon Moyo, recently reincarnated as the prodigal son.
This scurrilous son of the soil first emerged in 1989 as a champion of democracy. His impressive speeches and talent for a scholarly critique of the ongoing sea-changes that heralded the end of the Cold War made him many friends among the democratically-minded, including this writer. He got good jobs, great commissions with wealthy sponsors and in respectable academia.
Then, surprisingly, he swopped sides.
There is much evidence that his personal life was in disarray while at the same time he was running into financial storms. The US Ford Foundation and SA Wits university were witness to that. Back in Harare he took a high profile position on the Constitution Commission whose object was to constitutionally entrench Robert Mugabe in power. He was clearly well rewarded for putting his skills at the disposal of the ruling party. He lost badly as the February 2000 Referendum showed. No matter. After destroying the last vestiges of freedom of expression while a junior Minister of Information, he pops up championing some skull-duggery to manipulate the leadership of his party and he is thrown out of his powerful position.
Tjolotjo is his constituency which returns him to parliament and he seems, for a time, to be of independent mind.
The swop to political independence is not convincing and certainly not financially rewarding - this writer has had experience of the latter - and he returns to the ZANU PF fold. The fact that the ruling party takes him back is proof positive of how weak the party has become now that the opposition has made significant progress. How long before he sees his future looking more promising if he makes yet another swop?
Who will trust him now?
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
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