A few years ago, I used to be a regular opinion writer, but soon I went into a spiral of dispiritedness.
In 2017, Zimbabwe experienced a coup and instead of condemning it, we cheered loudly and welcomed it.
I am not going to be sanctimonious about it, we made our beds and in them we must now lay.
For the past five years, I have been carefully selecting what I read. I cancelled newspaper subscriptions and stopped reading all daily newspapers in Zimbabwe and I probably actively read only one weekly newspaper.
I never watch news on TV. My DStv subscription lapsed and I cannot be bothered to renew it.
This is what is known as selective news avoidance.
In the past four months, I quit X, formerly known as Twitter, despite once being a prolific twitterer.
The news was depressing and I did not fancy spending my days doomscrolling.
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But you know you cannot avoid the news forever, there is a human need to be informed about what is happening and to also contribute to discourse.
Recently I have been mulling on contributing to debate on national issues.
I have been tempted to write an opinion column and share my views, as the succession issue threatens to be the only thing we talk about these days.
Eight years ago, when I was still an ardent writer, we had the needlessly verbose Christopher Mutsvangwa evoking the Mgagao Declaration and how war veterans had installed Robert Mugabe as president.
Mutsvangwa made the right noises, he told us that any leader who blamed sanctions for the country’s failures did not deserve to be at the helm of the country.
What a brave man, we thought, he was speaking truth to power.
He was doing the unthinkable by challenging Mugabe.
A few years later, the man that he had so enthusiastically campaigned for came up with a public holiday called the anti-sanctions day, rallied the region to campaign against the embargo and blamed the country’s ills on sanctions.
And there is not so much as a squeak from Mutsvangwa telling us how bad leaders blame sanctions. Such hypocrisy.
Fast forward to 2025, we have Blessed Geza, or as we now all fondly call him, Bombshell, making all the right noises.
Like Mutsvangwa before him, he is lamenting corruption and state capture by the president and his family.
Sound familiar?
Probably we are desperate for heroes and Geza fits the bill, for now.
I am not holding my breath that Geza will be any audible when the horse that he is betting on fails.
It seems we have collective amnesia.
We have forgotten how Mutsvangwa soon negated the progressive things he said before the coup in 2017 and reverted to type shortly thereafter.
He became his entitled arrogant self, telling all of us where to get off when we dared criticise his party.
He was condescending when reminded of what he said before the coup. He had become what he had preached against, just a few short years earlier.
Recently, Tatenda Mavetera, a minister in the government, was dancing, singing praises of her boss antagonising his deputy’s supporters.
My mind quickly raced to when Jonathan Moyo, Saviour Kasukuwere and Walter Mzembi all danced in support of Mugabe, angering his then deputy’s supporters.
History is repeating itself and the tragedy is that we learned nothing from history.
Just as in 2017, people are picking sides, which is where I think the tragedy lies.
I understand that people are desperate, the coup, or as we euphemistically called it at some point “the military assisted transition” has not delivered the promises that it had said it would.
You cannot begrudge people for wanting or demanding change or others for demanding the continuation of the status quo, but the reality is that we are now active participants in what is essentially manoeuvres by Zanu PF to consolidate power.
I was tempted to say that we are active participants in Zanu PF regenerating itself, but no, this is not a regeneration, as this would imply growth or renewal.
Zanu PF has barely changed since it first came onto the scene.
Mugabe’s ouster was not the beginning of a rebirth of the party, but it was a consolidation of what came before.
Agendas that we had long forgotten are creeping up.
The decimation of the opposition is nothing new, ask Zapu.
Rather, this is a continuation of the one party state agenda that Zanu PF has long pushed for and is revived at intervals.
The term extension agenda is nothing new.
If they can get this term extended, what is going to stop them from amending it in future until we forget term limits as what happened with Mugabe.
Now in the midst of all this, I asked myself whether despondency is the right approach.
I am disinterested in any of the Zanu PF factions, but there is need for active public debate on what their approaches mean for the country.
There is need to consult history and let it guide us into the future.
Despondency and apathy only serve to reinforce the status quo with little benefit for the citizens.
There does not seem to be any hope for the common person; but nobody owes us any hope, we owe it to ourselves to work for a better country.
I have come to realise that despondency will not help anything.
For a democracy – Zimbabwe is anything but – to thrive, there is need for healthy debate about contemporary issues and I want to play my part.
So, allow me to reintroduce myself, and with respect to Rene Descartes – I write, therefore, I am.
