Once upon a time, Zanu PF had a leadership code, the party’s manifesto on how leaders should present themselves in public.
Most of its tenets are obviously outdated, considering that the document is more than 40 years old, having been adopted at a congress in 1984.
One of the key principles was that the party “regards corruption as an evil disease destructive of society”.
When Enos Nkala, a former Home Affairs minister was implicated in the Willowgate Scandal, he was soon jettisoned from the ministry.
When he died, he was a little more than an attention seeker, claiming he would soon release a tell-all book that would expose his then principal, Robert Mugabe.
Maurice Nyagumbo is said to have committed suicide as he could no longer live with the shame of being outed for corruption.
His so-called corruption is nothing compared to what we see today.
Frederick Shava was sent into political oblivion after he was implicated in the Willowgate Scandal as well.
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This was until he was resurrected by this new Zanu PF, which has the temerity of calling itself “new dispensation”.
While some corruption accused were eventually pardoned, at least Zanu PF pretended it was dealing with the scourge.
Zanu PF has always been mired in corruption, but one thing the party did well was to pretend that it was dealing with the vice and was able to continue with the facade for decades.
The difference between the Zanu PF of old and the new one is that the modern Zanu PF does not even bother to pretend and is arrogantly flashing the ill-gotten gains of corruption in our face.
I often laugh when I hear people saying Zanu PF has an ideology, I challenge anyone to tell me what it is.
One time the country is hobnobbing with the west at the citadel of neo-liberalism that is Davos, the next it is pretending to have a hangover of Marxist-Leninism, with our friends being China and Russia.
Once upon a time Zimbabwe was a vocal member of the Non-Aligned Movement, now we openly take sides with Russia in its war with Ukraine.
In place of a coherent ideology, what we have now is an elite that does not care what the people think and they are only driven by one thing, self-enrichment at whatever the cost.
They cannot be bothered about transparency and accountability and anyone who questions the source of wealth is delegitimised and literally driven out of town.
Instead of ideology, what we see is Zanu PF that has been captured by kleptomaniac gangs that would never have passed the test of the party’s leadership code.
They are bound together by greed.
Take this businessman, for example.
For the past few years, he has been doling out cash and recently upped the ante by giving out cars to many supporters of Zanu PF and other people of his liking.
It does not make sense that in a poor country like Zimbabwe, there is someone who has as much cash on him as he has at any given time and is also able to distribute so many cars.
Instead of, maybe being transparent, about his source of funds, he becomes more arrogant and flaunts it in the faces of the masses of Zimbabweans that are starving, poor and unemployed.
The audacity of it all.
The central bank is literally trying to squeeze water from a stone by getting the informal sector to put their money in financial institutions, yet one individual can at a whim tell an artist or a footballer to go to his lawyer to get more than US$20 000 in cash.
How does this make sense?
In a normal country, this businessman would be expected to be transparent about his source of funds and the central bank would also be questioning why he has so much cash on him instead of depositing it in a bank.
But not in Zimbabwe, instead, we make excuses for such people and hold them in high regard.
What is tragic about Zimbabwe, and authored by Zanu PF, is that the party has corrupted the fabric of society to a point that there are Zimbabweans, wallowing in poverty, who defend the very people that are responsible for their suffering.
Our national psyche is so broken that we laud the people that we should be scrutinising. We have literally become enablers of our own suffering.
In her book, Autocracy Inc, Anne Applebaum reminds of the words of Gene Sharp, who noted that dictatorships — and by extension corrupt overlords — thrive not because of unusual powers or personalities but because most people who live under their shadows are apathetic or afraid.
If we demand more accountability and transparency, then surely we can stop some of this corruption that has become endemic to the country.
Were Maurice Nyagumbo to rise from the dead today, he would see that what he is alleged to have done was child’s play and instead, his comrades would welcome him and describe him as little more than a small-time player.
Almost 11 years to the day, a columnist for The Herald urged Zanu PF to revisit the leadership code.
I am not holding my breath that the party is capable of a reset and become the party that is embarrassed by corruption to a point of acting on it.
