President, we want to start by expressing our deepest regret at the monumental fraud committed against the MDC and the people of Zimbabwe. The youth assembly is fully behind you and will support you through thick and thin. We are 100 percent sure that you won this election and should have been at State House by now.
However, we are deeply concerned by the gradual departure from the noble founding values and principles of the MDC – democracy, good governance, the rule of law, transparency and accountability.
Many analysts attribute the election result partly to the manner in which we conducted our own affairs internally – especially the primary elections. They argued that Zanu (PF) rigging was made easier by our own failure to conduct our primaries democratically and to address the concerns of aggrieved parties – leading to an unusually high number of independent candidates branching away.
The local government arena is the only sphere of the struggle that remains firmly under our control. I am sure you will also agree that this makes it imperative that we occupy this strategic space and use it to effectively demonstrate our excellence as a party. We must govern these spaces fundamentally differently from Zanu (PF) and use them to rejuvenate and maintain confidence in the people about our ability and capacity to govern well.
We implore you to make extensive consultations of the structures concerned before you recommend a mayoral candidate to them. It is critical that you take the people’s views seriously and to transcend the Jericho wall that some have tried to build around you for their own selfish ends. There are people who prevented you from knowing the truth in the run up to the elections and who today are on the verge of succeeding in doing the same with the appointment of Mayors to the grave detriment of the party.
The MDC must demonstrate to the world that it is indeed the democratic alternative it claims to be. We must also respect and trust the wisdom, prudence and judgment of our party structures. Beware President those that prevented you from knowing the truth by seeking proximity to yourself and your of those around you who peddle falsehoods and paranoia. You need to open up the selection of mayors to a democratic process. Thank you.
Over-aged youth leaders
Zimbabwe’s political youth leaders are over-aged and don’t represent the views of the real youths. Please, young people, be wise and do away with these old people who are failing the really young people.
In the two major political parties, the youth leaders are either fathers or grandfathers. Solomon Madzore of MDC-T is 36, married with a number of children. Saviour Kasukuwere, 41, of Zanu (PF) is a pensioner from the CIO! He is also the sole owner of MIGDALE Holdings, the parent company for Comoil, Commercial Transport, Comsec and other entities – plus a number of farms in and around the prime farm land of Mazowe and a holiday home in Vumba.
He is supposed to represent the interests of real youths pounding the streets looking for jobs. But he is occupied defending court cases against him by farm workers, former workers at commercial transport and rebellious youths who were not paid for services rendered during the elections.
Another Zanu youth leader, Absolom Sikhosana, is a reckless father with many of his children living in abject poverty in Bulawayo. There is a serious need for youth leaders to organize students, articulate their issues and demand their rights. Employers cannot be the right mouthpieces for the jobless or employees.
Our youths need loans and grants to help them attend school, college and university. They need to go for exchange programmes with students from other countries where they discuss and plan for the future of their nations. They need to learn new technology and skills. The empowerment gospel of Zanu (PF) has extinguished the quest for learning, since it only encourages political favouritism at the expense of true entrepreneurship, and technical excellence and professionalism.
The culture of using youths to perpetrate violence against citizens in exchange for beer and pieces of silver must be condemned in strongest terms.
As a way forward for our promising nation, we need the youths from primary schools, colleges and universities to come together or to be organised in a way that they think is good for their future. They need to be independent of the old systems and chart the way forward in an organised way, driven by technology and skills to reduce costs and labour. – Asijiki, Ndatenda, Baba Jukwa
Post published in: News