Letter from America-(08-02-07)

lly using the state-owned media, ridiculed Mugabe’s propaganda refrain that sanctions and imperialists were the cause of the country’s problems.
Gono appeared to be sympathetic to the masses when he talked about the spiralling cost of living – indeed his words were ample justification for the wildcat strikes around the country.
Here is Mugabe’s personal banker, apparently bent on betraying his chief and the party. But was Gono genuine? Had he truly been converted?
There are two possibilities.
The first is simply that Gono is experiencing a rude awakening and realizes he is on a wild goose chase. He now realizes he is running in circles and very close behind his boss, the madman from Ngomahuru who, as the late Edison Zvobgo used to refer to Mugabe, had been given a baton to pass on but ran into the mountains where he is still running wildly.
The second and more likely possibility is that he, like other disgruntled party officials, is playing to the public gallery.
These could be his opening shots in a bid to enter the presidential race next year, notwithstanding the fact that Mugabe has said he will not step down until 2010.
But more important, Gono knows that Zanu no longer enjoys the support of the majority of people.
He also knows that, while his name keeps coming up in conversations as a dark horse that could be pulled, like a magician’s rabbit, at the last minute to replace Mugabe, he will face a formidable opposition from the factions within Zanu (PF).
People will not soon forget the agony of the Gono-imposed life of bearers’ cheques and economic policies that caused most people enormous hardships.
Gono may have sounded like he was trying to punish the top money traders especially in Zanu (PF). But in reality he has viciously, and with utmost deliberation, economically depressed Zimbabweans
Zimbabweans are also aware how Gono has accumulated considerable personal wealth and a lifestyle beyond most of our dreams. It is reported that he is building a 200-bedroom mansion, now travels in a mini convoy and has been taking or plans to take flying lessons with the possibility of buying his own private jet.
Whether these reports are true or not they are doing their rounds with sufficient credibility to tarnish Gono’s political image.
Some officials in the international community now see Gono as the hope for a new political order that will combine at its leadership helm the moderates in Zanu (PF) and members of the opposition movement. This idea has been discussed for several years now. It forms the framework, at least from the international community’s perspective, for a resolution of the crisis of governance in Zimbabwe.
But Gono is only repeating what the opposition movement has been saying for years. The only difference is that Gono can say what he wants live on State TV and radio and get away with it, whereas opposition members are denied the right to use the public airwaves to express the very same criticism of Mugabe’s disastrous policies.
How does one explain this criticism by Gono while he is sitting next to Mugabe at the gravy table? Self-interest and grand-standing are the obvious answers.
Sadly, Zimbabweans will have to enter into some working alliance with these disgruntled Zanu (PF) elements, as they can be useful in the struggle for the restoration of democracy and the rule of law. But Zimbabweans must be on guard at all times that they do not mortgage their basic human and political rights and freedom to a new breed of oppressors.
For this reason, Zimbabwean civil society must maintain a vanguard movement that will ensure that their civil institutions like the trade unions, women, youth and student organizations are intact and viable in the post-Mugabe era.
Part of the program for emancipation by the civil society should be to strengthen and institutionalize its vanguard movement.
It was this vanguard movement that was mobilized very effectively against attempts to rig the elections by the deposed former dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, in 1986.
Members of the vanguard movement organized themselves into vigilant groups who slept at polling stations and, despite the threats from Marcos’ soldiers, linked hands and literally protected the ballot boxes from being interfered with.