-By Professor Jonathan Moyo
REQUIEM FOR CHANGE WITH CONTINUITY:
There are some who of late have been falling on each other, peddling and exchanging wishes and even hallucinations that what happened yesterday can happen again today just like it happened yesterday.
They should perish the thought; that kind of tomorrow never comes, it is not coming.
This is in line with the enduring insights about history from the likes of Heraclitus to Karl Marx to George Santana to Eugene O’Neill, and from the rich pool of wisdom embodied in African proverbs.
The critical takeaway about history from these sources is that — because the essential question about human existence is the same everywhere and is therefore constant and ubiquitous — the past happens over and over again in new ways, shapes or forms, as the present and as the future; hence the abiding biblical tenet in Ecclesiastes 1:9 that “there is no new thing under the sun”.
Those who learn nothing and who forget everything from the past are doomed to repeat it, as a tragedy or as a farce.
People evolve and adapt as they and the environment around them always change, such that no one can step into the same river twice.
While ordinarily change should be for the better; Murphy’s Law dictates otherwise in that in the real world things always tend to go wrong along the way because anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and there’s nothing on earth that cannot go wrong.
It is for this reason that the best reform or a meaningful revolution in any and every society is change with continuity.
A plan that does not consolidate change with continuity is doomed to end either tragically or farcical.
Consequently, the compelling lesson from the foregoing is that there will be no change in Zimbabwe without ZanuPF-continuity. New leaders with new ideas will come from ZanuPF.
Anything else is noise from rootless or baseless and self-indulgent voices whose messages are doomed by their lack of continuity; meaning their lack of connection with Zimbabwe’s history for the sake of continuity.
All told and things being equal; this is why after all has been said and done and whether anyone likes it or not, ZanuPF is here to stay!
*Jonathan Moyo is a former Zimbabwean cabinet minister
