What do you do if you are an illegitimate tyrant whose stay in office is as uncertain as the monsoon in the Sahara, what do you do to stay in office a bit longer? This is especially so against the backdrop of your party’s sabotage of the economy, which is now stagnant, growing negatively, which has contributed to the debilitating state paralysis. Yet you want to stay in power, ignoring the inevitable state collapse and the accompanying failure. You will be tempted to try what has worked in the past. Some gimmick that resonated well with an uninformed population that was deceived as a means to an end of retaining power illegitimately, by pretending to appeal and to act in the interests of the people being deceived, and exploited.

The gimmick that worked before, by evoking populism in the people was the chaotic, unconstitutional land grab which has resulted in the prevailing food insecurity, despite having forcefully reclaimed the land that is the most fertile in the whole continent, and used to be the bread basket of the entire continent. The people did not have land yes, but it had to take the illegitimate zanu pf to realize that the people do not have land. This is the realization that came with the perceived threat of the opposition formed in 1999 as an alternative to the failed and parasitic zanu pf. In this regard, zanu pf used populism. The utility of the populism whitewashed its failures that had led to the fraternizing of the new opposition and the war veterans disgruntled by the apparent and palpable zanu pf failures. Populism was the weapon of choice to abort this seemingly potent alliance that challenged the status quo of zanu pf that enabled it to loot, plunder and predate.

What was at stake here was the status quo whose preservation depended on illegitimate power retention. The people had lost confidence in zanu pf. This is the issue here. It might sound confusing but it is not. The parasites in zanu pf had their looting and plundering interests threatened by the loss of confidence in the people. To remedy the situation, zanu pf pretended to act in the interest of the people while consolidating against a potential loss of control and power which would inhibit them from further plundering and looting.

The delusion 2030, and all other childish and populist gimmicks such as the national recolonization program one, the anti-transition destabilization program, all are like the unconstitutional and chaotic land seizures, they largely appeal to the politically uninformed, and as such, are begs full of hot air. They are a mechanism that allows zanu pf pests to buy more time to loot and plunder, while retaining power illegitimately.