Zanu PF reportedly wants to integrate the youths into its patronage system, which will make them feel duty-bound to drive its often violent campaign. Apart from wresting political control of urban areas from the MDC-T, under the strategy the youths who will become dependent on Zanu PF, will defend it in the coming elections because their livelihoods would be entirely centred on such projects.
President Robert Mugabe has said elections would be held by March next year.In cities such as Masvingo and Bulawayo, the youths are invading buildings owned by white businesspeople claiming they were doing so under the controversial Indigenisation and Empowerment Act.
In the past few weeks Zanu PF, through the shadowy Chipangano gang, has been trying to grab council facilities such as Mukambo Market in Highfield and commuter ranks in Harare.
They are already in control of several other ranks in Harare, the Green Market, Mupedzanhamo and Siyaso informal trade markets in Mbare suburb, where Chipangano operates from.
“The idea is that once the youths benefit through this patronage system they will not break away,” said one Zanu PF official. “If they do so, they risk losing all they got. Zanu PF is taking advantage of the high levels of poverty and unemployment among the youths.”
Currently unemployment rate tops 80% while poverty levels hover around the same level, with most people surviving on less than a dollar a day. Analysts say the patronage system has worked quite well against many disgruntled senior Zanu PF officials who can no longer leave the party because they acquired their wealth through patronage or corrupt means.
Attempts to leave would mean risking prosecution or losing all they acquired.
Just a fortnight ago, suspected Zanu PF youths were demanding “toll fees” from commuter omnibuses plying the Kuwadzana route claiming they had been sent by the Minister of State for Presidential Affairs Didymus Mutasa.
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Mutasa, who is also Zanu PF’s secretary for administration, has however disassociated himself from the youths. They rowdy youths were putting on Zanu PF bandanas.
The incident came a few days after a commuter driver was seriously injured after he refused to pay the same fee to another gang believed to be linked to Zanu PF.
Most of the youths interviewed said they surrender part of their daily collections to Zanu PF provincial headquarters along Fourth Street where all their operations were directed from.
This prejudices the city council of the much needed revenue.
“These incidents are not isolated, they are well-organised and approved at the party level as a way of taking over Harare from the MDC and create youth dependent on the party for their survival,” said one Zanu PF official.
“This is why you see that in most of the cases the thugs are never arrested.”
BULAWAYO, MASVINGO BUILDINGS SEIZED
In Bulawayo and Masvingo, Zanu PF youths have been invading buildings in the city owned mostly by the Asian and European business community claiming they were not adequately utilised.
The youths, led by the Zanu PF provincial leadership, claim that they have identified about 70 unoccupied buildings in the city, which they said would be opened up to residents who need them.
It appears that while senior Zanu PF officials publicly rebuke the youths, they secretly urge them to continue with their violent property grab.MDC-T spokesperson Douglas Mwonzora said the property grab was a co-ordinated Zanu PF strategy, sanctioned at the senior party level, to make it impossible for free and fair campaign as the country heads for elections.
The invasions lacked legal or moral justification, he said.
“They (Zanu PF) sanction this violence because if they wanted they would have stopped this a long time ago.”But Zanu PF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo on Friday dismissed accusations that those grabbing council facilities were from his party. “I don’t know anything about that. Who told you they are our youths?” said Gumbo.
Mutasa recently said Zanu PF will defend its violent youths who had disrupted a Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission bill hearing at Parliament, assaulted MPs and journalists.
