Let us draw lessons from all that has happened. We must vehemently defend to the hilt the Party values, culture and traditions. Revolutions do get infiltrated and corrupted, and once corrupted, they degenerate and lose direction.
We must never lower our guard, and must arrest any negative tendencies that creep into the Party before the take hold, corrupt and alienate us. The responsibility to defend and protect our Party’s constitution, and the ideals of our revolution, its history and legacy, falls squarely on each and every cadre of the Party.
Let us remain genuine cadres and not turn careerists who, lichen-like, fasten on Party structures, programmes and personages, all for self-gain and self enrichment.
Comrades,delegates
Moving into the future, I exhort us all to be disciplined and in many ways reinvent our politics in many ways that hearken back to wartime templates and practices which won us the trust and confidence of the people; which won us a war in 1980 and helped us to repeatedly win elections since then and renewing our mandate and covenant with the people of Zimbabwe and again and again.
We must now, all of us return to source in order to repair the Party and regain the trust of the people, who have for long been poisoned by misdeeds and excesses of the counter-revolutionaries who had infiltrated our Party rank and file. In this regard, war veterans have a big role to play, they are not expendable; their value far exceeds the numerical value of their vote.
We should give them a pride of place, appreciating the sacrifices they made in the past, valuing their current role in socialising the youths on the Party norms and ethos as we chart a course for the future, well embedded in the stem foundations of our past. I, thus, urge the Party to manage inter-generational transitions so the spirit of the struggle is returned and passed on as a living tissue.
We must therefore thrive to offer a positive, progressive vision for the future which tallies with the hopes and dreams of all. In this regard, we should not be a Party of the past; we must also be a part for the future, a Party for posterity. Let us all be alive to the fact that successful parties constantly renew themselves, speaking to women, youths and the disadvantaged.
Equally it is essential to constantly engage with all stakeholders across the socio, economic and political spectrum and indeed across borders, to make ourselves responsive and relevant. Comrades, there is therefore urgent need for training interventions to realign, refocus and recalibrate our membership at all levels countrywide to align with this new impetus.
Party work must not be in the old mould of looking at ZANU-PF as being about politics, politics and politics only. Now we must be about Politics and Economics after all, the best politics emerge from the market place where livelihoods are made! I am confident that the reconstructed Department of Commissariat together with departments will be up to the task in this new era of our party.
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