The injury levied by the hashtag campaign in question, was minimal, certainly now a matter of stale memory. Besides, both writers know the depth of Zanu PF; know the backbone of its support base, which is so far away from ever being touched by the digital nether, itself the milieu and habitat for all hashtags.
True, the hashtag might have been an irritant, but one which Zanu PF had long learnt to live with, even then countermanding it effectively. So, truthfully speaking, the two’s missive regrets and apologies for an offence long forgotten, indeed for an assaulting platform which while sophisticated and trendy once upon a time, had largely become a dying expression of impotent, sanctimonious rage or anger, more so pitted against an elephantine Party which Zanu PF is. Second point.
The two went further. They affirmed the core values of Zanu PF, re-stating that no other party in the country shares the same depth and mission, or exhibits the same ideological conviction and clarity, which the synthetic digital hashtag, by their own admission, can never approximate.
It was a point with sharp double-edges, which they still made, whether out of defeat or foolhardiness. But it also exhibits an uncanny self-awareness which is admirable. Not many noticed this. At an obvious, easy-to-recover level, it repudiated the superficial life and depth which Triple C can only have in its self-deluding digital life.
It also savaged Triple C for its shallow and disappointing leadership and leadership goals, even then expressing disappointment of the two over unmet expectations founded on a hope to instrumentalise Triple C. This bit, our equally shallow media savoured, according it screaming headline status. I don’t need to belabour it.
But there was more, deeper self-recognition in the same: an acute awareness by the two of the inherent deficiency and limitations of the step they have taken through the open letter, and the need to do a lot more than hang their plea and cause on such an innocuous, synthetic construct which hurt no one at its most frenzied, and had since died anyway.
By their admission, purveyed indirectly as a criticism of Triple C, the hashtag weapon was inorganic, ephemeral and had limited reach on Zanu PF’s backbone. It was a weapon of anger and desperation tossed against a profoundly organic formation that Zanu PF is, and has always been, including from their days in the Party.
So a lot more needed to be done, to make a stronger case and impression, than this un-pointed plea to some inchoate body they called “Zanu PF comrades”. Point Three.
There is a small detail they made in their missive, which may have gone unnoticed, yet which is so important enough as to determine the fate of their apology, and possible formal plea SHOULD it ever materialise, in the post-immediate or eventually. I use the word SHOULD advisedly.
At this stage, there is little reason for being exuberantly or generously expectant about this communication, more so given who the writers are. I have already said the communication lacks a post office box number, addressed as it is to some amorphous magnitude they call “Zanu PF Comrades”.
Potentially, it could be viewed as subversive, hostile even, in that it may be construed to be their attempt to reach and address Zanu PF membership through some invisible fly-past the Party leadership.
An attempt to by-pass, sideswipe and relegate the leadership and its structures, in order to supplant that leadership and ensconce themselves as the new men! The open letter would be some dipstick, some probing challenge, to test and gauge their own appeal for a superseding challenge to the leadership newly elected in the just-ended Congress.
Continued next page
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