Can We Trust The Bad Company On The Amendments To Repressive Laws?

The constitutional discourse in Postcolonial Zimbabwe has been a response to the human rights violations, with most proponents of constitutionalism acceding to the idea that a new constitution or at least amendments to strategic repressive laws will help us restore the Zimbabwe we want.

I subscribe to the idea that constitutionalism is one way of tackling the Zimbabwe crisis but not in itself an end to the crisis, while I will not want to undermine the effectiveness of challenging Mugabe and company on the human rights and constitutional dimension.

I would like to suggest that Mugabe and company could also be challenged on a discourse of lack of effective and suitable leadership credentials on the critical values of love and spirituality in leadership, which define a law-abiding citizen.

The bashing of the opposition supporters, the torching of their belongings, the rigging of elections and the economic mismanagement is/was prior not legally and legitimately permissible not withstanding it being carried out in the full view of Zimbabweans and the international community

I submit that the present discourse on the amendment of security laws and media laws as a commitment or an attempt to democratic values by Mugabe and company is without substance, because acceding to legal restrictions that guarantee freedom in itself will not mean that that this bad company has reformed or reinvented themselves.

The conspicuous lack of spirituality and love (spiritual and emotional intelligence) in leadership is a militating factor to the bad company miraculously rediscovering and reinventing themselves as law-abiding citizen.

Love seems strange to others in the context of politics and leadership because it emotionally suggestive of sex and romance but alternatively they can refer to this unique lacking leadership quality as the spirituality.

However others see these things as being separate, for this group of people I will attempt to explain what I mean by alternatively using the word spirituality for love, if love sounds too sentimental for them.

Spirituality and/or love have been ubiquitous since time immemorial; even tyrants would concede that they were suppressing their feelings and needs of practicing love and/or spirituality in leadership.

Love and/or spirituality in leadership is genuine compassion, empathy, valuing quality of human existence, good relationship with others and connection to the world beyond, responsible, sensitive, accountable, tolerant, selfless giving and caring, considerate to others in decision making, trustworthy, and nurturing of ones own sprit and love.

It is deeply follows that spoiling the future generations for selfish ends is not acceptable and is not a loving thing, leaders must above all be servants of the people than to be tormenters of their subjects.

Though love and spirituality were particularly popularized and adopted in the belief and religious industry, here love and spirituality do not imply or require a religious component or affiliation. In fact it is far from it.

When unloving, dispassionate love exist in a leader, whatever its cause, this unavoidably sets tone for the whole organization to be unloving and uncaring, and devoid of spiritual awareness, and Zimbabwe’s leadership and the ZANU PF case is no exception.

In some unfortunate instances dispassionate anti-spiritual leadership can be aggressively result driven and they can be a miracle of the dictatorship, where they can be popularly successful, usually according to their own projected definition.


The historical prevalents of a dispassionate leadership, unloving ideas, and uncaring behaviour in Postcolonial Zimbabwe has tended to determine leadership, and so the whole selfish cycle reinforces itself.

However the Mugabe and company has been caught up in a web given the enormous challenge from globalisation, with its approach to political diversity as strength not as a weakness.

Precedence, is premised on that Mugabe and company are totally devoid of spirituality and love in leadership because this leadership quality is so connected to motivation and change, leaders with a spiritual calling and love are exactly the opposite of Mugabe and company.

If this bad company cannot locate love and spirituality in their mindset then there are slim chances that there are serious about being law-abiding citizens.

I submit that the Zimbabwe we want can be restored together with the constitutional route, but the absence of the compassionate love and spirituality in the leadership informs that the cosmetic legal amendments to AIPPA, BSA and POSA will be irrelevant given the precedence set by the bad company of continuously selectively and abusively interpreting the legal statutes to their advantage even for laws that are clear, in blue and white.

For any genuine talks to succeed in restoring the path to the Zimbabwe we want there is need for leaders to have a collaborative mindset, reach out to others, mediate daily, challenge themselves outside their comfort zones and above all do the right things because it is the right thing to do.

Hillary Kundishora is a Scholar of Strategic management. He can be contacted on hkudishora@yahoo.co.uk.