Hopewell Chin’ono has castigated the MDC Alliance and Zanu PF for maintaining the concept of a ‘’Big man’’ at the expense of creating strong institutions.
Chin’ono said this has seen Nelson Chamisa and President Emmerson Mnangagwa becoming more powerful than their political parties.
In an interview, he said the situation is just the same as it was during the time of Robert Mugabe.
“We need an opposition party like the MDC Alliance which is strong. You see the MDC Alliance got lesser votes than its president it shows that we are not building institutions’. People are following individuals. The same thing again happened with Zanu PF. When you look at the Mugabe days, Mugabe was the embodiment of everything to do with Zanu PF.
‘’I mean if you said Zanu PF you would be talking about Mugabe to a point where people who are elderly referred to him as Jongwe. Which is supposed to be Zanu PF, but he had become the Jongwe, he became the embodiment of Zanu PF.
‘’We are seeing that again today with Emmerson Mnangagwa. Where they are prepared to break all the rules to accommodate his weaknesses, to accommodate his idiosyncrasies. This is very unfortunate because we end up with a very strong President and a political party beholding to him.
Zanu PF and MDC Alliance have no power to recall their Presidents
‘’Today the MDC and Zanu PF have no political strength to recall their presidents because their presidents have become more powerful than the institution themselves. And I think we need to strive towards building institutions that is why I was saying if I am good at journalism or good as a filmmaker, I should not necessarily think that I should go into power now. I should build institution around where I am working so that my goodness, my brilliance is reflected through those institutions.
‘’So, if you look at all those people who are called brilliant who are in government, what have they build? You have a finance minister who collapsed a bank, people call him brilliant. What is brilliant about collapsing a bank?
‘’People like that should not even be in government because they have a track record of destruction and don’t expect them to start building because they are in government. They will continue destroying like what Mthuli (Ncube) is doing,’’ he said.
