Back to Index

Zimbabwean analyst Brian Kagoro calls for revamp of the opposition
Violet Gonda, SW Radio Africa
January 17, 2006

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news170106/kagoro170106.htm

The whole interview can be heard in the SW Radio Africa Tuesday archives on the programme Hot Seat.
Read Transcript of interview with Brian Kagoro on SW Radio Africa's Hot Seat

"The MDC as an institution is hardly what we must be fighting to preserve or protect but rather the values that formed its formation and the formation of the broader progressive forces in Zimbabwe." These were the words of well known political analyst and human rights lawyer Brian Kagoro.

Kagoro was speaking on the programme Hot Seat on the political crisis in the country and on how to salvage the opposition after the devastating effects caused by the infighting within the 6 year old opposition.

The civic leader said clearly the feud is a personal vendetta amongst two factions that has very little to do with national interest. He believes it’s partly male egos that are refusing to heal saying, "…sadly the crisis does not simply affect the MDC as a political party but affects an entire opposition movement." He said, it suggests the opposition is not being ruled by values and that the party’s leadership, structures and processes are not that different from ZANU PF. Kagoro calls this the "ZANUFICATION" of the political space.

Observers say the split has had a devastating effect on the party’s support base resulting in the general membership being confused and made to choose between two MDC factions. The situation for the party’s supporters has been made worse by the fact that the party is going to hold two separate congresses. And most recently in the urban council elections, the MDC fielded 2 candidates representing the rival factions, thereby splitting the opposition vote.

Kagoro said the full extent of the split in the MDC affects a whole generation. He said, represented in the MDC was an entire generation of young people who were not tainted with the politics of yesteryear, the politics of ethnicity, politics of greed and the stone age politics which depended on " who had a larger stick and a bigger stone."

The former chairman of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition said current events in the party defeat the whole point of why many joined pro-democracy movements like the Crisis Coalition, the National Constitutional Assembly and Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights. He said there was a desire to see the end of a kleptocracy, so that we have nations and systems that are not founded by thieves but on values of service.

"Clearly the feud in the MDC suggests that we are still off the mark. It suggests that not only are we off the mark but that we have become very shoddy copy cats of the very system that for years we invested our life to fight." He said this crisis should be viewed as national not in the sense of a disintegration of political party but the unmaking of a hope that has taken so many lives and taken so many years to form. "A hope that Zimbabwe can be reconstituted by new persons by new politics and by new values. This is the tragedy of the MDC fight."

When asked if it would be better for the political future of Zimbabwe if the MDC disbanded? Kagoro said what we should look to save the core values of the MDC and the soul of opposition politics that says, "The people as a general collective must determine the future. What we should be happy to lose is bigotry."

He emphasised that the split in the MDC in essence is a non-event in itself because neither faction necessarily epitomises the hope nor the value system, judging by how they have behaved within the last the last few months.

However, he said the leaders’ contribution towards the process of democratisation is something that cannot be written off. "As such one is caught in the desperate mode of literally waiting to save them from themselves, before we even think about the impact and the benefit that accrues to ZANU PF as a result of this internal feuding."

"Excuses that the leaders are using to chop each other with political machetes are unacceptable and groups that support democracy must read them the riot act and try to bring them together." Kagoro said if there is failure to bring the warring factions together, then Zimbabweans reserve the right to exercise a more drastic form of disapproval.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP