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The people of Zimbabwe vs the state
Marko Phiri
May 18, 2005

As Zimbabweans wallow amid growing food shortages, and a host of other hardships, questions that emerge about their continued silence inevitably form everyday discussions among people who would like to see the country get back to its feet. This has also brought to the fore what role the country’s opposition has to play in coming with a road map that will see Zimbabwe’s recovery. Therefore two major players in the debate about the country’s return to civilisation have emerged as the people themselves and country’s foremost political opposition, the MDC.

That the MDC was born out of people’s frustration with the politics of the party that has hogged political space for a quarter century should have then meant a quick return to international dialogue with countries known to have been the country’s development partners since the coming of independence. But why did that not happen with subsequent elections? Besides pointing to the ruling party’s disputed victories, the answers are not simple. The Movement for Democratic Change is being criticised for not providing the leadership the people need for a way forward. The party is seemingly lost for solutions. What the people need is for the party to which they have sworn allegiance to point them to alternatives that will not merely effect regime change, but create constructive engagement which will see an end to many years of arrogant rule.

But the issue considering the nature of the politics that have been seen here becomes, how would have anybody brave enough - much as seen through the atmosphere the MDC has had to operate, from the pre-Jongwe days to the present day Bennet debacle – have fared? How would anyone of us have approached an opponent like ZANU PF? Small wonder then that many here have left the country’s fate to be decided by higher forces than mere mortals. It shows the extent to which solutions outside the failed ballot are hard to come by.

But then it is not only within the country’s frontiers the crisis, which has sought to seemingly permanent itself here, will find solutions. Amid all the criticism of the opposition, how would anybody have approached this issue considering the multilateral approach that defines international relations has been solely absent? Could the planned visit of the UN chief be part of the gods’ plan to redeem us? The opposition has had the unfortunate position of virtually being left alone to deal with the issues here. The globetrotting of the party’s leadership since the disputed 2000 legislative poll is yet to bear any fruit. Which countries have lended their voices to pragmatic approaches to the crisis here in light of calls for South Africa to literally crack the whip and tell Mugabe to behave?

Besides the so-called smart sanctions whose effect has not helped the lot here live better lives, what can be pointed at as serious attempts to engage the MDC and the people of Zimbabwe with real efforts to deal with the Zimbabwe crisis? That some people have opined that Zimbabweans ought to solve their own problems is ample evidence that the "interior settlement" of issues here is much larger than the simple analysis that has emerged here vis-à-vis the MDC’s competence. The people who took to the streets in the famed 1998 food riots have not repeated that feat in the past few years when life became extremely tough for many here. Why?

The latest round of food shortages and obscene price increases that have seen the emergence of a flourishing black market have provided the fertile ground for any protests. But this has not happened, why? Thus it has been intimated that only the gods will save this country. The hazards of taking to the streets are many, and looking at how many opposition party supporters have lost their lives in the past years and with their families failing to seek legal recourse - never mind that their grievances are supposed to be justiciable - is reason enough for many to elect to suffer silently. All things being fair, they would take to the streets, but the ever-looming security and "law" enforcement forces have been enough to stop any aspiring activist short in their militant tracks.

It has been known in the struggle for democracy that academics also become the vanguard of protests, but has this happened here? University student activism has helped push reforms across the world and has sparked revolutions since World War One. In Zimbabwe all forms of militancy have been suppressed, and therefore the opposition cannot be treated as typical fall guys and blamed for failing to lead the people not to the Promised Land, but a life where the people can demand accountable governance.

If a regime can torture an individual like a legislator or interestingly a human rights lawyer like Gabriel Shumba and get away with it, what then about the ordinary man, woman and child with no clue about their rights? But these same people would still claim a fundamental right, a right to life. Because all traces of militancy have been successfully stymied by the regime, it is then curious to have criticism heaped at the opposition that they have failed the people. The challenges this country faces are gargantuan, and any pretence that they will be over through the ballot or the MDC taking the people by the hand and swarming the streets is but futile.

Amid all the cul-de-sacs that the MDC has met, with the most fundamental being judicial dependence on the executive, the question becomes whither Zimbabwe? Obviously the people are not ready yet to take bullets from trigger-happy defenders of the regime, and unless real pressure is exerted from outside it could be another 75 years before salvation comes. And nobody knows in what form it will come.

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