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Wishing MDC unity is missing the point
Itai Masotsha Zimunya
December 20, 2005

I have read and listened to numerous arguments and wishes by people that the feuding camps in the MDC leadership should unite. Their argument is that it needs a more united opposition to fight Zanu PF tyranny and seriously challenge its governance failure. I agree with the wish or belief of the need of a united front. However, wishing the pro-senate and the anti-senate factions to unite is wishful thinking. Water and oil can share a container but will not mix. Secondly, we wish to boldly progress and argue that the quicker the MDC split the better for Zimbabwe.

Political parties are formed to contest and protect power. The power to "implement" the people’s projects and representation; and seeking that power is a birthright. In the process of either making leaders or removing them, the people’s wishes must be sovereign and this is where the MDC fiasco comes in.

The Crisis in the MDC is not at branch, district or provincial level. The problem now lies in the so called executive even though various structures referred to above have taken sides depending on several issues including hope of power, tribe and ideology among others. Fundamentally, the difference was on the strategy to get power- either through elections or boycott.

Welshman Ncube and his crew proffer Victorian arguments that are legally pure, that power in a democracy is contested or lost in an election. This is the model for most democracies and this was the vision of the patriotic front- Mugabe and Nkomo in 1979 before independence. The issue does not even lie in the permanency of boycotting elections by Morgan Tsvangirai and his camp. In other words, Morgan and Welsh differ on tactics and timing and with that, there can not be any reconciliation. The best that people could expect from this scenario is another patriotic front where Welshman’s party will continue contesting rigged elections and challenging the outcomes in the Zimbabwean courts of law whilst Morgan and those that believe in his strategy engage the regime in what he calls peaceful democratic resistance.

At a personal level, basing on strategy, I agree with Mugabe and other real freedom fighters that dictators need to be fought by the people. Ian Smith was a ruthless dictator that justified apartheid, oppression, segregation and plunder on the basis that black people were minors. With his thick head, he refused to see the light of freedom glowing across the sub-Saharan sub continent. The people of Zimbabwe resorted to war. A bitter war but in the end, freedom came. What we did with that freedom is what sets us to the MDC crisis that is discussed as if Welsh or Morgan are responsible for the fuel crisis and hunger.

Like Smith, Mugabe is another dictator that needs to be fought. The tactics and strategies could differ with those used against Smith. Tsvangirai argues that this process of fighting the dictator is through civil disobedience and peaceful democratic resistance to rigged and bogus elections including boycotting his expensive transport and stores. In this struggle, like with Ian Smith, the people’s demands are the same, liberation, free education, free health and affordable food.

The first and important unity that Morgan and Welsh should do is to agree to go separate ways. The second aspect is to have different congresses and have their own political establishments. The assets such as offices might be important but are not sufficient or even worth forming subject of any political discussion because the power lies in the people.

To want to pretend that Morgan is Welsh’s President is silly, just as it is to imagine Morgan calling Welsh his Secretary General. It is my observation, however, that like him or hate him, Morgan seems to have the people with him and should this happen, his party will emerge stronger to challenge the one-party state manifesto of Zanu PF. For this reason, we will not focus on other smaller parties that will emerge from this waterfall, but focus on the significant factor.

In the above said case where you have a reformed MDC or having another name, Zimbabwe will be back to the era similar to that of the year 2000, where Zanu PFs dominance will be under check. The fundamental question that many people in the pro-senate faction continued to ask, unfairly on Morgan alone is- what next after boycott- as if the pro-senate people had not planned anything in the post-electoral fraud period.

Here emerges another fundamental issue that makes it impossible to mix water and oil. Morgan believes in people power, where, should elections be rigged, the people would take the governing body to task. This is different from the acutely-legal strategy of packaging people power into a court challenge, the majority of whose cases are presided over by judges whose astuteness is dubious.

From another pedestal but objective perspective, the Movement for Democratic Change is the millions of people that opted to join that association. One fundamental factor ignored by those praying for the opposition political party’s death is that the MDC’s life style is different to that of Zanu PF. In Zanu PF Mugabe is the security chief, central committee thinker, finance omega and politburo supremo whilst the ordinary Zanu PF member’s status is a mere "yesman".

Zanu PF knows very well that the differences within the MDC leadership are broad and deep, but because they want an end where both Morgan and Welsh would have lost all their public statures or politically bruised beyond redemption, they do the unexpected. Give lots of airtime to both factions to slice each other and ignore fundamental national issues such as poverty, school fees increases, the high cost of school uniforms among other headaches.

What therefore becomes important in this discussion is that should Welsh and Morgan agree, that agreement should be to point arrows on the main protagonist, Mugabe. However, the chance of this unity is very slim because the politics of our continent is being shaped by money. In fact, the best thing that will happen to Zimbabwe post year 2000 is an MDC split. Several issues come to mind here.

Why and how on earth does the Zimbabwean government let free Aubrey Welken, the South African spy? - and even have him accompanied by the highest security officer, State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa.

We do not know the answer but we will not be far from the truth to speculate that South Africa paid millions of Rands to both Zimbabwe and Zanu PF as compensation to both the damage and the threat it paused through its operations. In the context of the MDC crisis, it would be naïve of us to think that the South African Secret Service (SASS) was only paying senior Zanu PF people to get information. Some top MDC people might be on the South African Secret Service payroll and that means disaster not only for the MDC, but for Zimbabwe as a whole. Questions of sovereignty and stability come to the fore and at this stage, narrow political party considerations would be set aside to defend the country.

This possibility of there being MDC people on the SASS payroll completely erodes most chances of reform. What others could simply do is to ask for political clemency just to stay on top and not to serve the real interest of the party supporters. This is dangerous. Secrecy and intelligence is Thabo Mbeki’s strength and those that complained of quiet diplomacy now know the answer. It is important again to be clear to him that when Zimbabweans ask for help, they do not need him to remove Mugabe the person. The call is to help formulate more democratic institutions because, whilst Zimbabwe’s crisis might be linked to an individual, certainly its reconstruction will be on the basis of institutional clarity and not personal sagacity of whichever leader elected.

Therefore, it must be clear to Mbeki that we do not need his anointed President, but our struggle is for systems and institutions that are just and legitimate, institutions that allow the freedom and prosperity that were the vision of our war of liberation. We will never place Zimbabwe’s destiny in a person’s hand for we have learnt enough from Murambatsvina and Hondo Yeminda.

Egypt Dzinemunhenzva, a leader of one small political party in Zimbabwe asks an important question. He says, what audacity does Zanu PF have in telling us (opposition parties) not to get funding from abroad when they are Chinese funded? On another note, several questions have been asked on to the amounts of money (US$) that these alleged spies were paid by the South African Secret Service (SASS) for political information. The workers and students union management systems strike me. It is taboo for a union leader to dine and wine with a bloodsucker and simultaneously ignore the fundamental issues of discussion like salary hikes or payout increaments.

The climax of this matter therefore, is that it is important for Welsh and Morgan to be mature and stop behaving like teenagers fighting over a love affair. Both parties claim to have the majority of following in Zimbabwe and also claim to have popular political programmes.

Competition is healthy and it is high time they have their various congresses and give the people of Zimbabwe opportunities to listen and follow leaders or devils they know.

At a personal level, to have the combination of people like Dr Shake Maya as advisors is dangerous to any politically serious person. What Jonathan Moyo was to Zanu PF must be the clear case study to all, and in any case, associations and clubs like political parties have rights to associate or not to associate with people of dubious agendas.

It would be unfair to conclude without asserting the Zimbabwe question. The crisis in Zimbabwe is not in the MDC, but a Zanu PF created problem stemming from many years of misgovernance and plunder. 2005 marks the fifth year of massive looting and merrying in Zanu PF, which circus has led to unprecedented poverty levels, massive shortages of basic commodities including fuel. The greatest of these effects was a massive impoverishing of the majority of people including civil servants like teachers, nurses, the army, the police and other government officers.

The impact of the madness of Restore Order to the elderly, widows, the unemployed, opharns and especially the girl child was best captured by the United Nations- an act of madness. In the MDC discourse, I strongly argue that a divided MDC will give the people a clear chance to chose what they want between rigged elections or fair elections whose fairness is demanded in the streets and avenues of Zimbabwe. Broadly, whether by Zanu PF, MDC or MDC PF, for the crisis to be resolved, we need, as a people to revisit the issue of a new national constitution and the holding of free and fair elections. This process eliminates unaccountable brats whose capacity is nothing but asset stripping coated by boasts of liberation war credentials. Aluta continue!

*Itai Masotsha Zimunya, a human rights activist. He can be contacted at itaizim@yahoo.com

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