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Of blind scribes, blinkered scholars and smart politicians
Hope Dzavashumairi, AfricaFiles
July 14, 2008

http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=18472&ThisURL=./zimbabwe.asp&URLName=Zimbabwe

Although the current election campaign in Zimbabwe offers a unique study in unconventional or smart politics, both media and academic analysts have largely remained amazingly uninformed, complacent and ignorant about what they are witnessing and pontificating on. Tied hand and foot to the positivist tenets of liberal journalism and scholarship, blind scribes and blinkered scholars routinely saturate media space with simplistic misrepresentations of the unfolding disaster. We may never awaken to reality until it confronts us like death. Yet, the signals of deceit have been abundantly communicated for seasoned scribes and sentient scholars to deconstruct the current political spectacle of a ruling party nominating and sponsoring three candidates to gang up on [kukutsirana] a formidable opposition leader and win by default.

A Background of unconventional politics
To begin with, the conventional liberal view of multiparty democracy surprisingly remains predominant despite unmistakable indications that the ruling party will do literally anything to prevent any serious challenge to its political monopoly. Subverting electoral institutions and processes is a well known practice of ZANU PF and is now almost the rule. Security chiefs boldly threatening voters should they dare elect anyone but the incumbent party is business as usual. Blatantly biased reporting against the opposition party has now spilled over from public to private media, leaving voters without any reliable basis for rationally assessing their options except silent gossip. Outright violence against opposition members is not only condoned but officially organized, encouraged, expected and protected. All these are familiar features of Zimbabwean multiparty democracy.

A lesser-known but crucial part of ZANU PF-s political ethic insidiously pervades the campaign, namely unconventional or smart politics. This unconventional ingredient was adopted at ZANU-s formation in 1963 and quietly inscribed in the office of Secretary for Public [Subversive] Affairs to ensure that the struggle would continue should the party be banned like its three predecessors, the ANC, NDP and ZAPU. ZANU-s mastery of subversive "martial arts" was duly acknowledged one evening in December 1973 in an hour-long radio address to his Rhodesians by none other than Ian Smith himself. Ironically, Smith eventually converted to unconventional tactics in later phases of the war as he came to rely more on the Selous Scouts than on his own conventional soldiers. In the process, the two adversaries, RF and ZANU, literally educated each other in the smart politics of daring to deceive. The rest of that bloody war is now archival material.

More recently, with all the financial and human capital at its disposal, ZANU PF has spared no dime in sponsoring subterranean subversion against the MDC and civil society opponents. The scribes and academics have apparently forgotten the incredibly fabricated and orchestrated president-assassination plots and subsequent treason trials and acquittals of opposition leaders. They have forgotten the abduction and mischievously practiced exhumation of a missing war veteran followed by the spectacular state media trial and conviction of MDC members, only for the High Court judge to dismiss police evidence with a damning reproach and acquit the alleged "self-confessed murderers and terrorists".

During the 2005 parliamentary election campaign, after warning urban voters against rejecting it again as they had done in 2002, the ZANU PF leadership went on to destroy poor people-s homes and livelihoods in the so-called Operation Murambatsvina. The scribes and intellectuals matter-of- factly reported the horrendous suffering of millions of Africans rendered homeless and jobless and exposed to the biting winter without ever touching on the political agenda and strategies involved. They decried and denounced the cruelty of the operation. The United Nations sent a commission of enquiry headed by a habitat expert. Back in New York, Anna Tibaijuka routinely reported the horrors and recommended assistance in re-housing the victims. All was seen as a housing crisis. Not a hint of the politics behind the so-called "Operation Restore Order".

Another habitat fixer, UN Under-Secretary Egeland, followed that up with an offer to provide tents and ameliorate the suffering. Mugabe simply told him "tents are for Arabs". [Good lobbying for his own Bedouin bosom friend, Gaddafi]. For their part, official scribes filled media space with images of Operation Garikai [Prosper] which cynically pretended that the same government that had destroyed people-s homes was suddenly providing its victims with improved houses. No one questioned the credibility of such blatant hypocrisy.

The misrepresentation of those operations and interventions as a "housing" issue requiring habitat experts and reconstruction funds is a perfect example of the skills of smart politics at work. In all these moves, the process of punitive purging of the urban electorate was totally obscured by the simulation of a housing and humanitarian crisis. Serious political analysts would recognize this as a case of issue suppression.

With blind scribes, illiterate intellectual commentators and all other global notables transfixed on the theatre of fictitious treason trials, macabre exhumations, cruel home demolitions and damning reports, as well as television images of fictive urban reconstruction, virtually no-one noticed the connection between such punitive purging of urban voters and the long-term strategy of liquidating the MDC opposition.

The vicious systematic removal of opposition supporters from those rural areas that had once been known as commercial farms had been the first phase in ZANU PF-s overall plan to purge and punish the electorate. The scribes and intellectuals saw and reported it all as "land reform", completely missing the political substance of the misnamed "Third Chimurenga". Operation Murambatsvina and other subsequent punitive purges of the urban electorate were systematically sanitized, reported and explained as slum clearance, urban renewal, price control and monetary policy implementation. Purging and reconfiguring the electorate as part of unconventional political practice remained beyond the horizons of global and local media and intellectual imagination. The masters of smart politics could not be more amused as the community of "political analysts" routinely swallowed their mythologies bait, hook, line, sinker, and fisheman.

Smart politics and the current election campaign in Zimbabwe
So how does such a background illuminate the secrets of the current electoral campaign? Zimbabwe-s long experience with smart politics notwithstanding, today-s global Scribes and Pharisees have continued to view the current campaign in terms of the routine assumptions of conventional liberal scholarship. They have focused on the usual intimidation, violence, arrests, partial administration, unequal coverage in public media, vote buying, gerrymandering, all pointing towards a rigged outcome. Since all this would not be monitored and exposed by international observers and media, early predictions of the outcome invariably dismissed the opposition as hopelessly divided. The election would be a non-event. That ZANU PF would prefer a victory that looked more legitimate was totally overlooked.

Then suddenly, the masters of smart politics threw what looked like a wild card into the works. Having prepared the ground by orchestrating a succession battle and split that never was, ZANU PF created the illusion of an internal rebellion centred on the "independent" presidential candidacy of ZANU PF stalwart Simba Makoni. Partisans privy to the strategy could not have anticipated a better response. The gallery of global and local Scribes and Pharisees came alive and ensured that the issues in this election would never be addressed, precisely what the party strategists had hoped for.

Peta Thornycroft led the chorus with an operatic soprano portraying Makoni-s nomination as the rousing arrival of a "roaring lion". As an instant expert in Swahili, she euphorically revealed the surprise finding that his first name means "lion", completely mistranslating [and mispronouncing] the Shona word for power to give it the same meaning as the Swahili word for lion. The word for a lion in Shona is "shumba". Makoni-s buffalo clan would be shocked to read that he had defected to the lion clan. Peta went completely off the rails! Forgive the digression.

After that, the Scribes and Pharisees had a field day in scenario writing. While any outcome was now allowed to be conceivable, "the Makoni issue" had to be factored into every analysis. Makoni, the medium of ZANU PF deceit, not his message, had become the election issue for 2008. To that effect, the conventional wisdom of the Pharisees stabilized on the inevitability of a presidential run-off because the "Makoni factor" would allegedly certainly prevent an outright victory for anyone. No-one bothered to specify the nature of "the factor", explain its modus operandi, or even explore it.

Occasional warnings against reading the "Makoni factor" too literally appeared in the press but were routinely dismissed as "conspiracy theories", as if such theories self refute. Makoni himself revealed that he was a ZANU PF member out to rescue his party through a leadership renewal which would help it avoid regime change, that is an MDC victory. Dumiso Dabengwa confirmed that intention. Mnangagwa played the dummy that Makoni had "expelled himself", to which the latter curtly answered "nonsense" and that was the end of intra party hostilities. Earlier noises from the likes of Joseph Chinotimba to "deal with Makoni the ZANU way" were soon silenced. ZANU PF violence was never to be visited on Makoni-s Mavambo outfit. They were 2 sides of the same coin.

The Scribes and Pharisees were left to read these manouvres in their own conventional language of splits, expulsions, and defections. A few well known ZANU PF apparatchiks and had-beens came onto the stage and gave off as much of their party identity as the script permitted them to do. But the press gallery still insisted on mistaking them for real defectors. So the game of suspense took over the mediasphere. With every scribe anticipating a scoop on the next "defection", and every [invariably "respectable"] analyst impatiently waiting to complete their next treatise, the spaghetti yarn just unfolded endlessly. To those in the gallery, the ZANU PF split was for real and it was only time before John Nkomo, Joseph Msika, Joice and Solomon Mujuru, Dzikamai Mavhaire and Sheba Gava Zvinavashe followed and left poor Bob for dead. The clock ticked. The train of defectors did not arrive. The drama continued with no evidence of further defections.

In time, the "Makoni factor" grew into a cryptic puzzle. On short-wave radio and South African television, Makoni was politely asked to present his programme. Here was a democratic leader who claimed to "share your pain" but would not tell viewers and listeners what he stood for. "The people know me. I am Simba Makoni. I don-t have a programme, Violet. Having a programme would make me a dictator. Just elect me because you know me. When [not if] you elect me, I shall form a "National Authority" of any elected people. They will then, after you have already elected me, proceed to define what I, your inevitably elected president, will then stand for". Voters must just elect this "war cabinet" casualty without scrutinizing his record, his connections and his intentions and hope that he will deliver them from the current crisis. My foot! What enemies was he fighting in the "war cabinet" and politburo? And he has the gall to insist that he will, not may, be elected! What does all this mean in terms of smart politics?

Makoni took all precautions to hide his identity. Having clearly stated that he was not alone, the gallery could be excused for anticipating a stream of defections to his "project". Note the emerging vocabulary of smart politics. It-s no longer multiparty democracy but flexible politics with aspiring leaders creating factions, formations, and projects to hide or stretch their identities. Gone are the rigid identities of mass parties and mass rallies of the age of African nationalism. With the same passengers in a single spectacular road-show, and with television cameras repeatedly zooming in and out of a small and enthusiastic rented crowed, all the fringe political formations can now be misrepresented as great political events. Old parties can present themselves in any new clothes, utter different slogans and offer ingredients in the name of "power to the people". Unsuspecting voters may be excu sed for failing to distinguish between competing candidates, their respective political associations and the political choices between them.

Makoni is clearly an essential part of the ZANU PF election 2008 strategy. One does not need a conspiracy theory to see that. He is the mid-field playmaker venturing into the opposition, winning loose balls and supplying opposition-splitting passes to his number 9 striker Bob. He is all the more effective having been, like a Selous scout, redressed and manicured like the political "other". He may be ritually reviled like ZANU PF-s real "enemies", called an opportunist, "a Prostitute from Mbare" or worse. Yet these are purely harmless barbs calculated to render him less suspect among the voters and in the press gallery. [By the way the prostitutes in Harare do not hang out in Mbare. There are, on the other hand, lots of them in the Avenues area, around State House!]. To his credit, Simba has played very well, concealed his identity, picked up a few votes from the Mutambara MDC fiction-s [ yes fiction, don-t edit] leadership.

Langton Towungana is also part of it. By simply playing God-s candidate with a cross symbol, he can pick up loose votes from religious zealots. With a long name beginning with T, he may also pick up a few votes meant for Tsvangirai. On the whole, it-s been the smartest political spectacle ever witnessed anywhere on Earth. But smart politicians, please give us a break. If only you could use your skills for developing Zimbabwe rather than cheating the people! To the scribes and Pharisees, please wake up and try a little investigative journalism and smart scholarship in your practice. You have had a good sleep throughout this campaign.

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