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MDC T disengagement is ominous yet inevitable and practical
Isaya Sithole
October 21, 2009

It must have come as a shock to many Zimbabweans when the MDC T leader, Mr M.R Tsvangirai, announced his party-s disengagement from the inclusive government citing unresolved and outstanding issues in the Global Political Agreement. This is a very serious, well-considered and well-timed move by the MDC T, but one which has ominous implications if it is not handled with care by the other parties to the GPA. The practical and operational dynamics of the inclusive government as hitherto constituted, against a background of massive violence against MDC T supporters and activists towards the June 27 2008 Presidential election run-off of the March 29 inconclusive elections in which Tsvangirai led, made it not only inevitable, but practical, though ominous, for the MDC T to disengage.

The Global Political Agreement has its genesis in the failure of electoral politics in Zimbabwe to resolve the socio-politico-economic challenges the country is facing. It came from the crucible of negotiations and compromise, and is therefore underpinned by different intentions and interpretations. Some see it as an indispensable "insurance policy" and "guarantee", while others regard it as a forced compromise that in the medium to long term could have a curtailing and inhibiting impact on the popular will. What cannot be taken away from the GPA and the inclusive-cum-exclusive government though, is that it has managed to bring back semblances of peace and instability and accompanying hope and confidence in the country.

Political violence had decreased, macro-economic fundamentals were stabilizing, regional and international integration was promising, re-engagement with the international community was gradually bearing fruit, with grants, lines of credit and investors trickling into the country, and the tourism sector exhibiting massive potential for growth, not to mention that economic planning and investment promotion was fairly possible and predictable. It is against this background that the MDC T disengagement from the inclusive government is ominous, with the danger that much of the little progress that has been made so far in the rationalization of not only our macro-economic and macro-social fundamentals, but also, and equally importantly, our macro-political fundamentals, may actually be undone.

Agriculture, tourism, mining, industry, commerce and international trade have already been thrown into disarray. Some public and private enterprises that had clinched some deals or are still negotiating deals with international investors may have to live with the disruptive consequences of supposedly honorable men and women dishonoring themselves by failing to implement what they agreed on. What a way to scare away badly needed, yet skeptical, international investors. Smart foolishness! All those expensive investment conferences and indabas have now come to nought.

Whatever its defectiveness, the negotiators of the GPA and the facilitator must be lauded for their strenuous, and sometimes thankless, efforts in the long and winding negotiations that culminated in the GPA. Posterity will give them their proper place in history. The GPA managed to capture the essence of a compromise, namely that there were no winners and no losers_ the middle course won the argument. It was not easy to strike a negotiated settlement after almost a decade of belligerence in which some people grew more powerful than the institutions which bestowed the power on them, thinking had been replaced by belligerent justification and rational process had given way to obstinate rationalization.

It was not easy for Tsvangirai to humble himself and accept a diminished Prime Ministerial role in a coalition government with skewed power relations, when the results of the March 29 2008 inconclusive Presidential elections resoundingly and inescapably led to the conclusion that a majority of Zimbabweans want him at the helm of state affairs in Zimbabwe, notwithstanding persistent efforts by some retrogressive reactionaries to continue to ridicule and undermine him and what he symbolizes. It was not easy either for President Mugabe to convince anti-reform conservatives in his party that ZANU PF needs to make a paradigm shift from a commandist to consensual polity, characterized by mutual respect and understanding, even if the person concerned is Morgan Richard Tsvangirai and the party concerned is MDC T. And even if the organizations concerned are the National Constitutional Assembly, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Zimbabwe National Students Union and/or Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition.

It is continuing to be difficult and complex for the President (who must now play a fatherly and elder statesman-s role) and reformers in ZANU PF to convince their retrogressive conservative counterparts that voting for MDC T in a free and fair election is not voting wrongly (kukanganisa kuvhota) and that it does not warrant abusing state resources and institutions to institute a reign of terror against innocent citizens of Zimbabwe, under the guise of protecting and safeguarding national security, sovereignty and the sacrosanct nationalist and Pan-Africanist ideals of the liberation struggle.

It is clear to anyone who cares to look below the veneer that there is a self-serving and powerful clique in ZANU PF that initiated, planned and executed the reign of terror after March 29 2008, and is now holding the President hostage by coercing him to abuse his honorable position in government to politically destroy Honorable Prime Minister Tsvangirai and the MDC T, by refusing to resolve outstanding issues in the GPA, knowing very well that this will disappoint, disillusion and frustrate MDC members and supporters who survived the terror that they inhumanly unleashed against them. Prime Minister Tsvangirai and the entire MDC T leadership have now liberated and redeemed themselves and their consciences by refusing to be destroyed politically, disengaging from the inclusive government and going back to the people.

It was indeed not easy also for Professor Arthur Mutambara, Professor Welshman Ncube ( who has been in the thick of the negotiations since 2002) and MDC M to act as a solvent to the belligerence of the two major parties to the GPA, when it became clear during the long and winding negotiations that the crisis in Zimbabwe would not and could not be resolved by the mighty, but by the meek; and that it would be done by a very human series of moral and ethical responses rather than by positivist legal or grand government or majority gesture. It was not easy because MDC M-s conciliatory role, and DPM Mutambara-s ultra-pro-ZANU PF positions in the first four months of the consummation of the inclusive government, generated internal contradictions that threatened to destroy the party as a separate entity. Now the party has another challenge and it remains to be seen whether they will be up to it.

As far as the inclusive government is concerned, it is the long, tortuous and grinding conflict of the past decade and the long, winding and tiresome negotiations culminating in the GPA that should instruct, inform, inspire and determine our present and future. It is against this background that the MDC T-s disengagement is ominous. But what is even more ominous are attempts by this self-serving and insecure elite in ZANU PF to undermine the GPA as "a mere piece of paper" whose relevance expired with the enactment of Constitutional Amendment No. 19 and the consummation of the inclusive government on February 13 2009. This is clear political mischief and l hope patriotic and peace-loving Zimbabweans can see through it. I hope His Excellency, the President, can see through it too.

It is now a public secret that after the signing of the GPA, this political terroristic kleptocratic elite took advantage of the psychologically disorienting trauma they had caused in the country to reign in on the President to make senior appointments in government in contravention of the letter and spirit of the GPA, knowing very well that the President would people he had a soft spot for. Now they have put the President in a dilemma by putting him in a catch-22 situation in which he must now supposedly choose between the people he had appointed and those preferred by the other parties to the GPA.

This group surreptitiously and clandestinely go to these appointed people in the dark and to other ZANU PF members and supporters behind the President-s back to influence them that with all the good things that they did for him he now wants to dump them in favor of people from the two MDC formations, thereby creating tension and instability in the President-s political constituency. They then go back to the President to blackmail him that resolving outstanding issues in the GPA will destabilize ZANU PF, lead to the President-s downfall and facilitate regime change and an imperialist onslaught, knowing very well that the President does not like both imperialists and regime change, as if constitutional regime change is a crime and as if there is any other regime apart from a coalition of the three parties to the GPA.

This factional and divisive ZANU PF elite, which is desperate to succeed President Mugabe ahead of the other faction which is more humane, conciliatory and democratic, thrives on constructing conspiracy theories around the President, make him feel insecure, and then paradoxically pose as the only people capable of protecting the President, in a political sense, even though the President-s tenure for entire duration of the inclusive government is guaranteed in the GPA, which the same group is mischievously trying to undermine to save their selfish purpose of making the President feel insecure, play on his fears and then manipulate and hold him to ransom, together with the entire Zimbabwean population desperate for an improvement in their livelihoods. People want food and jobs, not political bickering.

It is unfortunate that this desperate clique in ZANU PF has created a situation that led to the personalization of outstanding issues in the GPA, a national agreement involving the three major political parties in Zimbabwe. Reserve Bank governor, Dr Gideon Gono and Attorney General Johannes Tomana have now unfortunately and regrettably become embodiments of the outstanding issues in the GPA and, to be honest, l personally feel for them and their families in respect of the embarrassment, humiliation and degradation they now suffer but since they are public personalities, they must be able to stand and endure the heat in the political kitchen.

While Tomana has his own problems of zealotry, redeemable characters like Dr Gono and others are complicating their situation by laying themselves open to self-serving political manipulation by a retrogressive and reactionary clique in ZANU PF. They make it seem as if the only posts that Gono and Tomana can occupy within and outside the government of Zimbabwe are those Reserve Bank Governor and Attorney-General respectively. And yet we cry about a brain drain. This is not patriotism but senseless and stupid chauvinism which all patriotic Zimbabweans must challenge unequivocally, irrespective of their political affiliation.

I know there are men and women of honor in ZANU PF and l appeal to them to summon their moral courage and stand up to be counted in safeguarding the sanctity of the GPA_ a reflection of the balance of political forces in Zimbabwe as at September 15, 2008. This is the basis and foundation of political engagement in the inclusive government and must be honored and given its proper place by all the signatories to it. Any attempt from any quarter to reverse the political equilibrium in Zimbabwe as captured in the GPA must and will be resisted.

Deputy Prime Minister Mutambara has already started engaging the other principals. It is good to note that he now understands his role. The negotiators must also start re-engaging. But it would appear that this is now a matter that should now fall squarely and directly in the hands of the SADC troika with the urgency that it deserves. The facilitator, Mr Thabo Mbeki, also still has a role to play. Any delay in this regard will further impoverish the Zimbabwean people, with catastrophic and cataclysmic consequences. Those who are influencing the President must see for themselves that they have now become the biggest threat to national peace and security. It does not help matters to try to reduce the MDC T pull-out to a protest against the trial of Roy Benett when there are some fundamental legal, structural, institutional, administrative and operational issues that go to the heart of the GPA.S

But l am hopeful though, that very soon the outstanding issues in the GPA will be resolved and that the MDC T will re-engage. This largely depends on the manner in which the other two parties to the GPA will handle the MDC T-s potentially explosive disengagement from the inclusive government, both at the perception and practical levels.

Naturally, transition politics naturally manifest themselves in uncertainty, increasing violence (verbal, physical and psychological), suspicion, occasional despair and the consolidation of power bases. The danger of losing political power and leverage is ever present in a transitional coalition arrangement such as we have and constituency pressures consistently haunt the principals, either in the form of high expectations or that they have sold out. Because of this, policy positions and pronouncements always see-saw and oscillate between the radical faction and the realist faction. This is the theoretical rhythm of all transitional processes everywhere throughout the world; what differs is the tempo. What is required is what is called a "process alliance" amongst the leadership and, noticeably, all the three principals seem to understand this key concept. The challenge is to keep the inclusive government intact while making win-win compromises along the way.

However, in all this , a great deal of intellectual and political dexterity is required for, notwithstanding the process alliance, it is almost an inevitability that arguments will be heated at times, that participants will still flex political muscles on occasion, and that sometimes the drama can be felt and the atmosphere proverbially cut with a knife. Much depends on the craftsmanship of the principals in managing their constituencies; to vibrate with the pulse of their members and supporters, and yet without compromising on their commitments to the other principals and to the GPA.

So, by disengaging from the inclusive government, apart from merely pressing for the fulfillment of outstanding issues in the GPA, the MDC T is also consolidating its power base. When they finally re-engage after the resolution of the sticking issues, they will be more secure, confident and stronger. Even if the outstanding issues are resolved, it is important to note that the inclusive government, for its entire lifespan, will always work within the rather uncomfortable situation of opposition-in-partnership. This is a fundamental dynamic element of any coalition government anywhere in the world.

* Isaya Muriwo Sithole is a lawyer practicing in Harare, as well as an independent political, strategic & development consultant. Feedback: isithole@yahoo.com

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