Tsvangirai: A life on other people’s battlefronts

THERE was once a time when being sceptical or plainly suspicious about the way the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) conducts its business was a matter for private or quiet misgivings.

To publicly question or express one’s worry about the vigour and energy exhibited and invested by queer characters in the huge political enterprise that has become of the Zimbabwean crisis was an “at personal risk” adventure because of vicious pillory and the lasting bad name that still comes with it, even to this day.

It should be understood, therefore, why some independent newspapers have steered clear of harm’s way, conforming to this ultra-repressive form of order so intensely calculated that it has been a taboo to criticise Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC allies.

Sadly, this has brought about undesired ends through sorry activities such as acting persistently in a manner that allowed the puppet tag to stick and in a manner that grossly undermined democracy on the opposition leadership’s part.

Two of those undesired ends stand out:  the 2005 split and the failure to take power from a hugely unpopular incumbent.

How things are changing. No cause can be so noble that its methods of struggle can be beyond question and reproach, some gradually seem to be saying. Top publisher Trevor Ncube thinks that an MDC administration alone would be a “disaster”; veteran journalist Peta Thornycroft recently observed a flurry of activity in the name of the MDC in South Africa inspired by nothing but money and profit. Now a top Zambian newspaper, the Post, has proffered similar sentiments.

In perhaps the most scathing editorial by a regional paper on Morgan Tsvangirai, and the MDC, the Zambian daily recently fell short of saying that while the MDC rested firmly on the genuine aspirations of many Zimbabweans, it was also carried and driven by scary interests from within and elsewhere. The paper also accused Tsvangirai of campaigning “vigorously” for sanctions and for being “arrogant”.

While the paper got the context of the Zimbabwean drama right, it may not be wrong to conclude that the comment missed out on some fundamental problems besetting the MDC so much so it became almost unfair on Tsvangirai, who is personable and easy at grassroots.

So important to the struggle for democracy is Tsvangirai that he should be credited for having seen as early (some might say too late) as the late 1980′s that Mugabe was bad for Zimbabwe, a time when most Zimbabweans gave him fresh mandates (1990,1996) and a time when the British awarded him a knighthood (1994) despite all the evidence of fascism!

It is a shade unfair to blame Tsvangirai for the sanctions that have served no purpose other than to collude with Zanu PF economic vandalism and fuel the social chaos that has set Zimbabwe firmly on the route of a failed state, and brought down on the population varieties of moral degradation. The sanctions would still have been imposed because the engineers are so powerful that they don’t even need Tsvangirai’s consent even though they may consult him.

FRONTMAN: The trouble with the MDC has been the dilemma of Tsvangirai

It would be unfair, as well, to blame Tsvangirai for sourcing funding from outside Africa when we know too well that all African movements have had a similar genesis with their leaders being flown by sympathetic Western funders to London and New York; and some of their officers being granted scholarships throughout the 1970′s.

Despite these lapses, the comment by the Post, a paper which is in the same league as other liberal regional papers like the Zimbabwe Independent, the Namibian and the Daily News, may still have echoed some sentiments which many dread to express for the fear of being ostracised, and being labelled “sell-outs”, “CIOs”, “tribalists” or worse.

The trouble with the MDC has been the dilemma of Tsvangirai — a well meaning trade unionist and former Mugabe disciple who genuinely sought a route out of the economic vandalism visited upon Zimbabwe by the Zanu PF oligarchy, but found himself strangely mutated into a nexus of varying and clashing interests aimed at selfish ends, with nothing to do with human rights and good governance.

So vicious and dramatic has been the interplay of these interests that anybody in Tsvangirai’s position would have been confused and resultantly faltered at one stage or another.

Once Tsvangirai and others formed the MDC, many opportunists came forth flooding the democratic project to the extent that the central cause was easily hijacked to represent many interests which he never immediately understood as he lacked the synthesising capacity.

The reason for this was that the MDC emerged out of a totalitarian order where cronyism held sway so much so it was literally impossible for the new party to hold its act together without financial assistance from elsewhere.

The MDC soon found itself deep on other people’s battlefronts — being reduced to a stick with which to beat other people’s enemies. So in trying to bring about change, Tsvangirai easily became the wound through which a strange disease, so queer that none shall diagnose it anytime soon, attacked the national soul.

Suddenly strange alliances were formed around the Zimbabwean crisis. Even as   commercial farmers were dolling out cheques in that favourite Zanu PF CNN recording, it was clear that Tsvangirai was confused as to how white business could all of a sudden fund, so readily, a cause for the poor black workers!

A question has yet to be answered: How did it become possible for a man like Tsvangirai who made his name in the streets stalling business and churning out Marxist Leninist rhetoric against the Breton Woods institutions become a darling of white, international capital?

As opposed to being arrogant, as the Post alleges, Tsvangirai is in fact a navigable political operator who watched helplessly as his democratic project was flooded out by multiple interests and soldiers of fortune so much so that shady characters can pen articles and pass them under his name, as happened earlier this year with the British Guardian newspaper.

“The MDC has often seemed rudderless. In fact, the captain is at the tiller but not steering the ship,” veteran analyst, Professor Stephen Chan observed recently.

Moreover, most people jumped onto the MDC gravy train as a route out of poverty visited upon them by Mugabe’s policies. It is for that reason that most people today don’t want the Zimbabwean crisis to end because with it will end their fortunes; their employment.

This explains why the MDC’s offices in the UK and Johannesburg are in a mess with officers fighting over the ready cash.

Worse still, there are many “Mugabe people” who have thrown themselves into the “change” cause for no reason other than for personal prosperity. (If you want to see that many Zimbabweans like Mugabe, just compare him with Mandela and the shrieks will reach the high heavens in support of the veteran dictator).  

So ironic is the MDC politics that while the world is today united in heaving a sigh of relief at the coming of an Obama administration in the USA, Tsvangirai, whose party was formed in the backdrop of growing poverty and inequality, finds himself in the grip of the discredited George W Bush politics.

So confusing is the MDC politics that it has made it possible for Tsvangirai to occasionally commit himself to matters he doesn’t quite understand, and to utter statements which will shock him as soon as he descends from the rostrum.

It is fair to say that Tsvangirai didn’t understand what he was playing himself into when he threatened to “remove” Mugabe “violently”. It is difficult to believe that he knew what he meant when he told the BBC that South Africa would be right to cut electricity and other services to Zimbabwe. Now it’s as if he is the one who campaigned for sanctions, yet in truth, the sanctions were already in operation when he uttered those words.

So confused was Tsvangirai that he also promised the Final Push forgetting that the MDC rejected violence as a tool for seeking political power, and the fact that he fears violence himself (if he is not hiding in Botswana, he is ensconced inside the Dutch Embassy). Talk is rife that he is one to prefer a less bumpy road to the end as opposed to the pain his supporters go through.

Moreover, he was so ignorant that he didn’t know an international crook like Ari-Ben Menashe despite the fact he was known to many people in Zimbabwe, some of whom were Tsvangirai’s friends and are still disbelieving that he neglected even the most basic character check through a Google search. Had he done, he would have quickly realised that Menashe is not a man to do business with.

The confusions, ironies and blunders attendant to the MDC politics have served as political windfall to Mugabe and his sympathisers, allowing most African leaders to be sceptical about the MDC. They fear that if the current drive to push Mugabe out succeeds, it will serve as a model for opposition parties in the region, and moreover, they feel so astounded that Tsvangirai, who never went through hell as them, could enjoy so much goodwill that rivals or far surpasses that of Mandela.

So fortunate has been Tsvangirai that he has even been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize within just a few years of notable political activity and yet he never needed to do anything. All it took was to say “Mugabe must go”; be linked to false Mugabe assassination plots and be beaten by the police.

While it took Mandela not just decades, but a mixture of painful milestones and set-backs such as the Rivonia Trial, underground activities, Robin Island, and a terrorist tag not removed until last year, to win the prize, Tsvangirai has had the swiftest and easiest route to fame with the BBC, CNN and the entire Fleet Street edifice backing him.

It is clear, therefore, why Tsvangirai has found it difficult to come up with a clear strategy and statements because he is overwhelmed with many forces around him and is daily surprised by the “goodwill” which falls like manna from heaven with him just seated. Here is the luckiest political operator ever to come out of Africa!

Indeed, the MDC doesn’t need to write any project proposals — all it takes is for them to threaten to do something and for Mugabe to crank the gears towards further repression; and the headlines will scream around the globe in their favour; and then cash will flow like blood from a fresh wound.

With these curious forces around him, it should not surprise anybody when Tsvangirai, who in his public appearances looked like Lenin only yesterday suddenly harbours Nick Faldo dreams, playing golf with American ambassadors. It should not surprise anybody when an African leader of Mandela’s stature remains on the USA terrorist register so many years after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and yet it takes almost for Tsvangirai to be nominated for such a prestigious prize.

Perhaps, like the Post, many people (not only Africans) privately ask themselves : “What is it which they (MDC’s western backers) have found more interesting, more favourable, more acceptable in Tsvangirai and MDC that they did not find in Mandela and ANC, in Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo and Zanu and Zapu?”

Perhaps everybody knows the answer, only they lack courage to say it out loud – fearing a backlash from the forces of DEMOCRATIC CHANGE.