Label food, not people

Label food, not people

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• Morgan Tsvangirai: The senate, what's in it for the people?

• Grace Kwinjeh: No to senate elections!

• Kwinjeh attacks MDC senate poll participation

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• Dr Alex Magaisa: Constitution without Constitutionalism

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By Bekithemba Mhlanga

WHO was it who began messing with on the MDC constitution? Was it Morgan Tsvangirai or the “lightweights” who are standing in the senate elections?

Information available to the public domain is that it was Morgan Tsvangirai when he decided that he was not going to abide by the resolutions of the MDC council. It is difficult to understand that the MDC leader used his casting vote to sort out the issue, when the decision before the council was carried by 33 – 31. Unless of course if the dear leader’s vote is worth four of those of the ordinary members.

Now, for a legal mind to throw the book at the MDC senate candidates under the guise of violating the constitution and not doing the same to the President is strange to say the least. One is left with little doubt that individuals are being partisan in their approach to the problem that is facing the MDC at the moment – the real and present problem of an ethnic divide. There is no way we can romanticise this issue – it is the driving force behind the antagonists in this duel. Period! Talking about it or suggesting that it is a problem should not be construed in anyway as advocating for tribalism.

The facts are that the majority of the senate candidates are from Matebeleland and the majority of the people in that part of the world are Ndebele. It is also a fact that the majority of the Members of Parliament of the MDC are from the southern part of the country, a predominantly Ndebele speaking region.

So to suggest that they are pissing on the constitution of the MDC , that they are sell-outs, Zanunites and stooges of the CIO and Robert Mugabe will only serve to inflame their feelings that they being treated as second class citizens even within a family viewed as second class people by Zanu PF.

The collective inclination to condemn and vilify the pro-senate section of the MDC seems to have not only been given succour by certain individuals in the MDC but also certain sections of the media. Strangely enough the state media, for reasons known to all and sundry, has come out and given both sides a fair and balanced report to the two factions.

When the individuals standing for the senate are referred to as lightweights in the MDC one is left wondering who in the MDC qualifies to be called a heavyweight.

Probably if the candidates had been endorsed by Morgan Tsvangirai then they would be referred to as heavyweights. Since when did the MDC have heavyweights on standby for council or national elections?

Again the individuals concerned are bound to be infuriated by this categorisation and labelling. Label food not people.

But this does not stop here, it extends to the intelligentsia that have rounded on the people of the south as illiterate, uninformed and not capable of making and arriving at their own conclusions about the decision whether to participate or not participate in the senate elections.

These people know their political capital to the MDC and are ready to flex it now.

Bekithemba Mhlanga is a Zimbabwean journalist based in Crawley, United Kingdom
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