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Interview Part 4: Madhuku, Prof Ncube and Biti
This is the fourth part of an SW Radio Africa Hot Seat interview with the two secretary generals of the MDC factions Professor Welshman Ncube and Tendai Biti and NCA chairman, Dr Lovemore Madhuku. Violet Gonda asked the questions:
Broadcast on August Tuesday August 1st 2006
Violet: Thank you for joining us on the programme where we are talking to opposition officials Tendai Biti and Professor Welshman Ncube and the National Constitutional Assembly Chairperson, Doctor Lovemore Madhuku. This Tuesday, the three panellists discuss the challenges facing the pro-democracy movement, and in particular, the relationship between the opposition and civil society.
It has been said that the split in the MDC is causing divisions in civil society. So, I start by asking Dr Madhuku what is the relationship between the two MDC’s and civil society?
Dr Madhuku: There is no division in civic society at the moment and the relationship between civic society and the two groups is very clear. The two MDC’s are part of what we are calling, or, what everyone would describe, as the pro-democracy movement in Zimbabwe. We have obviously different understandings over certain issues, and a number of important issues but at the moment, we would want to see a situation where the two MDC’s, alongside other political parties and the Churches, the Trades Unions and so forth, we work together towards getting some solution towards the crisis in the country.
We would want to see a situation where we perhaps agree on, I don’t want to use the word ‘road map’, because it has been used by Tendai and I may be accused of being closer to them, but the kind of understanding we would want to see. So, there is no division in civic society. There are different perceptions here and there and also a media obsession with wanting to align civic groups with one or the other MDC group, but, I think in reality there are no divisions. There are, of course, from time to time, emotive responses to certain issues on the basis of what is happening on a day to day basis.
Violet: Professor Ncube what is your comment on this as it’s also reported that your party had threatened to sponsor a parallel civil society in Zimbabwe because of the allegations that the current bodies had sided with the Tsvangirai faction?
Professor Ncube: Well, as far as I know we have not threatened to sponsor any parallel thing. We are a political party, we are not civil society. There are some of our members who are in civil society who might hold views which might be different from the dominant views in civil society. Our gripe with civil society is not that one individual or an organisation feels that it is closer to this or that political party. Our problem with civil society at the moment has been what we might have been calling the deafening silence on the values and principles for which civil society is supposed to be fighting. Here we are talking, for instance, of the issue of violence.
When we talk about violence in the opposition, when we monitor violence as civil society, we must be monitoring all the violence which is taking place perpetrated by Zanu PF and violence which is perpetrated by other actors other than Zanu PF and condemning it and not turning a blind eye to it. And, for us, civil society is about a new constitution. Why are you about a new constitution, for instance the NCA, the Lawyers for Human Rights and so forth? Why are they about that? Because they are driven by democratic values and for us it is important to continuously remind civil society, for civil society to remind itself, that the space that it wants for civil society, the democracy that it is fighting for, it must be insisting on that democracy, it must be insisting on the observance of those values across the board, including opposition political parties. And, that is the point that we have been making, and we get very, very worried when political parties in the opposition and the ruling party want to reproduce themselves through civil society. You go to a ZINASU Congress; you find that a political party is sponsoring a candidate for ZINASU. You go to the University of Zimbabwe you find political parties sponsoring candidates for the SRC at the University of Zimbabwe, and so forth and so on. So when you see a civil society which is gearing itself to be an extension of a political party then you have a problem. Civil society must be there to play a critical role regardless of which political party is in government.
Violet: And, Tendai is it useful for political parties to align themselves with civic society or with civic groups?
Tendai Biti: Well, the thing is, it’s not about alignment; it’s about accepting the reality that civic society; and I’m talking about the Pro-Democracy component of civic society, because not all civic society is a society or is civil. I think there are some that are collaborating with the establishment, and there are some that are as much an integral part of the exploitation of the people by the regime. So it’s not about alignment but it’s about working together either in a united front or in a popular font to use Trotskyite language, in other words working towards common goals that you want to achieve, and you can either do it on a broad general democratic front, for instance we want a new constitution, or, you can target specific micro issues, for instance a rates boycott in Kadoma and so forth. And, clearly, clearly, civic society in the democratic sense and political parties in the democratic sense, require each other, and, as I said earlier on, Zimbabwe is an unprecedented crisis of a Failed State.
The State itself has surrendered all its responsibility towards the delivery of social services, the delivery of economic conditions that allow citizens to reproduce themselves on a day to day basis; I can give you millions and millions of statistics. In that case, it is quite clear that political parties and civic society are in one end; we are in the sub-society, we are in one end and the government and the State are in the other, and clearly, all of us, I think, in civic society, have a new vision and that vision is a new Zimbabwe and a new beginning, a re-start if you like. And, if that is the case, if that is the common denominator, surely, surely there must be a basis of vertical and horizontal alliances. So, in my respectful opinion, civic society and political parties need each other, but I agree that political parties do not have a right of determining the content and programme of civil society and vice versa.
I think a lot of the problem that has afflicted the position is: a) the 12th of October situation has not helped. Secondly, I think there is, if you don’t engage in meaningful political, physical, intellectual activity to which I think there has been a gap, you will tend to fight each other internally; whether you are civic society, whether you are political parties and so forth. And, if civic society and political parties are not generating activity on the ground, they reduce themselves to airport activists, they reduce themselves to 4x4 activists, then you have a very crippled movement, either the political movement or the civic society movement. And, those two crippled pillars cannot form a symbiotic relationship that has got synergies and chemistry, and, I think that as civic society and political parties, we need to look at ourselves in the mirror and say ‘have we done justice to the dream and hypothesis and adjectival process of a new Zimbabwe. I’ve no doubt; mark my words, that we owe it to future generations.
All of us are suffering. Just go into a supermarket and you get raped by prices! $30 million will not buy you anything. The average Consumer Council or ZCTU minimum poverty salary is now $60 million. The average salary to the 10% of the population in Zimbabwe that is employed is $8 million and 80% of our population are surviving on US $1 a day and surely I think it shocks many of our friends elsewhere that how are we coping and how are we normalising this clearly abnormal situation. I think future generations are going to laugh at us and say ‘look, what were you doing when things were burning; inflation in real terms was 2500%, when the budget deficit as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product was an unprecedented 60%, where were you?’ And, personally, personally, I don’t want not to have an answer, and I don’t want to rationalise my own failure on things that are subjective, things that are temporal and things that can be addressed, and, I think we owe it to ourselves to address those problems.
Violet: But, Tendai, do you agree that there is now a situation between the civic groups and opposition parties that is not so different you know from the Zanu PF approach that takes the view that if you don’t support them, you are the enemy?
Tendai Biti: Well, I mean, the organisation that I represent has not accused any civic society, any body, any organisation in Zimbabwe that does not agree with us as a sell out. I think one of the things we are trying to cultivate is tolerance and I think that for political parties, it is very important not to be seen to be arrogant and it’s very important not to want to have your ideas and principles reproduced. I am a genuine democrat and as far as I’m concerned, the more the plural voices, the more the rainbow voices, the better but I will not adopt a fascist approach in respect of how civic society, and anyone else for that matter, should relate to us. I think that, in my view, what should define the relationship of political parties and civic society is to not what we say, but what do we. And, what we must be doing right now, I’ve already said, is to have programmes on the ground that are consistent with our aspirations. And, as far as I’m concerned, what defines our aspirations is the Zimbabwean crisis, is the fact that we need food, we need jobs and we need Anti-Retrovirals, we need to fight the collapse in our public health system. That is the bottom line and most of all, of course, we need a new constitution and we need some road map to legitimacy. To me, that is critical.
Violet: Let me come back to Dr Madhuku. Is there tolerance in civil society bearing in mind that you are reported to have made statements aligning yourselves to the Tsvangirai MDC because of the numbers, you know, after the MDC split?
Dr Madhuku: Ah, well, I think there has been a misunderstanding of what I said at the time that this problem arose. I think what I made clear was that as a country we would have preferred one MDC and if there was going to be a way of resolving it, and at the time I thought that the numbers game was going to be an important way of reaching some settlement; some resolution. We didn’t want a divided MDC. And I made comments implying that if we were to go by numbers then those with more numbers were supposed to take the day. But, some people challenged me that certain numbers were more on the Tsvangirai group than on the others. But, you would be taking us back; it doesn’t tell us what the effect of civic society relations and political parties is. What I would want to emphasise is; we should move forward on the basis of what we believe we should do, in this case, it is to advocate for an open democracy, we work together with different groups. The statements I made at the time of the split were made at the time to try and contribute to how we could resolve the situation then.
Violet: You know, it’s been said that when somebody comes up with a plan on how to remove the Mugabe regime then these divisions in the opposition will disappear. Do you agree that this is the problem; that no one has a plan for removing Mugabe?
Dr Madhuku: Well, I think there is a plan, perhaps it has not been defined but I agree with you that as soon as we agree to a programme, as soon as we have a programme that we all support, the differences will go away. That’s my view and that’s been shared by many people. If we have a direction and a direction such as now being suggested that we should all advocate for a new constitution, push Mugabe to embrace constitutional reforms then free and fair elections under a new constitution. If that were to be accepted as the way forward, I believe that people in the MDC led by Morgan, people in the MDC led by Arthur Mutambara and various other groups will all join hands and work together.
The only difficulty I still see is that in the process of fighting to achieve what we want to achieve, there are these elements that come in, and some take the view that ‘well, let’s not focus on those elements, let’s just focus on the removal of Mugabe’s system and so on.’
And, if you listen to Professor Ncube he seems to be saying that even in the process, as we go through the process of trying to achieve what we want, these side effects that come in should be addressed. And, that is what creates, I think, the differences that you have seen. Some of us, in civic society in particular, we have been accused of like what he refers to as ‘silence’, we would be pained by what is happening but at the same time feel that ‘well, let’s not divert our attention, let’s keep on focusing on a particular thing, and there is a genuine difference of approach there. How far we take into account issues that arise in the process of us achieving a broader goal; these things that come in. Some believe those things, small things which I believe are small; are big enough to warrant our focus on them. Where others feel that ‘well, these things that arise are not big enough to warrant our focus, let’s keep focusing on that broad agenda’. And, perhaps we might need to discuss that, not in this programme, but as we sit around together, Professor Ncube and others to discuss this.
Violet: We have two more segments left with Tendai Biti, Professor Welshman Ncube and Doctor Lovemore Madhuku. It’s a known fact that there’s a major crisis being faced in Zimbabwe but the question for many is why the pro-democracy movement has not been able to capitalise on so many government failures. Join us next Tuesday when the panellists discuss the issue of the road map to democracy and mass action.
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