Zimbabweans at the polls: the great debates

Zimbabweans at the polls: the great debates

• Change cannot wait for Madhuku's post-election ambitions

• Voting for change in Zimbabwe

• Can an independent win in Zimbabwe? Yes he can!

• Makoni: puppet, Zanu PF agent or national hero?

• Who is behind Makoni? Please count me in!

• Obama v Billary Clinton: lessons for Africa

• If Zuma is corrupt, who isn't?

• Charamba gives civil service a very bad name

• Be the change that you want to see

• The paradox of African liberation and change

• Zimbabwe and the Jacob Zuma factor

• The EU-Africa relationship post-colonialism

• Beyond Lisbon: setting the African agenda

• Implications of Zuma winning ANC presidency

• Africa's enduring economic apartheid

• Does indigenisation threaten law of succession?

• Defining the role of the state in post-colonial Africa

• Mushore's ordeal and the Zimbabwe we want

• Does rule of law pose a threat to Africa?

• Capitalism may challenge the poor, but it gives them hope

• The Africa we want: out of time?

• Africa: From Berlin to Lisbon

• The turning point that never was

• Zimbabwe's turning point

• Black Economic Empoerment project gone awry

• Africa's bitter harvest

• Africa's real brand ambassadors

• Indigenisation: a case of hypocritical manipulation?

• Can Africa's brand ambassadors please stand up?

• Is Zimbabwe a candidate for economic surgery?

• Zimbabwe's leadership paradox

• Rhodesia not so good

• Wither Zimbabwe?

• Investing in fear: Mugabe's economic revival plan

• Mugabe takes over as leader of the opposition

• Mugabe under siege: a failed ideology or conspiracy?

• Robert Mugabe's fate

• Without a cause, Africa's progress stunted

• Kofi Annan and the outsourcing of Africa's future

• The Africa we want

• Africa's development challenge: from civil to platinum rights

• 2008 may already be a done deal

• To quit or not to quit: the leadership question

• Business sector cannot remain indifferent to political question

• Gono plays Pope and Cop

• Trust and succession politics in Africa

• Robert Mugabe and Ian Smith: two of a kind

By Mutumwa D. Mawere
(www.mmawere.com)

THE stakes are high and yet the debate about the key challenges that confront Zimbabwe has been predictably hijacked and imprisoned by a mischievous dichotomous analysis of the Zimbabwean condition spearheaded by no other than the incumbent President.

Any leader in President Robert Mugabe’s position would know what time it is but it is evident that what citizens are yearning for is regrettably not at the centre of neither Zanu PF nor the President’s agenda.

The task of reconstructing and transforming the country has played hostage to a minimalist and divisive approach to nation building. Zimbabwe is crying out loud for a leadership that can transcend the limitations of partisan political discourse to begin addressing the root causes of the country’s debilitating political and economic crisis.

In under 12 days, registered and eligible voters will confront a ballot paper asking them to make a choice between four Zimbabwean men. There are many of us who remain concerned about the Zimbabwean condition but are not in a position to directly influence the outcome of the elections.

I am acutely aware that if President Mugabe were to be re-elected, such an outcome would be absurd not only because I have interests in the country but because the answer to a better and not bitter Zimbabwe does not lie in him.

All we can and should do is to assist in unpacking the kind of issues that should hopefully inform those that are privileged to vote or anyone who believes that democratic change is inevitable in Zimbabwe. The only sustainable way of advancing such change is to talk to those who have the capacity to use their pen in a secret ballot to send the message that the country is serious and ready to move on.

Such people are our relatives and friends, and it should be easy for anyone in the Diaspora to reach at least 20 people before the decision day to tell them about what is at stake. The state media in Zimbabwe is totally helpless and partisan to assist in any change agenda.

Simba Makoni’s entry has helped to make Mugabe’s speeches longer and more ridiculous and in a sense, facilitated the penetration of Morgan Tsvangirai deeper into traditional Zanu PF strongholds. Mugabe is not capable of handling two strong competitors and this election has the prospect of surprising many. It is important that we all play our part in this great March surprise by changing the debate about what matters to Zimbabweans.

President Mugabe, like many of his contemporaries, is afraid of change. He is at his best when he analyses the Zimbabwean condition in self-serving dichotomies: “puppet vs patriot”; “progressive vs reactionary”; “principal vs agent”; “wife vs prostitute”; “Mugabe vs Tsvangirai/Makoni”; “Zanu PF vs sell-outs/enemies of the state”; “neo colonialism vs sovereignty” and “black vs white”.

As a consequence, most of the critical debates of our time have been imprisoned by this kind of analysis and in the process, the policy issues that ought to be at the centre of these fundamental debates are easily lost. The campaign language used by President Mugabe suggests that Zimbabwe is not in a crisis and, in fact, the forthcoming election represents nothing but a constitutionally mandated ritual with predetermined outcomes.

Notwithstanding the anger of citizens, President Mugabe has attempted to deflect the anger and redirect it at his competitors in a hypocritical manner that only serves to make citizens cynical of elections and political processes.

I am not convinced that many of the members and supporters of Zanu PF fully comprehend the magnitude of the crisis and its causes.

It would be simplistic to argue that the Zimbabwean crisis is a product of imperialism and the actions of the enemies of the state, and yet at this defining stage of the national democratic revolution, it is being argued that conditions exist for a credible, free and fair election and that the incumbent President has a clue about what Zimbabwe needs to lift itself out of the quagmire.

Even President Mugabe would accept that one of the foundational principles of the liberation struggle was the need to restore civil rights to all the country’s citizens. However, it appears that over the last 28 years he has changed and sees the country in partisan terms, and in a sense, regards himself as a super citizen endowed with a different set of rights.

The manner in which he has welcomed Makoni’s audacious entry into Presidential politics and the dismissive attitude towards Tsvangirai suggests that if he had his way, he would have amended the constitution to disqualify such competitors. Fortunately, residual democratic order still exists in Zimbabwe to allow Makoni, Tsvangirai and Langton Towungana to share the same platform with Mugabe.

If Mugabe cannot erase the names of his competitors from the ballot paper, then it is baffling to hear that his colleagues in the army and prison service would want to pre-empt the outcome of the elections through cheap intimidation.

What is instructive is that President Mugabe has never considered Tsvangirai to be his equal to the extent that even in the context of the SADC mediated talks, he did not see it fit to meet his fellow Zimbabwean citizen.

It was then left to President Mbeki to shuttle between the two parties and yet only 29 years ago, the same President Mugabe sat at the same negotiating table with Ian Smith and has credited himself for being an architect of unity with Joshua Nkomo.

What kind of mind informs President Mugabe’s thinking about power, citizenship and responsibility? It is evident that in President Mugabe’s mind, any political competitor is an enemy of the state and should not be treated as a patriot seeking the same ends that he purports to be advancing by wanting to remain in power.

Any government derives its legitimacy from its people. The only reliable source revenue for any functioning democratic order is tax revenue from citizens. Accordingly, any functional state should not see its role as more than a referee and facilitator seeking to expand its revenue base to do more for the vulnerable citizens.

The post-colonial government has systematically reduced the revenue base of the state. The Zimbabwe of today is more dependent on aid than on its own tax contributions.

When you see the RBZ engaging in commercial activities and procuring tractors and farm implements; then you know its time for fundamental changes.

Ultimately the shareholders of the nation are the citizens that contribute through taxes to its sustenance. However, in contemporary Zimbabwe, there appears to be a serious disconnect between the people who elect and who fund the government.

Most able bodied Zimbabweans have been externalised and are now contributing taxes to foreign jurisdictions. If there was any better yardstick to measure the success or failure of President Mugabe’s government, it is in the area of ensuring the viability of the state.

Any President who constructively undermines the state’s tax base must be shown a red card. The Zimbabwean government has succeeded in converting the state into a private fiefdom with a number of opaque godfathers masquerading as state actors.

The role of the RBZ in undermining the state ought to be one of the fundamental issues to be debated and resolved so that commercial none-state actors who have been sucked into the corrupt machine can be released to pursue genuine economic and not politically engineered activities.

Mutumwa Mawere's weekly column is published on New Zimbabwe.com every Monday. You can contact him at: mmawere@global.co.za
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