Voters must demand better leadership

Voters must demand better leadership

• Editor's Memo: Cut the chase, blame Blair

I HAVE watched the implosion of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) with great sadness. It's enough to make one want to walk out and have a tattoo!

In the past six years, the MDC under Morgan Tsvangirai's leadership, has put up a commendable fight to rescue Zimbabwe from Robert Mugabe's dictatorship.

The fight has not been easy. Scores of MDC supporters have been killed in pursuit of a New Zimbabwe. Top MDC leaders have been arrested countless times, and they have all been acquitted -- which explains something about policing and the justice system in Zimbabwe.

In the six years that the MDC has existed, Zimbabweans of all tribal backgrounds appeared ready to turn the clock on Zanu PF's divisive, faction-driven politics which had for two decades restrained the nation's march towards a one-nation agenda.

While reporting for The Daily News, I had the opportunity to meet and travel with Tsvangirai in rural Matabeleland. He struck me as a "people's man", a man who understood and appreciated the suffering of Zimbabwe's rural poor. He spoke in ordinary language on ordinary subjects to ordinary audiences. They loved him.

While seeking to unite the nation, Tsvangirai appeared not to have lost a sense of the past. I remember after a rally in Tsholotsho, Tsvangirai stopped at the site of a mass grave where 12 members of the same family were executed by Mugabe's North Korean-trained Five Brigade. Tsvangirai spoke movingly and vowed that such scenes should never be repeated in a New Zimbabwe.

For someone who witnessed the MDC campaign juggernaut so close and knew the principals very well, current events in the MDC are just mind-numbing.

What happened to the dream of a New Zimbabwe? What happened to the MDC's promise to "Chinja Maitiro/Guqula Izenzo"? What happened to the unity, and democratic purpose of the party?

Trying to pick the warring MDC factions apart and apportioning blame to one group or the other has been the political game so far. There has been a discomforting nurturing of extremist views. The middle ground has all been obliterated. The principle is now a simple "it's either you are with us or with them", or rather more accurately, "it's either you are with us or with the enemy".

"Internet chat rooms have become mini-war zones where ideas are killed with chilling vulgarities and tribal slurs. Friendships have broken down, partnerships abandoned and reason discarded"

MDUDUZI MATHUTHU

Instead of seeing a change in "maitiro/izenzo", the MDC seems to have plagiarised wholesale from Zanu PF's political handbook. Members of Parliament can now be assaulted at MDC meetings, constituency T-Shirts for MDC MPs can be set on fire by toyi-toying youths in front of the leader of the opposition. Slogans like "Job Sikhala - mudenga - roverai pasi - hezo vo - Bgwa!" pose a chilling reminder of "pasi naTsvangirai" slogans which only yesterday were being chanted by Mugabe and his supporters.

The level of intolerance and rejection of opposing views in the MDC is shocking. What is even heart-breaking is that this "black and white" view of Zimbabwean politics has now percolated down to ordinary Zimbabweans who are in fact victims of their leaders' short comings.

Internet chatrooms have become mini-war zones where ideas are killed with chilling vulgarities and tribal slurs. A once united block of opposition supporters is now dangerously divided. Friendships have broken down, partnerships abandoned and reason discarded. It's all a cocktail that looks set to prolong Zanu PF's hold on power.

Yet one thing is inescapable. The entire MDC leadership has betrayed the people, the living and those who died in its name. After six years during which one presidential and two parliamentary elections were lost, the evidence suggests there is nothing particularly exceptional about the current leadership of the opposition.

The childish and "schoolboy-in-playground with ball-in-hand" manner in which the MDC leaders have all acted over this affair raises profound questions about the leadership we have.

Whatever faction emerges triumphant from this messy affair, people should not lose perspective. Winning factional politics and winning national politics is like day and night.

What Zimbabweans must demand from their leaders is quality and delivery. The Conservative party in the UK has just elected its fourth leader in eight years. Because they are not in power, they are perpetually searching for the best leader, and the party's supporters are not scared to ring the changes because they are not married to any one leader but Conservative politics, principles and systems.

Taking the MDC -- whatever faction wins the internal power game -- into an election with a reformed Zanu PF has the danger of placing a change of government beyond this generation.

What the MDC supporters should be demanding is leadership renewal. The party needs a clean break. New leadership, untainted by the current politics, should be something that the party's supporters up and down the country should be seriously considering. There are principled Zimbabweans at home and abroad who can take the mettle of bringing a New Zimbabwe, Strive Masiyiwa being a brilliant example.

Opposition supporters and pro-democracy activists should also be asking themselves if the daily mudslinging and tribal slurs is good for opposition politics. They should be much more demanding of their leaders and much more open minded or they would indefinitely postpone the arrival of the New Zimbabwe.

The struggle for democratic change - which we thought was at the heart of the MDC agenda - is suffering quick retrogression. Mugabe is smiling.

New Zimbabwe.com will support, as we have done over the last two years, a progressive opposition movement. But we will not back a shambles and fail to ask questions -- simply because a majority appears to be caught up in that shambles.

Zimbabwean voters must raise their standards of leaders to beat authoritarianism, both in government and the opposition.
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mathuthu@newzimbabwe.com