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Who is afraid, really?
By
Silence
Chihuri
ZIMBABWEANS
are reportedly gripped with fear and some ‘experts’ on fright
would need to remove the fear from within our nation before anything
can be done.
We all remember the follow up to the follow up of the follow up to the follow up the ‘consultation’ with the people to make sure they were ready for the ‘cold season’.
When everyone was busy believing that as claimed on numerous occasions, the nation was now ready to embark onto bigger things, all of sudden the whole nation is but afraid!
But why are Zimbabweans afraid today in the year 2006 and who exactly are they afraid of? And when fear becomes the life of a people, how then can the fear be removed there-from without necessarily taking the life out of the people? Zimbabwe is already at the cross roads anyway and there is no longer any need for ramshackle fixes to our problems, or any prophets of doom because whatever it is we could have avoided as a nation has already happened and now is an ideal juncture in our history to look back and take realistic stork of how it all went wrong.
There have been three key players in the development of the Zimbabwean body politic and these have been the ruling Zanu PF, the MDC Party and the loosely collated civil society. Zanu PF goes back several decades in our history, and while the civil society goes nearly as long back, in the earlier years it was not as dynamic as it is now because then, it was mainly the determined but overstretched CCJP, the Cold Comfort Foundation and latterly after independence ZimRights and then a host of other bodies that have since proliferated over recent years such as the NCA, the Crisis Zimbabwe etc.
Then enters the MDC Party, arguably the newest kid on the national socio-political block but that has probably made the greatest impact on same in a number of ways both negatively and positively. Positively summarised, the MDC greatly fast-tracked the process of multi-partyism and democratic pluralism. Negatively and with great consequences though, the MDC put the nation to sleep with the belief that all was well only to wake some five years or so later to the stuck reality that in fact things were getting worse
In the close of the 1990’s when things really started to show real signs of falling apart economically, politically and socially, with corruption starting to seriously wade into the heart of central government, and the general unrest that was becoming an integral characteristic of the Zimbabwean labour force, all was there for everyone to see that retrogression was setting in steadily. By the turn of the millennium and with the government evidently faltering, a new political alternative was being moulded in the form an MDC that was backed if not largely inspired by the militant labour constituent and a then fully-fledged civil society.
Events such as the historic march 2000 NO Vote on the proposed constitution instilled a dangerously false sense of security among our lot, because It gave the impression of a no nonsense population that knew exactly what it deserved and they wanted it. We all remembered how a cowed President Mugabe addressed the nation on the evening of the NO Vote, and everyone was fooled the hypocritical kind of democratic tolerance and magnanimity displayed on the night thinking this would continue to be the order coming days, weeks, months and now years!!! A nation could never be wrong and it was this terribly deceptive beginning that would go on to cost us our precious country and ruin the prospects of our citizens.
The NO Vote influenced a few essential aspects of our society that must be critically looked at in the process of counting the costs of dictatorship, political opportunism and defective ideologues. The NO Vote brought out the diabolical side of our government because the rude awakening that was occasioned by the government’s defeat at the hands of the people was to turn it against those people. As a direct consequence of the NO Vote, Zimbabweans foolishly and falsely perceived that they held their destiny in their hands and that it was only themselves who would shape that destiny, not knowing that this all but changed that very evening as soon as President left that modest stool at Pockets Hills.
Again, as a result of the No Vote there was ushered in a breed of opportunistic briefcase politicians who practice mercenary nationalism because they saw an immediately opened avenue to advance their personal prospects in the name of delivering a nation from the evil hands of a repressive government. It is this last effect of the NO Vote that has cost us our country, our dignity, and our prospects and self-respect as a nation more than the devilish acts of the government because we entrusted our hopes and aspirations into the hands of cheap gold diggers.
Can anyone imagine how a house in Cape Town, bought with the money that was begged from the world in the name of the oppressed, impoverished, deprived poor people of Zimbabwe, could benefit those people most of whom don’t even have passports or even birth certificates. Sadly, some people see wisdom in such parasitic betrayal of our deprived and deceived people. What is the difference between Zanu PF chefs externalising national wealth and an MDC bourgeoisie hot on their trail?
It was the supposedly historic NO Vote that created an opposition with a defective if at all defined ideology because pooled together were individuals most of whom had never been credibly tried and tested and suddenly, the national destiny was dangling upon their little and precarious shoulders. Yet everything looked and seemed deceptively falling into place. To be fair, Zanu PF and the MDC have equally let the people of Zimbabwe down because under the MDC’s watch, the Zanu PF government has missed chance after to clean up the national mess that they have created, and have hoped from one economic blunder to blunder while blatantly oppressive the people into cowed submissiveness.
And on the other hand the MDC continues its merry go round making contradiction after contradiction, empty threat after empty threat, such that up to now no right minded Zimbabwean has the faintest idea of exactly what the Party, (if it still a party), is trying to achieve. All the early gains of the MDC Party’s formative years have all but gone leaving a tattered tool of personal fulfilment, laying bear the sad reality that Zimbabweans got off on a non-existent larch and riding high in cloud cuckoo in the hypothetical belief that there was a Party firmly placed to take on the regime.
In fact, things have never been worse than they were in 2000 or before but the only difference is that then, the false hopes were still so fresh for anyone to see that behind that luminary horizon there was nothing really. Now the painful truth is slowly dawning on Zimbabweans that no miracle whatsoever will ever be sprung either by Zanu PF reforming itself or by an MDC maturity and this is why people think that things have worsened in Zimbabwe. What has worsened very substantially is the inadequacy of the MDC as a party to challenge if not stop, Zanu PF in their tracks and the corridors of power that smell with filthy arrogance. The MDC has equally missed on delivering the people and has resorted or maybe confined itself to the art of shifting goal posts, contradictory statements, and cheap political disclaimers.
In the beginning the MDC pledged to deliver the people through elections and this it almost did but because the Party has never been administered on the solid premise of holding on to covered ground, the initial electoral gains have been steadily eroded. Then the party was shifted onto the boycott footing whereby its existence was wedged on the basis of boycotting elections, Parliamentary sessions or national events and again this did not last with the strategy or none of it , thrust upon the never envisaged mass resistance of which a lot of noise was made. In an evidently time buying ploy, the country was scoured supposedly to consult and enthuse the people on the impending winter of protests so that they could actively participate.
Welshman Ncube summed up Tsvangirai more validly than anyone would do in a whole generation to come when he said those who worked with him knew that man and that he would never do any of the things he was pledging to do. Already Ncube has been significantly vindicated because after all that prep talk and the euphoria created by the fifteen thousand-fold congress, the humiliating submission is that the people are afraid to do anything. What is laughable however, is that the most afraid of the people will seek to remove the fear from within the people and one wonders how? Mugabe spent several years in prison but when he was released he showed his toughened and determined fighting spirit by reaching out for arms and going into real combat against Smith.
While Tsvangirai spent fifteen days in prison they were enough to cow him never to dare again preferring the lawful walk for solidarity fully knowing that one can never be arrested for walking to ‘work’. Zimbabweans are not afraid. Not even one time. It is Tsvangirai who is afraid and he is very afraid. Sprinting one hundred meters from Harvest house and going back in a flash before the sun rises is not what a gallant leader does, and a real leader does not mislead his people through serial scape goating. Lovemore Matombo, Wellington Chibhebhe and Lucia Matibenga and all the others were beaten black and blue while Tsvangirai was under lock and key telling people that the ZUCTU demonstration was not the MDC one because he was going to organise the real one later.
Mugabe is now more worried about Chibhebhe than Tsvangirai because he knows what separates the two men. Tsvangirai wants to be our President and that comes with sacrifice even of one’s life. Enough people have sacrificed and this is the time for the leader HIMSELF to take to the stage in the real sense, not to wave a giant miniature palm, but to lead the people out of extinction. How many times do we have to be dragged back to the drawing board while the country is rotting?
Tsvangirai is an integral element of that false kick-off and the ensuing artificial sense of security and this is the time for the reality check. No more false starts or dangerous existence. Zanu PF had been badly shaken by the aftermath of the NO Vote and the 2000 general elections and had been swept off their destructive feet yet the MDC has allowed them to regain balance and they are stamping the whole nation with those menacing feet.
Chihuri is a Zimbabwean politician based in the United Kingdom
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