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Zimbabwe's future in Zanu PF's hands
By
Innocent
Chofamba-Sithole
THE most
likely probability from the prevailing configuration of political forces
in Zimbabwe today is that Zanu PF looks set to remain in power long
after the departure of Robert Mugabe.
This looming scenario owes itself as much to the Machiavellian scheming behind the ruling party’s self-reservation strategy as to the unravelling of the main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
For anyone who cares to understand the trajectory of power in Zimbabwe today, it is important to begin with an appreciation of two obvious but fundamental and mutually reinforcing realities underpinning the political contest over the state. The first one concerns the decisive constitutional authority that now vests in the parliamentary Zanu PF party in the wake of the 2005 general elections. The second is that the MDC, as we had come to know it over the last six years, has ceased to exist. Its place has now been taken over by two rival factions commanding significantly less support than their erstwhile progenitor.
To put it plainly, Zanu PF’s constitutionally contrived two-thirds majority means that it does not require the consent of the opposition in Parliament to keep Mugabe’s successor in State House for years on end before he or she is subjected to a national election. Already, Zanu PF is reportedly mulling such a strategy under the guise of holding joint parliamentary and presidential elections in 2010.
The opposition could respond to such manoeuvres either by co-operating with the ruling party with a view to influencing the transitional process and securing a role for itself in an envisaged transitional government, or it could mobilise political resistance against them altogether. However, the first scenario appears more realistic than the second for reasons that will become clear as this discussion unfolds.
As Eldred Masunungure has eloquently argued recently, for any mass resistance programme to succeed, the opposition needs to grapple with the “basic asymmetry in the risk orientations of the ruling elite and the ruled masses”. According to this argument, the opposition is faced with the challenge of transforming Zimbabwe’s subjective political culture into one that is capable of actively supporting civil disobedience against a risk-taking Zanu PF regime.
It follows, therefore, that success in this endeavour necessarily hinges on the opposition leadership’s own capacity to eschew risk-aversion in order to inspire a culture of popular activism. And yet it must be mentioned that our recent history is replete with missed opportunities; the opposition leadership has tended to remain inert even in circumstances where “the ruled masses” were reasonably predisposed to support one form of civil disobedience or the other.
For example, the erstwhile MDC leadership chose to pursue dialogue in the aftermath of Mugabe’s disputed victory in the 2002 presidential elections, only for them to rediscover their resolve to confront the regime head-on more than a year later. But the decisive moment had already been lost, hence the failure of the grandly ambitious but conceptually awkward “Final Push” of June 2003.
Since then, the Zanu PF regime has summarily dissolved the MDC’s elected municipal governments across the country and embarked on the infamous Operation Murambatsvina without eliciting as much as a whimper of protest from the opposition. Critics have seized upon this apparent political lethargy to charge that the MDC was never a truly organic, socially-based political movement. Whether this charge is fair – let alone accurate – is not the focus of this discussion.
However, it is necessary to point out that the unravelling of the “spaghetti mix” at the apex of the MDC has left the opposition movement grossly disarticulated and strategically hamstrung.
In direct response to this dismal state of opposition politics, and against the background of deepening economic woes, the electorate has become disillusioned and apathetic. The ill-conceived and clearly unsustainable threats of “a winter” of mass action by Morgan Tsvangirai and his faction have exacerbated this sense of political resignation as they have served only to emphasise the opposition’s weakness.
It is quite clear that the opposition currently lacks the capacity to mobilise decisive resistance against any constitutional deferral of the presidential election for the simple reason that the opposition itself has ceased to be attractive.
How strong, then, is the likelihood of the opposition co-operating with Zanu PF over transitional arrangements to a post-Mugabe era? Going by the historical record, one would have to concede that the opposition is highly amenable to some form of negotiated settlement with the ruling party. The elusive objective of the MDC’s diplomatic campaign over the last few years has been to bring Zanu PF to the negotiation table in order to thrash out arrangements for a transitional framework.
The single-mindedness with which the erstwhile MDC pursued the diplomatic route almost became an open admission of its declining people power. Hence the party’s trenchant frustration with Thabo Mbeki’s choice of foreign policy towards Zimbabwe.
With the opposition as weakened as it is, and Zanu PF winning more than 140 seats unopposed in crucial local elections in recent weeks, it is apparent that the ruling party feels no political pressure to engage in inter-party dialogue. However, it may consider talking to the opposition and civil society over transitional arrangements in order to create a semblance of national consensus as part of a strategy to thaw the West’s diplomatic siege on the country. The availability of choice, in terms of which opposition faction to engage, also presents Zanu PF with potentially strategic political capital.
The country’s immediate post-Mugabe future, therefore, appears to be firmly tied to the outcome of Zanu PF’s internecine succession conundrum. The prospect of the ruling party itself splitting along factional lines has been raised quite frequently, especially now as the race to succeed the octogenarian strongman draws closer to the finish-line. This “split thesis” assumes that decades of “democratic centralism” within Zanu PF have virtually transformed Mugabe into an institution-within-an-institution and that his departure, in the absence of both elite and rank and file consensus over his successor, would inevitably have cataclysmic consequences for his party.
However, I am inclined to discount the “split thesis” on several grounds. First, Zanu PF’s factions recognise how important the party’s continued control over the state is to its regime reproduction agenda.
Therefore, the leadership ambitions of the ruling party’s competing factions have to be understood within the context of intra-state power contestations that are at once informed by the overriding imperative to preserve the party at the helm of the state. In other words, the succession race is a political battle to be lost and won entirely inside Easton’s proverbial black box.
It is highly unlikely that any of the Zanu PF factions is prepared to march into opposition and take on the might of the would-be state-sponsored ruling party.
Unless there is a viable partner in the pre-existing opposition to ally with on the eve of elections, as happened in Kenya in 2002, it is difficult to imagine that either faction is ready for the often protracted, arduous and thankless industry of opposition politics.
Secondly and inseparably linked to the first point, both factions are no doubt reassured in their presidential hopes by Zanu PF’s contrived constitutional authority to either re-mould the institutions of state or to re-write the rules of political engagement to its liking. It would be absurd for them to risk losing this political advantage by splitting up.
Thirdly, intra-party political contests are, in principle, not zero-sum games. An accommodation of the losers and their critical minimum interests is always a necessity before closing ranks to face external competition. Besides, it is still possible that whoever loses the presidential contest can proceed to enjoy significant or even decisive political influence through factional representation in both party and state structures, such as central committee, politburo and parliament.
Finally, the major
protagonists in Zanu PF’s succession race have material interests
of immense proportions and will most likely act out of economic
self-preservation rather than set themselves in confrontation with the
“pirate state”.
Therefore, the vanquished faction is more likely to immediately fall in. Having presided over the dissolution of white economic power in commercial agriculture as well as the hounding of undesirable black businessmen, none of these state-sponsored bourgeoisies are prepared to suffer utter ruin at the hands of a vengeful ruling party. Besides, where is the pain in political compliance when your loyalty could earn you access to lucrative equity in the soon-to- be-liberated mining industry? Add that to the three or so farms acquired in the Third Chimurenga and things could pretty much look up after all!
I need not prescribe what the opposition needs to do to forestall this uninspiring prospect, for that has been pointed out more eloquently by many others before. But whatever they decide to do, the opposition need to understand that time is fast running out.
Sithole is a Zimbabwean journalist and writes frrom the UK. He can be contacted at: chofamba@yahoo.co.uk
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