A rejoinder to Paul Themba Nyathi

A rejoinder to Paul Themba Nyathi

• Bloody Monday for MDC

• Paul T Nyathi: Tribal slurs easy to make, but extremely dangerous

• Brilliant Mhlanga: MDC no longer an alternative

• Patrick Mlambo: Tsvangirai has lost plot

• Nyathi hits back at Tsvangirai bribery claims

• Bekithemba Mhlanga: Tsvangirai fell for Zanu PF bait

• Alex Magaisa: Handling a fledging democracy

• Elliot Pfebve: Tsvangirai and Mugabe, larvae and butterfly scenario

• MDC moves to impeach Tsvangirai

• Gibson Sibanda: Tsvangirai in breach of constitution

• Tsvangirai accuses officials of vote-buying

• Itai Zimunya: MDC split good for Zimbabwe

• Tsvangirai bid to heal rifts

• Chenjerai Hove: The MDC and a very Zimbabwean disease

• Tsvangirai must 'come to terms' - Nyathi

• Msekiwa Makwanya: Tsvangirai, lessons in democratic process

• Heads must roll

• MDC splits widen after senate vote

• Tsvangirai: We are out

• Nyathi: We are in

• MDC to boycott senate - Tsvangirai

• Melusi Nyathi: MDC must reconnect with people

• Mugabe sets November 26 Senate poll date

• Tsvangirai plays down rift with Ncube

• Oscar Nkala: MDC should snub senate

• Mugabe calls senate poll for November, MDC undecided

• Msekiwa Makwanya: the MDC, the senate and boycott politics

• Morgan Tsvangirai: The senate, what's in it for the people?

• Grace Kwinjeh: No to senate elections!

• Kwinjeh attacks MDC senate poll participation

• MDC to contest for senate seats

• Prof Jonathan Moyo: New amendments should face battle royal

• New constitutional moves 'will not fly'

• Chinamasa slammed over 'exit visa' threat

• Innocent C Sithole: The MDC and culture of prevarication

• MDC wants to give senate a miss

• Prof Welshman Ncube: Constitutional reforms recipe for disaster

• Zim denies plot to curtail critics' travel

• Dr Alex Magaisa: Constitution without Constitutionalism

• Lucas Nkomo: The right to revolt against tyranny

• Tawanda Hove: Constitutional reforms and MDC mess

• US says Zim moves 'a sad step backwards'

• Rights groups condemn constitutional moves

• Paul Themba Nyathi: Dark day for democracy

• Parliament passes amendment bill

• Prof Jonathan Moyo: Constitutional madness will not save Zanu PF

• MDC ambush Zanu PF with draft constitution

• Zim tables bill to amend constitution

• Lawyers condemn constitutional amendment

• Aspiring Zanu PF senator dies of poisoning

• Alex Magaisa: Constitutional amendment spells doom for economy

• Chinamasa admits Zanu PF has no two thirds

• Zimbabwe senate will last only 5 years

By Stanford Mukasa

I HAVE listened to Paul Themba Nyathi’s 18-minute interview on SWRA as well as read his article in the New Zimbabwe.

In a classic case of the devil-may-quote-scriptures-when –it-suits-he Nyathi is very good at selectively moralizing issues and proselytizing principles that frame the MDC’s struggle for democracy.

But Nyathi comes far short on articulating not only the basic democratic theory of representation but also some facts on the ground.

And this has raised suspicions about the real motives of this so called “top six” in the MDC. Let me explain.

Nyathi has become a zealous fanatic of the 33 – 31 vote by the National Council. He has made the vote not only a supreme decision but also sacrosanct and binding on everyone in the MDC. So are we to assume, for example, that when Mugabe’s Parliament voted in favor of resuscitating the Senate MDC MPs are bound to support the Senate?

In any democratic decision -making process the president of the organization has executive powers which include the right to challenge, to sign or not to sign the majority vote. Much as I hate to do so for the simple reason Mugabe is not really president of Zimbabwe on the grounds that he stole the elections, I have to remind Nyathi that when Parliament votes overwhelmingly in favor of a bill it still has to go to the “president” for his signature.

The “president” has the executive authority to sign it, or refuse to sign it. It does not become law merely because it passed by a majority decision in Parliament. When MDC becomes the government of Zimbabwe the likes of Nyathi will have to familiarize themselves with this two-tier approach to democratic representation and decision making.

(Refer to Gibson Sibanda's article on MDC constitution)

When the National Council voted the way it did, the next step for Nyathi should have been to go to the president of the Party from where he would receive clearance to make a public statement. Nyathi serves at the pleasure of the president of the MDC.

As such Nyathi should have cleared his statement to the press through the office of the MDC president. The president of the MDC has, or should have, the executive powers to question a vote and even call for a review of that vote. This is why he is an executive president, not just the King or Queen of the MDC. This is a system of checks and balances where both the National Council and the presidency are two institutional tiers in a decision-making process where one has to check on the other to ensure a fair representation of the membership of the party’s followers.

If a deadlock were to emerge between the president and the National Council then some institutional mechanism for dealing with the issue, such as referring the matter to the Congress or back to the provinces should have been used.

While Nyathi appeared exuberant in articulating the rights and powers of the National Council or the democratic principle of the vote, his sonorous cantations were reduced to an inaudible mumble when it came to articulating the powers of the executive president. Herein lay the bias. When Nyathi announced the results of the vote he did not also announce the position of the president. This one -sided presentation made him party to the de facto coup that was clearly emerging among the “top six.”

And now let us come to some facts. Nyathi has absolutely refused to comment on the reports that some members of the National Council had been instructed by their constituencies to vote against participation in the Senate. Yet they changed their minds and voted in favor. The fact that nine or 10 provinces reportedly came out in support of the boycott, notwithstanding the misrepresentation of their position by their delegates at National Council does not seem to have bothered Nyathi.

He was asked this question by Violet Gonda on SWRA, specifically that some provinces had complained that their delegates had not voted according to their instructions. His nonchalant answer was he was not going to be bothered in discussing this! He avoided the very reason that justified the nullification of the National Council vote by the MDC president. Yet he alleged intimidation “coming from the president’s office.” He was the only one who alleged intimidation. No one outside the “top six” corroborated his allegations.

Nyathi very conveniently and callously chose to ignore facts that were staring at him in his face. The powerful women’s and youth leagues, the vast majority of the membership of the MDC, the nearly 50 percent of the delegates to the National Council, the civic society leadership in Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans in Diaspora have all come squarely against participation in the elections. Unless there was a secret agreement between some unnamed individuals in the so called “top six” with Mugabe about who was going to be allowed a breadcrumb Senate seat it boggles anybody’s mind how Nyathi could possibly hope to win any Senate election against such overwhelming opposition from within the MDC to participating in elections.

Abraham Lincoln once said a house divided cannot stand. We have an MDC National Council split in the middle on this issue. Didn’t this ever give Nyathi cause to pause and reflect on the implications of the 33 – 31 vote? All this makes me see Paul Themba Nyathi as the Roman Emperor Nero who was playing fiddle while Rome was burning. He has totally closed his mind, eyes and ears to the national sentiment against participation. The fact that the Senate will be a useless white elephant that will gobble over $250 billion just until the end of this year, and the fact that just about any sane person in Zimbabwe is fully aware that the Senate is Mugabe‘s very expensive "thank you" gift to appease his failed politicians does not seem to have made any sense to Nyathi.

The Senate has had no historical significance in Zimbabwe’s politics. It was dismantled in 1989 because it was a white elephant and a very expensive bureaucracy.

What then motivated some members of the National Council to vote in favor of participating in the Senate under these circumstances? Could some of these members have been driven by outside interests? Why did Mugabe and Mbeki express an interest in the internal politics of the MDDC? And why, specifically, did they appear to be siding with the renegade “top six” and the pro-participation faction? Why have the “top six” now been making pilgrimages to Mbeki for mediation? Why did the “top six” not to go back to the people of Zimbabwe and argue their case there? Where they afraid that if they appear before the people of Zimbabwe, instead of before Mbeki in South Africa, they might notice how much of an exaggeration their “top six” designation is, and how close they really are from the bottom? Could there have been some private tripartite agenda among the “top six”, Mbeki and Mugabe to force MDC’s participation in the Senate as a way of legitimating the Senate?

The Zimbabwean nation will undoubtedly breathe a sigh of relief that there was at least one man in the MDC who stood firm in their interests. And this is the very same man that Nyathi is lambasting; the same man who, ironically, is receiving a hero’s welcome wherever he goes in the provinces. That man is Morgan Tsvangirayi.

Stanford Mukasa is a journalism professor in the USA and can be e-mailed at: mukasa@iup.edu
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