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Is Tsvangirai his own man?
By Chikoko
Muponde
WHAT is happening in the MDC should force us to ask questions about
ideas of democracy and the constitution.
If Tsvangirai believes in free and fair elections, why is it that he goes on to reject the outcome of an election he suggested himself? Will he be able to accept results of any election that do not promote his own vision and ambitions? And, for the pro-senate faction, why do they also not accept that 46 out of 70 (or 52 out of 66 as reported) members of the so-called all-powerful National Council attended the meeting and overturned the watershed 33-31 vote last October? Is there anyone in the MDC who likes to lose? Something is rotten in the MDC party, and the sooner members of the party get to the bottom of it the better for the struggling democratic forces.
The faction that favours participation in the senatorial election is presenting strong arguments about defending whatever space the electoral process allows them. But it seems to be the benefits of fighting for and maintaining that space are just symbolic. To put it in Chenjerai Hove’s conscience-raising words on the same issue, the pro-senate faction is out ‘kunodziya moto wembavha’.
Real practical benefits have not been delivered in most MDC territories acquired through mayoral or parliamentary elections, nor have the MDC’s presence in parliament been respected by the ruling party which is determined to reduce it to mere nuisance value.
This is where Tsvangirai’s argument makes sense. To what extent can a party constitution be allowed to enslave the majority of the people it sets out to represent, even if the so-called all-powerful National Council would like to make MDC followers participate in something that has no moral principle? The pro-senate faction seems to believe in legality or constitutionality without morals or conscience. They would like to make us believe that conscience is not a basis for breaking the law.
Prisoners of conscience like Mandela will laugh at them. Mugabe will crack his fists at them, because if he had been schooled by the pro-senate faction in the MDC, he would never have led ZANU PF into a ruling party.
But that Robert Mugabe is not laughing at the pro-senate faction is not because he is not aware of their timely gullibility and foolishness that will soon render them irrelevant to Zimbabwean politics. Mugabe himself knows any politician who ties himself to serving unjust laws, whether of his own making or not, will never know the true taste of unfettered liberty. That is why the state controlled political editors are suddenly giving acres of space to every utterance by Gibson Sibanda, Gift Chimanikire, Paul Themba Nyathi and Welshman Ncube. Wily Mugabe is luring them into what will finally choke them for good. It is not daydreaming to think that a Unity Accord 2 is in the offing, but it will be with the Bulawayo-based faction, as it was in the past. It will still lack a broad-base, and will be supported by the elite, not the general povo. Hence there is need for the pro-senate faction to think through the limitations of their constitutionality, and stop being viewed as Ndebele ethnic leaders (in spite of pushing Gift Chimanikire to spew venom once in a while, and having all but one of the white legislators in their wings). Will the white section of the community be better served by an ethnic and elitist politics or broader mass movement, the latter which overlooked their whiteness as MPs?
Leaders must have that extra vision beyond the clauses of a constitution. But ultimately, the constitution must be respected, if it respects the will of the people, the minorities and the majorities. How the constitution should balance this is something that the MDC should be thinking about.
In a technical sense, Tsvangirai has not respected the constitution of the MDC. The 33-31 vote shows the pro-senate lobby had a simple majority, but whether it translates to a majority in terms of the grassroots support is still very questionable. This is perhaps why Tsvangirai decided to challenge his electoral loss by going back to the people. From what we read in the papers, his rallies are well-attended, and the key constituencies that ultimately decide the fate of any popular leader in Zimbabwe, the women and youths and the workers are fully behind Morgan Tsvangirai.
So, who does Welshman Ncube and Gibson Sibanda and his faction represent? Elites in the MDC who have no national appeal? If the numbers game is pursued to its logical conclusion, Tsvangirai has a larger national following, much larger than the numbers that the pro-senate faction can manage. As it has turned out, many other districts and provinces have now rallied behind the Tsvangirai faction. Only the three Matebeleland provinces have stood out as the champions of the 33-31 vote. What actually happened during the 12 October National Council election? Why have the supporters of the pro-senate faction dwindled so fast? Why would the secretariat of the MDC not call for another election if they were so sure the 33-31 result was binding and immutable? So, is the MDC constitution serving the interests of its many followers or the elites and their narrow interests? Isn’t it time the party gets down to the business of amending its constitution, or redrafting it, to make it more responsive to the wishes and struggles of the common members of society, than try to make us believe that its laws are immutable. Aren’t there professors and legal scholars in the party who understand that when laws begin to work against popular aspirations they become redundant and causes of friction and war? Aren’t there historians and war veterans in the party to remind all of us why the liberation war was fought in the first place? Aren’t there poets and priests of conscience in the party to remind all of us that when the yoke of unjust laws becomes too heavy, the protest of the prisoner of conscience finds echoes in the depths of the suffering of the poor?
If the pro-senate faction believes Tsvangirai is a dictator in the making, and is unwise and uneducated because he has flouted the MDC constitution, the same can be said about the dictatorial and oppressive tendencies of the MDC Constitution which rejects a person’s right to be directed by the pangs of his conscience, whether he is in the majority or not. Fortunately in this case, Tsvangirai’s conscience speaks to the majority of the population, and that of the pro-senate faction is still to be tested at grassroots level. Recent events have shown that it is now a wobbly pro-senate faction that is threatening to take more than half of the MDC membership to court in order to insist on its discredited, and rejected politics of elitism and tribalism.
Retreating to Bulawayo as a place of bitter memory in order to score points is in itself one way of playing tired politics. Zanu PF tried in the past twenty years to cool the pain of Matabeleland by promising Zambezi water, and recently by donating computers to schools, but the Matebeleland vote still eludes them. The pro-senate faction is aware of the elusiveness and bitterness of the Bulawayo vote, and would like to split the MDC party in such a way that Matebeleland remains forever quarantined, hounded and marginalized by frustrated politicians desperate to sign Unity Accords with them. For as long as the pro-senate faction holds Matebeleland hostage, that part of the country will forever remain a Ndebele space, and not a national space. It will forever be oppressed by the sentimental politics of always being regarded as the mourned ones, without real value being delivered in terms of development and national integration. There is need to develop a broader, trans-ethnic vision of history, which recognizes that forces that unleashed Gukurahundi on Matebeleland in the 1980s, are the same ones that unleashed Operation Murambatsvina across the country in 2005. Retreating and restricting politics to the hurts of one geographic space will miss the broader links that are important for the democratic struggle.
Bulawayo people should reject people who speak into their pain, and feed on the fodder of the painful past, in order to get seats in the discredited and impoverishing senate, or ministerial posts as a result of political handshakes and compromises. What we are seeing in the pro-senate lobby is real battle fatigue and a politics of accommodation. They would rather rest sooner than continue with the painful struggle to realize the highest possible moral and political standards in Zimbabwe. I do believe that those who seem to think that the break up of the MDC at this stage is the darkest hour of democracy are rather too squeamish. Zapu went through this, and Zanu was born. Zanu Pf still struggles with factionalism, but it does not stop it from ruling, whether you agree with how it rules or not. Why should being in the MDC be so romantic, rosy and buddy-buddy?
History has its
own ways of correcting, and even repeating its own anomalies. The break
up should be welcome as an early-warning system, even a cleansing process,
well before another presidential election. It could have been worse
if Zimbabweans had suddenly found themselves ruled by a bunch of people
who brandish the constitution, however immoral it might be, as if it
is all there is to life and politics. Whichever MDC faction will come
on top of the situation, will now have the opportunity to refine and
redefine its mandate and politics, and come to the common market begging
for votes. Only in this regard is it pertinent to ask whether Tsvangirai
has finally become his own man.
Chikoko Muponde is a researcher based in Johannesburg
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