via Lessons to be learnt from breakaways 5 November 2014 by Tawanda Majoni
For some time there has been talk of the need for Zimbabwe’s fragmented opposition to unite against Zanu (PF) and President Robert Mugabe. This strategy is inspired by the Kenyan Rainbow coalition of yesteryear and looks beautiful on paper.
But it is important to remember the fate of the political splinters in order to learn lessons from their failures. Their history not only sheds light on what the opposition has failed to do, but also on what it must now do in order to transform itself into a viable option against the ruling party. Of course, some of the splinters cited here have died, but good lessons can still be drawn from the graveyard.
The splinters did not all come from Zanu (PF). The Movement for Democratic Change, which by far has provided the most broad-based challenge to Zanu (PF) since independence, has already given us three rebel babies so far. In one way or another, these MDC renegade groups remain relevant to the grand coalition discourse, while Zanu (PF) has generated two rebel movements that can also be part of the grand coalition.
This piece is limited to what happened after independence in 1980, and will not bother with splinters that occurred prior to that.
First was the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) formed by the talkative Edgar Tekere formed to contest the 1990 elections. Tekere had been expelled from Zanu (PF) in 1988 for opposing a one party state and exposing growing corruption in his beloved party. He managed 16 percent of the votes against Mugabe—a mild shocker so to say—while his ZUM garnered 20 percent of the national vote – even though it bagged only two seats.
Tekere helped form Zanu in 1963 and shepherded the scholarly Mugabe into Mozambique to fight the racist colonialists. He spent 11 years in jail with Mugabe too.
As the Zanu (PF) rot spread, Margaret Dongo, who hailed from Tekere’s home province of Manicaland, broke away from the party and formed the Zimbabwe Union of Democrats (ZUD) in 1998. She was what modern democrats call a child soldier because she joined the war at 15, and was heavily involved in Zanu (PF) after independence. There was then a lull in party rebellions until 2005 when Welshman Ncube left the mainstream MDC following acrimony among the party leadership over the re-introduction of the Senate.
Then, in 2008, Simba Makoni and Dumiso Dabengwa, both Zanu (PF) heavyweights who sat in the politburo, pulled away and formed MKD and Zapu, respectively. There was another lull during the Government of National Unity) between 2009 and 2013 until Tendai Biti early this year broke away from Tsvangirai and now leads what he calls the Renewal Team.
By the way, there was also Job Sikhala who broke away to form his own MDC-99 – but he is now back with Tsvangirai An interesting commonality among all these splinter groups is that they have struggled to come up with their own unique ideologies and ways of doing things. Instead, they have claimed to be working to do better than their mother parties.
As a result, they have remained in the shadows of their former umbrella p formations. The main tragedy with this is that the electorate has struggled to distinguish the rebel movements from the parent bodies outside the individuals who have moved away. Because of this vagueness, the rebel leaders in Zanu (PF) in particular have been accused of selling decoys to the electorate. Invariably, Tekere, Dabengwa, Dongo and Makoni have all been accused of being moles of the ruling party. It is evident that the splinter groups always struggle to survive. They think like the old parties, and sometimes act the same way.
To worsen their plight, they enjoy lesser numbers. And they have always had to operate on thin pockets. Funding has largely eluded them because they have not been convincing to potential funders. The breakaway projects have tended to revolve around the personalities of those who led the splinters. In this regard, it is difficult, if not impossible, to see Zapu beyond Dabengwa, MKD after Makoni or even MDC-N without Ncube.
Besides ideological poverty, the splinter groups are also poor in strategy. They sometimes look lost on what they should do. In some cases, they actually display a tendency towards inconsistency and contradictions and are prone to play to the gallery instead of dealing with real issues at a practical level.
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COMMENTS
Tawanda what drives most Zimbabwean Politicians is the quest for power. They say that they wish to empower the people but in actual fact they end up taking the power from the people.
Leo Tolstoy said “In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty.” They stated off together to free the people but that has totally been forgotten. Tolstoy also said ” I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means – except by getting off his back.” This is what we have been doing all these years. Carrying these people on our backs. It will be very difficult to get a few leaders that think about the people. If they did they would not be doing this bickering and concentrating on uniting to save this once beautiful country.
Interesting . There has being no lessons learnt from the past about breakouts. At the present time there appears to be a disguise there is democracy in Zimbabwe but at the same time all parties are jockeying to be part of the gravy train once Bob meets his maker. Its all a scam my fellow Zimbabweans and dont be conned. Your intelligence will pick it up. They are all sleeping in the same bed.