On Saturday, the MDC family gathers in Bulawayo to commemorate the 17th anniversary of this great party. Seventeen years ago to the month, Zimbabweans gathered at Rufaro stadium in Harare to form this formidable political institution that now boasts of massive support from across the length and breadth of the country.
Source: MDC @17: Redefining the endgame – NewsDay Zimbabwe September 30, 2016
Opinion: Luke Tamborinyoka
The MDC and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai are home-grown political brands now sufficiently embedded in the national psyche to the extent that the party slogan, Chinja Maitiro/ Guqula Izenzo have become a national chorus in the country from Plumtree to Nyafaru, from Msampakaruma to Mandidzudzure.
The MDC has broken Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe’s political hymen, leaving the repressive party and its nonagenarian leader totally bemused; in complete denial of our national appeal and failing to fully appreciate the national spread of this great post-liberation movement.
On Saturday, all roads lead to Bulawayo; itself a carefully chosen venue to commemorate the party’s birthday. A young party with a lot of experience; probably the only party in the world that has waged a successful struggle against a hegemonic nationalist dictatorship armed with nothing else but bare hands, the audacity of hope, service and sacrifice.
At only 17, we are tried and tested across both political contours. We know both the corridors of government and the grind of opposition politics. Our leadership has been both in prison and at Munhumutapa Building; that citadel of government power in Samora Machel Avenue, Harare. Indeed, we have lived and experienced life in the political extremes but most importantly, we taught this regime that it was possible to turn government into an arena of selfless service to the people of this country.
When all hope was lost in 2009, it was Tsvangirai and the MDC’s competent hand at the wheel of government that made the difference to a despondent nation. The facts speak for themselves that it was the MDC that opened schools and hospitals that had been shut in harmony with the mediocrity of that era. This government may be struggling to raise salaries for civil servants but at our peak during our tenure in government in 2012 when we were in charge of the national purse, government was able to raise annual revenue of a staggering $4 billion.
In the election of 2013, despite all its imperfections that are now a matter of public record, the MDC swept all the parliamentary and council seats in Bulawayo, making Zanu PF a complete stranger in the country’s second largest city. The tired party was to clamber back after a few by-elections in which the MDC deliberately chose not to contest until far-reaching electoral reforms were implemented.
We have braved a tenacious 17 years in which we have lost comrades; in which we have watered the tree of our struggle with nothing but blood, sweat and tears.
Tsvangirai will speak to the depressed national context. He will explain the character of the great party that he leads and celebrate the emerging national convergence that is now inspiring a despondent nation. He will wind up with the now public secret that the only durable way out of this national mess can only be a return to legitimacy through a free, fair and credible poll.
Three years ago at the 14th anniversary celebrations at Sakubva stadium in Mutare, Tsvangirai delivered a great speech with a powerful punch-line that he borrowed from King David. After thieves and bandits had looted his property, King David in the Holy Book uttered the famous line borrowed by Tsvangirai in 2013 after the people’s mandate was again pick-pocketed by this regime: “We shall pursue, overtake and recover all”. The regime had just stolen an election and the MDC leader was pledging that the party would recover the people’s stolen mandate and install a legitimate people’s government.
As we celebrate, that promised recovery of a looted mandate is well on course — the sonorous national expressions of discontent on the streets of our country tell their own unique story of a brave people that has finally conquered the ghost of fear.
The theme is MDC @17: Redefining the Endgame. Yes, the end of this regime is nigh. Banking on sheer brute force —what Kenneth Galbraith (1983) called condign power — is no longer sustainable in our modern societies. This is the modern age where persuasion and soft power can make a whole lot of a difference. The sight in our streets of police officers bludgeoning innocent citizens and brutally suppressing a public protest sanctioned by the High Court exposed the archaic Fanonian and Machiavellian leanings of this regime. For God’s sake, this is the brave 21st Century and the glorification of State violence can only be as outmoded as our 92-year old President! Indeed, a relic of antiquity unbefitting of today’s politics of persuasion and not coercion.
Zanu PF itself has starkly refused to reform. Not only has the leopard said it will not change its spots, we remain fully aware that it is not amenable to nail cutters because it is its nails that define it. But we will reform and re-define this stubborn leopard called Zanu PF! After all, we have always known that this struggle was going to be a marathon, and not a sprint!
When a whole President publicly attacks the judiciary because of an unfavourable judgment and when he refers to an independent commission such as the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission as a “non-governmental organisation” as Mugabe did a few weeks ago, it becomes clear that even his image-minders have become helpless.
When you see all those people expressing themselves in the streets as permitted by a Constitution they made themselves, they are redefining the endgame.
The emerging convergence of war veterans, civil servants, opposition parties and the generality of the people of Zimbabwe in ostracising this decrepit regime is also a redefinition of the endgame.
When a diverse nation begins to speak with a sonorous voice demanding comprehensive electoral reforms that guarantee legitimacy, as Zimbabweans are now doing, they are redefining the endgame.
Luke Tamborinyoka doubles as the Presidential Spokesperson as well as the Director of Communications in the Movement for Democratic Change. He writes here in his official capacity.
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