via Life after Political Victory | newzimbabweconstitution 11 December by Alex T. Magaisa
Success in any endeavour is something that every individual or group strives to achieve and every effort is invested in order to attain it. It is an incredible experience and most people who have achieved moments of success know the feeling. But success also brings with it new challenges. And oft-times, when the rest of the crowd around is celebrating and others are envying the winner, it is not unusual that the winner is burdened by a feeling of uneasiness, brought by the realisation of the new challenges that success brings.
And so it is that while the parents are excited and telling the entire world that they daughter is number one in her class, the successful daughter is already concerned by the challenge of maintaining the number one spot. Because anything less would be considered a failure. While the General is congratulated for defeating the enemy in battle, he is already thinking about how to keep the enemy at bay and how to win the next battle. Success in the mind of the winner is an historical phase, indeed, a big challenge on its own that requires careful management.
And sometimes when you have used devious means to achieve success, you can be visited by a strange feeling of emptiness. And in such cases, you do not have a clue what to do with such success. You would have achieved the goal but would have no clue what do thereafter. One is reminded of the early days of August 2013, when an eerie silence and uneasiness descended upon the land, soon after the July 31 election. The victors were unsure and uneasy in their moment of supposed glory. Some, who were told that they had won, were surprised by their success, let alone by the margin of their success. It was a strange phenomenon in those days, when victors were reluctant celebrators, unsure and an uneasy in their victory. It was strange.
Now, more than a year later, the newly-named Vice President, Emmerson Mnangagwa has won a long-running battle against his erstwhile boss, former Vice President Joice Mujuru. It has been a bruising battle. It has left many wounds, soon to be scars and permanent reminders of an historic episode in the history of Zanu PF and the country that it leads. This success has hurt and disappointed a constituency that is not insignificant. It is the kind of success that comes at a heavy price – a price constituted by broken relationships, mutilated trust and broken hearts. It has created a huge reservoir of discontentment and resentment.
The now former VP Joice Mujuru thought she had it all. You could have been considered a fool if you had bet against her taking over from President Mugabe when he finally departs office by resignation or some other cause. But it was taken away and it is the manner in which it was wrested from her that would have hurt in the most painful fashion. She was mercilessly harangued by Grace Mugabe, the First Lady and humiliated by Mugabe himself before a gallery of cheering zealots. It would have hurt and hurt very badly.
She knows the man who has taken over from her was behind her downfall. Disrobed of the apparel of State authority, Mujuru and her allies may be powerless today, but Mnangagwa will be astute enough to know that they are not dead yet, whatever his most zealous supporters might say. It was her error in the lead up to 2014 Congress that caused her side to fall into complacency when they thought they had completed the job. It was this error that he, Mnangagwa capitalised upon. So he will be careful to avoid it. He will have to sleep with the proverbial eye open at all times.
But therein lies a problem that might afflict him and his allies. It is the problem of paranoia and what it might provoke. Since they realise that they effected a palace coup, bloodless though it was, they know that there is a thoroughly displeased and disaffected constituency within. The problem is how they will respond to this. They might respond to any perceived threats with a ferociously hard hand. They might begin to see threats everywhere, failing to trust even their own shadows. And they might use those threats as justification for a clampdown on opponents. Already, we have seen in the last couple of months, incidents that have been reported as ‘assassination attempts’ on Mnangagwa.
The first was a car crash in Harare involving Mnangagwa’s vehicle, which he was driving, a few weeks ago, just before Congress. People debated the incident without conclusion. Some were alarmed but others expressed doubt. Nothing much has been heard about that incident since then. The second is the most recent one, where we are told that cyanide was sprayed overnight in his office. Apparently his secretary entered the office first in the morning and she suffered the consequences. She was said to have been hospitalised.
Naturally a debate has ensued over these incidents. Sympathisers believe them to be genuine attempts on the newly appointed VP’s life. But others are more doubtful. They say these are contrived attempts at drawing public sympathy. Others are more cynical, saying these are precursors to a major clampdown, which might see worse being visited upon alleged perpetrators of these acts. Whatever the case, these incidents demonstrate the precarious and delicate nature of the matter. What is worrying, of course, is that these events are not without precedent in our political landscape and when they have happened before, they have brought dangerous consequences, the wounds of which, to date, have not healed.
Back in the early 1980s, arms caches were found on farms owned by Joshua Nkomo’s PF Zapu. There were already tensions between Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF and Nkomo’s party. These tensions went back to the early sixties, when a group of men broke away from Zapu, led by Nkomo to create Zanu. The split was acrimonious. When they prosecuted the liberation war, they did so through the agency of their two separate military units, Zanla and Zipra. When they negotiated for independence at Lancaster House in 1979, they pulled together as Patriotic Front and the expectation among some was that they would contest the historic elections together. This failed and they contested separately, with Mugabe’s Zanu PF winning the national vote but Nkomo’s PF Zapu taking most of the Matabeleland vote.
Although Mugabe had won and had become Prime Minister, the success had brought its own challenges. The failure in Matabeleland worried him and despite a unity government at independence, relations with Nkomo and PF Zapu were always uneasy. Those relations broke down when those arms caches were allegedly discovered. This was exacerbated by the sporadic incidents of dissident activity in the region, which Mugabe blamed on Nkomo’s Zapu. In his book, The Story of My Life, Nkomo pleads innocence. Kevin Woods, the CIO operative who worked as a double-agent for the South African Apartheid regime points to the sabotage carried out by so-called “Super Zapu” dissidents, who were sponsored by the Apartheid regime, to destabilise the newly independent State across the Limpopo.
But it was in that time that Mugabe was quoted as saying that when a cobra enters the home, the only way to deal with it was to crush its head. Relations with Nkomo and Zapu broke down completely. Nkomo fled Zimbabwe. The legend was that he dressed as a woman when he crossed the border into Botswana but it is an account that Nkomo denies vehemently. Gukurahundi followed – a brutal military operation that left thousands dead and displaced. The brutal operation only ended when Zanu and Zapu signed the Unity Accord in 1987, in terms of which the two became one political organisation, to be known as it is now, Zanu PF. Incidentally, Mnangagwa was Mugabe’s security minister during that time.
It is unlikely that the present acrimony will take us back to that dark period. But that dim era remains a grim reminder of how badly things can go if political acrimony is not carefully managed. Whether or not these alleged assassinations attempts are genuine, the hope must be that they are not a precursor to a period of political clampdown or worse, public emergency, under which most of the fundamental rights will be suspended. These are extremes but our history teaches us not to rule out anything.
It is clear that the victory for Mnangagwa and company has come at a huge cost. They will need to manage it carefully and find a way of handling their broken comrades. They are the ones that now have power but with power also comes serious responsibility. They will need to exercise their power responsibly. And in this regard a word needs to be said of the State media.
The State media has, throughout the recent battle for leadership, specialised in spewing vitriol and in some cases they have crossed the line and entered the arena of hate speech. They have used their power to whip up emotions amongst the political mob. The mob has responded with hate speech, too, taking a cue from the dominant State media. It is time to tone down this kind of behaviour. It is unnecessary. History reminds us that the media had a key role in the Rwandan genocide and in the atrocities that took place following the Kenyan elections in 2007. The media has to be more responsible. This is an issue the opposition has been talking about for many years and we have seen it again in the recent internal battle. It perpetuates a retrogressive culture. By all means pursue the criminal allegations – but there is a legal arena for that and if there is any seriousness, the legal facilities must be used.
Finally, success is a great feeling but it also brings new challenges and responsibilities. It means the deed is done but it also means new challenges await confrontation. It means the heightened challenge of avoiding failure. And in this case, it means facing the challenge of fulfilling the dreams and aspirations of many but also the challenge of handling the fall-out from the bitter and acrimonious fight that preceded the most recent success.
wamagaisa@yahoo.co.uk
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