Zimbabwe’s mainstream opposition, now in the form of a number
of MDC offshoots, has been having a bit of a spat over former Zanu Pf second
secretary and national vice president Joice Mujuru.
It began with the MDC
Renewal’s Elton Mangoma, in the throes of factional fighting, accusing his then leadership rival, Tendai Biti of liaising or at least wanting to join Mujuru in her
newfound political endeavours.
A few days
later, Biti retorted that it would be the height of idiocy for them not to seek
some sort of political pact with the former vice president. Though he also stated that it was highly unlikely
that he would ever form a similar coalition with Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader
of the largest opposition party in Parliament.
Not to be outdone was the MDC-T spokesperson, Obert Gutu,
who warned Mujuru against taking the MDC-R seriously because in his own words, ‘they
don’t have numbers’.
Add to this the wannabe mediator voice of Simba Makoni and
you have an opposition falling over its feet trying to be in Mujuru’s loop.
In return, the spokesperson for the still to become a physical reality People First, Rugare Gumbo, confirmed
meeting with some of these outfits to sound them out. He is also reported to
have said that they are looking for those with numbers on the ground.
While avoiding mirth, one can be forgiven for thinking that
it is Joice Mujuru who has been in opposition politics all of this time.
A key question is how it is that contemporary and long duree
opposition parties are caught wanting to curry favour with their one time and
rather obtuse rival over and above their own programmes of action?
Of the opposition parties in the mix, only one is actually
fully constituted. This being the MDC-T.
It held a congress and has a national leadership elected from the same
for a reasonable period of time.
The other parties that are clamouring to be at
Mujuru’s table have nether held full elective congresses in the aftermath of
the 2013 harmonised election. And they are all in parlous internal states with
factionalism, defections and resignations.
Moreover, none of these parties have so far articulated an
alternative post 2013 national program to rival the generally defunct Zanu Pf
one of ZimAsset. Even where they have a substantive national leadership.
Instead, their national plans of action appear to either
split, cause further splits within splits, cause by elections they do not participate
in and then immediately thereafter seek coalitions with personalities that have
been their rivals all along.
This is however not to say coalitions are a bad thing in
themselves. One only needs to look a the
Kenyan example of multiple collations toward general elections to
get an idea as to how these may work. It
was the National Rainbow Coalition that defeated ruling party candidate Uhuru
Kenyatta in 2002. Eleven years later it was
another coalition, the Jubilee Coalition that eventually brought Uhuru Kenyatta to
power.
The key difference is that those opposition parties that
joined electoral forces all had their own initial programmes and organizational
capacities that they brought to the coalition table.
In our Zimbabwean contemporary case, the collective opposition
is not in a state to form a serious or organic coalition among the old players
or the much vaunted new player on the scene.
At least for now.
What would be required is for each of the opposition parties
to get their internal affairs in proper democratic order, articulate their national
visions and then seek out broad coalitions.
The default route, which can be appealing for its populism,
to merely gather personalities together and claim a grand coalition, will sad
to say, not work. There will be
scrambles and disputes over leadership positions and uncoordinated presentation
of the overall national agenda of such a coalition. As already evidenced already by the
media spats over who Mujuru should join forces with.
The saddest thing though is that for all these years, the opposition
has not learnt to continually stand its own organic political ground . It
has to wait for Zanu Pf to help it find a new cause along the way. Its own issues get clouded in the dust of
factionalism, petty personality differences and an unfortunate propensity to
seek international recognition before all else.
Perhaps, this time things will be different. Perhaps there
will be a statesman/woman that will emerge from this raucous opposition politics
in Zimbabwe. But on the basis of current events, it will be tremendously hard
work for democratic success to be realized. If only for the country.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity
(takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
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