Recently a senior and experienced teacher from a rural area told me of his political disappointment in what remains of Zimbabwe’s mainstream opposition political party in its original but now various forms.
We have known each other since the late 1990s.
He said, within this current Zimbabwean political context, it turns out we had given them false hope about the future of the opposition and what we then generally referred to as the ‘struggle for a democratic Zimbabwe’
It was a fair but very hurtful point.
Now he, unlike us was not a founder member of the then Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999.
He learnt of it later via the grassroots campaigns of the mainstream Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), the Association of Women’s Clubs (AWCZ), the International Socialist Organization (ISO), the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), the Zimbabwe National Students Union(ZINASU), the Zimbabwe Nurses Association (ZINA) and some church organisations that I will not mention here for their safety.
All of which had formed a very broad urban to rural alliance to help form what we would then refer to as the Working People’s Party (WPP). One that became the MDC in 1999 and would contest the referendum for a new constitution in 2000 together with the NCA.
It would also contest parliamentary elections in the same year since they were not harmonized at that time with those of the presidency. The MDC made a strong showing for a nascent opposition political party and took a majority of the urban constituencies.
Now let me go back to the rural teacher. He may have joined in the opposition political and mobilization narrative a bit later. But this was before the presidential campaign of 2002.
He was already buoyed by the fact of the electoral successes (not quite victory) of the opposition as a movement of varying stakeholders and was keen in participating.
Then the politically motivated violence accentuated toward the presidential elections. Some of the teachers, nurses, youth activists and community leaders such as headmen were displaced from their rural homes, others allegedly killed or maimed. Some left for the Diaspora on asylum missions.
But even after that and the violence that was the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) and its spill over to rural areas, those that remained in Zimbabwe did not give up on the hope that they saw in the opposition.
Neither did many of us as founder members in one respect or the other.
What however emerged was a culture of what is now referred to as a either a “founder member syndrome” or a ‘suffered the most syndrome’ to get the party or other movements to where they were.
Especially with regards to two things, marginal electoral success or entitlement to the material trappings of electoral office. Be it in parliament, local government or even civil society or trade unions.
As I continue, please bear in mind the conversation I have cited above with the rural teacher. He is seeing the mistakes of the mainstream MDC. All through the reported and very real internal splits until the 2008 harmonised elections. Where by that time the MDC had effectively split into two. The Tsvangirai- Mutambara factions.
With also a smaller player in the form of the Solomon Mujuru and Dumiso Dabengwa backed Mavambo Kusile Dawn (MKD) party.
Those of us old enough will recall the tremendous politically motivated violence that occurred in that 2008 Presidential election run-off. And how it changed the social fabric of our society to an extreme political partisanship.
To the extent that SADC had to intervene and help us form an inclusive government based mainly on a combination of measuring Parliamentary seats as well as the ‘officially’ declared presidential election run-off result.
For my rural teacher cde who had gone through these political processes in a remote area, hiding and avoiding the violence as much as is possible, he still held firm to the principle that the opposition was sincere and standing its ground on the basis of not only its founding principles of social democracy but also a generically people centered approach to its politics.
With the formation of the SADC backed inclusive government, it was evident that the sharing of power with the ruling party would sort of appear like a cooption of the opposition unless founding principles and practices cited above were applied.
Unfortunately, being somewhat close to some of the processes of the opposition side of the GNU, they were not followed upon. Hence the opposition lost the harmonized election in 2013 at both parliamentary and presidential level.
This signified the beginning of the ebbing of organic support for Zimbabwe’s mainstream opposition. And with it also came some other splits that we don’t have enough space to historically narrate but their end effects are being felt today.
By the time the founding leader of the then MDC, MT Tsvangirai passed on, the opposition had fallen trap to an ahistorical populism that forget the organic experiences of its original supporter. In the form of for example my friend the rural teacher, the headman, the rural nurse, the urban youth activist, the ambitious farmer, the Zinasu members (among many others) who were there at the beginning and passed on the baton to others.
In 2018, there was a mixture of politics, age/ and religion for the opposition to feel confident of an eventual history. And there were many new younger supporters for variegated material reasons that had been mobilized to support my former ZINASU secretary general and colleague Nelson Chamisa and his team under the MDC Alliance.
That too unfortunately was to split. For reasons that ranged from clashes of founder member egos to age issues through to vested foreign interests in the future of the opposition.
The same has since happened since the 2023 elections. Again. Like a cycle of political behavior that is inexplicably repeating the same political mistakes time and time again when and where there is an election. Or its aftermath.
Again back to my rural teacher cde. He stated his personal disappointment in the state of the mainstream opposition. He did not regret his partial role and survival in supporting it since at least the year 2000.
But he made an even more worrying remark. He said, verbatim, “We never thought it was about the money or mere proximity to the power either of the state or to foreign or private business interests. We just thought it was for the people we lived and worked with. From Mahuwe to Gwanda. Now it has all changed.”
We were quiet for a while contemplating the conversation we had just had. And then his phone rang. He came back with a one liner. “We are beyond disappointed”.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com
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