31 May 2012 By Reason Wafawarova In 2000, MDC was in its infancy and the party went
into its maiden election race wielding nothing else
but the slogan "Chinja!" — a rather vacuous, albeit
populist chant for a departure from the then 20-year
rule of Zanu-PF. This chant for undefined change was more of an
"anything, but Zanu-PF" attraction for most of
Zimbabwe's urban voters, as the subsequent election
result proved. MDC itself had been launched as an expression of
protest against Zanu-PF's anti-labour and Just like the very party it sought to topple by
preaching a vacuous gospel of change, the MDC itself
was spectacularly hijacked by the same Western forces
that had sponsored ESAP, a policy against which the
MDC was building so much mileage; indeed at the
expense of the revolutionary Zanu-PF — itself
certainly far from being revolutionary between 1991
and 1999 — a time the party pursued the privatisation
and belt-tightening austerity policies of the IMF with
indisputable conviction and even arrogance. As the MDC was hijacked by the West to be used as a
puppet tool against Zanu-PF, the only viable political
option for Zanu-PF was to remember its revolutionary
beginnings and to go back to the same people it had so
much pushed into involuntary austerity for the benefit
of Western investors. Just like the MDC went across Zimbabwean cities
with its chinja slogan in 2000, Zanu-PF heroically
came back into the picture, setting the election
agenda on compulsory land reclamation, encouraging and
even taking over commandeering of occupation of
white-held commercial farms by landless masses — that
way absolutely infuriating the Western imperialist
anaconda, particularly the Tony Blair government in
London, joined in fury by the Howard and Bush
governments in Australia and the US respectively. Employment remained the significant concern for the
urban population, but that was relegated to a matter
of little moment as the MDC successfully preached more
their hatred for Zanu-PF's alleged dictatorship than
they outlined their capacity to create jobs for the
urban youths, strangely getting away with it as well. While Zanu-PF fervently promoted land reclamation
through whatever media the party could muster, the
best opportunity to rebut MDC accusations availed
itself when the ousted white commercial farmers began
to actively and openly fund-raise for the MDC, with
the Westminster Foundation posting its financial
backing of the labour-turned-puppet-party on its
website. The incriminating evidence was later pulled
down after the damage had already been inflicted. Apart from capitalising on the immensely popular
land reclamation policy, Zanu-PF damningly and
correctly labelled their political opponents in the
MDC insidious puppets of former colonisers. That label
is the widely held view across the African continent,
notably in Zambia, South Africa, Ghana and the DRC. The end result of the 2000 election was that the
election agenda became a matter of the trampling and
roar of the bewildered landless masses on the one hand
and the rhetoric of the "responsible men," who vainly
tried to rubbish land occupation as a "lawless land
grab," warning endlessly that Zimbabwe was going to
become a "basket case" for the foolishness of
reclaiming her stolen land. Britain was even so daring
as to raise the issue of property rights; colonially
stolen land being the property in question. At the peak of the 2000 electioneering one Fidelis
Mhashu of the MDC went public through the BBC, boldly
promising that his party would kick out black farmers
and give back the land to ousted white commercial
farmers. Zanu-PF feasted heavily on this propaganda
scoop and Mhashu's party could not reverse his
foolishness for fear of ramifications from the
sponsoring white farmers. The sell-out label just
stuck firmer. One reason the MDC does not speak a lot about
policy is that the party is sponsored to practise
capitalist politics — where those elites deemed
responsible for the success of all others must be
spared the foolishness of the bewildered masses,
usually considered ignorant and dependant, and whose
only function is to be spectators and never
participants. It is like the way blacks were meant to
watch white colonialists develop Africa. Of course spectators are not supposed to bother
their heads with complex matters like ownership of
resources and reclamation of land, only limiting
themselves to simple matters like waiting to be
employed by smart-thinking Western investors. The MDC election agenda for 2012 is "vote for a new
Zimbabwe," or "Let us complete the change," — a lot
more vacuous than the original chant for change. The
MDC election manifesto is shaped not exactly by the
vision of the party leaders or by their innovativeness
in matters of policy. It is entirely moulded and
anchored on the shortcomings of Zanu-PF — real,
alleged or imagined; ranging from the alleged
dictatorship and brutalities to the real shattering of
democratic systems within the party itself — like some
of the recent Zanu-PF sham District Co-ordinating
Committee (DCC) elections held in parts of the
country, some of them ordered to be nullified by the
party's leadership. Reports are that some Zanu-PF charlatans instructed
voters on who should win, in many cases barring
popular candidates from contesting, citing the
dictatorial jungle rule that says "juniors must not
contest positions that are of interest to senior
members" of the party. There is no worse insult to
democracy than this filthy logic, and Zanu-PF needs to
stop this madness before the electorate is fed up with
the nonsense. But away from its internal democratic shortcomings,
Zanu-PF has set a more plausible election agenda for
2012 than their MDC partners in the current inclusive
Government. The party has repeated another
mass-resonating economic policy in Saviour
Kasukuwere's indigenisation drive, especially the 51
percent local ownership of essential businesses in the
country. Predictably the MDC-T is concerned that the policy
will disappoint the responsible and civilised people
of this world, who must be attracted at all cost to
come and employ our labour-gifted people. What often happens in elections is that the needs
of people often recede drastically as party managers
and their PR agencies focus on character politics —
elevating vilification of political opponents to the
status of national interest, with slander and hate
sometimes converted to pure logic. To this end the MDC-T
cannot see itself winning an election where Zanu-PF is
not portrayed as demonic. Senator Morgan Femai's recent lunatic contributions
towards the HIV and Aids policy are not only a matter
of personal inadequacy but rather a disturbing
reflection of the shallowness in policy among
candidates that are allowed by political parties to
contest for positions of power. Specifically the
utterances that women need to be shabby and
unattractive in order to curb the spread of HIV and
Aids were an indication of the lack of seriousness the
MDC-T places on policy formulation. That Douglas Mwonzora could not even gather enough
courage to discredit the utterances, save for blaming
the "unfortunate" blame on his party makes it even
more concerning. It has become more important to block
a propaganda coup for Zanu-PF that even perfect
foolishness can be subtly defended. That is the logic
at the MDC-T. Senator Femai is certainly a foolish politician,
but he is definitely not the only nut case in the
political community. The late Senator Joseph Culverwell was ejected from
Parliament in the eighties after he labelled the late
Sydney Malunga "a lunatic" for suggesting that rapists
were motivated by hunger, advising the House that
providing food to poverty-stricken males would help
reduce rape cases. Culverwell declared he could not put up with such
"empty mouthing." Sadly Zimbabwe still has to put up
with this kind of empty-mouthing. One MDC-T legislator recently proposed the
administering of a libido-suppressing substance to all
men, and also passing a law that limits sex for men to
once a month. The vanguard who uphold the elevated ideals of our
liberation struggle have among them some who believe
they are uniquely charged with managing the Zimbabwean
society and directing the course of our collective
actions, even regardless of our choices. To these the
drift towards unchallenged occupation of political
office must be acceptable to all loyal members of the
revolution — in happiness and in sorrow, in good
performance or otherwise, simply on the most important
understanding that those who fought colonialism are
immune to challenge. Zanu-PF lost quite a chunk of parliamentary seats
to this phenomenon of mistaking docility for loyalty
in 2008. Imposed candidates chose to sink with the
party instead of upholding the views of the voting
public and allowing electable candidates to contest. If this does not change in the immediate, Zanu-PF
can prepare to escort those unelectable members of its
vanguard into political oblivion. Fortunately the
revolution is greater than the party. Each time this writer has raised the issue of the
MDC-T's incapacity to articulate policy, there has
always been this blame that the party has no access to
outline its policies through the public media. What has not been explained is why the slogan
CHINJA has been so successfully promoted outside
access to public media and why the soaring rhetoric
about Zanu-PF's alleged dictatorial tendencies has
been so widely peddled outside this public media
access. It is a wonder that the pages of pro-MDC-T
privately owned newspapers are all blank on MDC-T
policy, writing on behalf of the insidious party more
about Zanu-PF's problems than the successes of the MDC-T
— of course because no such successes exist. Zanu-PF must forget totally about the MDC-T in the
competing agenda setting of elections. Rather the
party must learn to contend with the reality that the
West's marvels about free elections are only spared
for situations where elections are believed to have
come out the "right way," for Zimbabwe the MDC-T way. The 2008 June election in Lebanon was hailed as
free and fair by the entirety of the West just because
the Western-sponsored Saad Hariri's March 14 coalition
had won more representatives in Parliament, despite
having lost the popular vote 47 percent to 53 percent
to Hizbollah's March 8 coalition. The 2006 Hamas election win in Palestine resulted
in the brutal US-Israel response to a genuinely free
election, with other shameless people lauding George
W. Bush's administration for its noble dedication to
"democracy promotion," even suggesting that it was the
US responsibility to make the lesser people of the
Arab world appreciate democracy, not to do the
unthinkable of voting such "terrorists" like Hamas
into power. Zanu-PF must watch out for this trend in the coming
election.The whole idea of elevating debate about
alleged human rights abuses and "war crimes" by Zanu-PF
and its leadership is designed to criminalise Zanu-PF
and whatever the party stands for, land and
indigenisation included, even criminalising membership
to the party. The idea is to set an election agenda that
threatens to punish the electorate for voting Zanu-PF,
starting by labelling all Zanu-PF supporters criminals
by association — threatening those who openly support
the policies of Zanu-PF with retribution in the event
Zanu-PF does not win the election one day. The hell
promised to instil fear is, of course, The Hague. If the people of Lebanon had voted Hizbollah into
power in 2008, the USA would not hesitate to instruct
Israel to bomb them for it, the same way the
Palestinians were starved, bombed and brutalised after
voting in Hamas in 2006. Zanu-PF must henceforth insist that intimidation of
its supporters by Western-sponsored human rights
activists and other Western surrogates must stop
forthwith if ever there will be a truly free and fair
election in Zimbabwe. Rhodesian Eddie Cross recently posted an article
portraying Zanu-PF as a party in waiting for some
retributive trials and punishment and, surely, that
kind of behaviour must be halted if Zanu-PF is serious
about asserting itself as the true revolutionary party
responsible for bringing about the nation's
independence, a legacy Zimbabwe cannot afford to lose. Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome!
It is homeland or death!! Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in
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