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Fungi Kwaramba-Zimpapers Elections Desk
COMMON sense dictates that when one lights a candle it is placed strategically so that the light reaches every part of the room and that applies to everyday life where society places so much weight on the virtues of accountability, transparency and participation in governance.
In our Zimbabwean context, and for that matter in any country or organisation that claims to be democratic, there should be a light that shines in every dark place – providing accountability, transparency, and guaranteeing the participation of its collective members.
The participation of members must provide an outcome that meets the minimum threshold of democratic practices, when that is absent or contested there should be mechanisms for redress, otherwise the political party risks fracturing and losing members in a game of numbers that requires addition instead of subtraction.
Last year, Zanu PF held a series of constitutional elections that brought new leadership in the Youth League, the Women’s League, the War Veterans League, and the party as a whole – the goal of the internal democratic processes which were held transparently and via the ballot, the only tested method of electing leadership and ensuring member participation, was to place the party in readiness for the 2023 harmonised elections.
Early this year, using the same modus operandi, the ruling party held its primary elections to select candidates that would be on the ballot paper in the harmonised elections, again the party sought to minimise friction and provided respite for genuinely aggrieved members, who had a lifeline thrown their way in the form of the primary elections reruns that were held in 27 wards and about six constituencies.
This produced an uncontested outcome that has been the foundation of the ruling party’s preparations for this year harmonised elections.
Apart from laying a firm foundation ahead of the elections, internal democratic processes in Zanu PF have laid another plinth that is critical to the outcome of the elections, that is the compilation of a comprehensive scientific database of the party’s membership cell by cell, which means the party knows even before the elections the number of guaranteed votes.
That aside, synergies with the diaspora community have been formed while the doors have been opened for former opposition figures like Cde Blessing Chebundo, who now heads a group of returnees that is harvesting and fishing disgruntled members of the opposition.
As a result of its planning, its structures, and its deliverables the ruling party is already sitting pretty on 74 wards which it won without breaking a sweat, it is not afflicted by double or in the case of CCC triple candidates, and it is guaranteed more wards and constituencies because it has invested in the processes that produce a positive outcome.
That is why President Mnangagwa is able to reach out to every part of the country selling the brand Zanu PF, as he indeed did when he visited Chipinge just last week where the ruling party launched its campaign not selling bottled smoke to the people, but rather pointing to achievements made so far by his Government lifting Zimbabweans into prosperity, towards an upper middle-class economy by 2030.
At a glance, these achievements include, but are not limited to the Agriculture Food Systems Transformation Strategy and the Agriculture 8.0 Model, which have seen the number of households receiving support under the Presidential Input Support Scheme, Pfumvudza/Intwasa Programme, doubling to over 3 million households.
Additional support is also being channelled to the Presidential Livestock, Piggery, Goat, Poultry, Fisheries, Tick Grease, and Horticulture Programmes, among others.
In the Mining Sector, an array of new investments and exploration projects are being established across every province in Zimbabwe and the country is on the brink of achieving a US$12 billion.
This is the organisational genius of Zanu PF led by President Mnangagwa that has seen the mining sector growing from US$2,8 billion in 2017, to the current US$7,2 billion.
But I regressed, this instalment, is not about the achievements of the Second Republic, but rather about the importance of accountability, transparency, and participation in organisational structures, three key elements that guarantee success as briefly noted above.
Flipping the coin
Mr Chamisa, like the bad carpenter who blames his tools for his shoddy work, accuses Zanu PF for his party’s fielding of multiple candidates.
He also blames the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission for accepting the multiple candidates.
He blames his enemies, real or imagined for his troubles, but the real elephant in the room is himself and his politics of deception based on an equally dubious strategy of ambiguity, which has succeeded in producing remarkably ambiguous results that one hopes Mr Chamisa will live with.
This is because when he was advised by friends and foe to come up with structures and a constitution, he thumbed his nose and doggedly stuck to his guns which have now boomeranged in his face with dastardly effects on him and his briefcase party, the CCC.
As historian Yuvai Noah Harari noted in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, in the jungle: When two males are contesting the alpha position, they usually do so by forming extensive coalitions of supporters, both male and female, from within the group.
Ties between coalition members are based on intimate daily contact – hugging, touching, kissing, grooming and mutual favours.
Just as human politicians on election campaigns go around shaking hands and kissing babies, so aspirants to the top position in a chimpanzee group spend much time hugging, back-slapping and kissing baby chimps.
The alpha male usually wins his position not because he is physically stronger, but because he leads a large and stable coalition.
These coalitions play a central part not only during overt struggles for the alpha position, but in almost all day-to-day activities.
Members of a coalition spend more time together, share food, and help one another in times of trouble, this means that even primates have the sense to build structures and alliances which Mr Chamisa scorns and still believes that he will become the president of an organised country like Zimbabwe, when he himself despises organisation.
He is now haunted by the absence of structures, but when his party starts to disintegrate he will blame everyone else but himself, and conveniently and self-serving forget that without transparency, accountability, and people participation, an organisation will not stand the vicissitudes of time and will not, without a constitution, manage indiscipline as is manifest in the multiple entries of candidates vying for the same constituency.
Expecting miracles in politics is not only tomfoolery, but is the refugee of losers and whiners, who presume that God will only work in their favour when politics is by its nature a dirty game that is no field of saints, votes will not hocus pocus go to Chamisa because he believes it is his time.
When President Mnangagwa was launching his campaign in Chipinge, rubbing shoulders with his people, Mr Chamisa was in South Africa rallying his supporters, only his God knows that those will not be voting in the coming elections, registered voters will.
There is no method to the madness.
It is a banal fact that one plus one equals two, and in the same vein if one does not prepare he is setting himself up for failure, and no amount of hocus pocus or phantasmagoria will deliver votes to a person who has made himself a demigod – above scrutiny and criticism, elements that are found in aspiring dictators whose real intentions are often evident in their desire to destroy internal opponents as was the case in CCC where the old guard was ruthlessly cut loose in a medieval electoral process known locally as “bereka mwana”, which is designed to intimidate voters and enable manipulation of the outcome.
It is self-evident that while Zanu PF is adding, the opposition is subtracting.
The election may as well be a fait accompli for the country has only one serious political party while others are more of burial societies, led by delusional characters, who are blind to the writing on the wall and seek structured opposition in the form of price instability, which however have since stabilised and fizzled from being the instigator of protest votes that they dreamt of.
Online Reporter