Biti: a thoughtful coward

Opinion Joram Nyathi
SUSPENDED MDC-T deputy treasurer-general Elton Mangoma is in a fighting mood. I don’t care whether he is popular or not, so that is beside the point. On the other hand, secretary-general Tendai Biti appears to have recoiled and jumped back into Tsvangirai’s “big tent”, all sins forgiven and forgotten.

Mangoma’s initial letter which led to his assault and later suspension was more of a plea for party leader Tsvangirai to make an introspection over his performance in the past 15 years at the helm.

Earlier, Elias Mudzuri had made a more or less similar plea, asking Tsvangirai to safeguard his legacy so that he could be spoken of as the late former South African president, Nelson Mandela.

But this time around Mangoma is not pleading. He is making a demand. Following Biti’s inexplicable volte face and “return home” this week, Mangoma was quoted in the media making sabre-rattling remarks which were much bolder than anything he has said before.
Mangoma said he did not want to be blamed by future generations for endorsing Tsvangirai as a leader when he knew he didn’t have the capacity. “I worked with him, I know him, he has no capacity, he is not fit,” Mangoma is quoted as telling The Zimbabwe Mail. “He must step down.”

Tsvangirai is obviously not ready to step down. He is busy engaging party structures. He has allegedly purged people perceived to be aligned to those who believe he has overstayed his welcome in Matabeleland North, Manicaland and other provinces. His argument is that only congress can remove him, a valid point.

However, what Mangoma’s defiance has done is to expose Biti as a strategist. He was one of the first people to condemn the violence visited on those who challenged Tsvangirai and only escaped the same fate by the skin of his jacket after slipping into Tsvangirai’s vehicle. He was the first to declare Mangoma’s suspension unconstitutional, and therefore null and void.

Both Biti and Mangoma have taken a different reading from Tsvangirai’s on the results of the July 31, 2013, harmonised elections. Tsvangirai took the now familiar line that the elections were rigged although he withdrew his constitutional petition before it could be heard last year. He had no shred of evidence. Mangoma said in his offending letter that the MDC-T leadership should accept “responsibility” for the party’s dismal performance.

Biti was one of those who went onto the mountain tops to claim that there had been a monumental electoral fraud. His “Wananchi” writings on Facebook revealed a person who was shocked and inconsolable after the loss. And there was a wring of conviction by the way. He made everybody feel that his party was a victim of Zanu-PF’s naked, flagrant fraud. That was before he lost his guard at a Sapes discussion on the fate of opposition politics recently. It was the turn of his interlocutors to be shocked.

True, he did not say Zanu-PF didn’t “steal” the elections. Instead, he said Zanu-PF had won because it had better and simpler policies which resonated with ordinary Zimbabweans: land and economic empowerment. His party, on the other hand, had been “too sophisticated” for ordinary folk. They were promising “hopes” and “dreams”.

Only the sober, sophisticated and honest can make such a public admission, especially given the predictable backlash. And that backlash didn’t come from Zanu-PF but from the MDC-T itself, civic society and the media. They all wanted to know what he had just smoked.

Perhaps he wanted to enjoy the cathartic effect of clearing his conscience once it became self-evident that there was no chance of reversing the electoral result, let alone the holding of another election soon.

At his recent rallies, Tsvangirai has been telling his supporters that those who want him to step down should leave the party. At one such rally, Biti was denounced and asked to resign as secretary-general. He did not.

Then Tsvangirai suddenly had an epiphanic moment. There was a huge possibility of another split. That would be the end of him and he had to avert it at all costs. He made a surprising “climb-down”. Those who left the party had been forgiven. The MDC-T, he proclaimed, had a huge tent where everyone was welcome. Prodigal sons and sisters would be welcomed with purple robes.

Job Sikhala was the first to join Tsvangirai in the MDC-T’s leadership cockpit.

Biti is certainly not a fool. It is telling that at his “unveiling” at the Tuesday press conference, he did not speak. There is a risk of a Fraudian slip when you are still seething with anger.

The most likely reason Biti grabbed Tsvangirai’s hand to jump back into the tent was a strategic one. By going public about leadership renewal, they had misread the reaction of their party supporters. There was a big chance that they could be fired from the party. That would mean having to start afresh, with a new name and few believers in this third way.

The MDC-T is a strong brand. Mangoma and Biti are part of that brand. Both have been able to identify weaknesses in that brand which need to be remedied. Mangoma pointed out the leadership challenge; Biti pointed to the ideological vacuum in the party. And in both cases, they are at variance with Tsvangirai who sees himself as the face of victory. Perhaps they spoke too soon for their own good.

More importantly, leaving the party at this critical juncture would open them to vilification which they could not effectively counter while at the same time creating space for opportunists waiting to deal with an already weakened and panicking Tsvangirai.

In his Sapes presentation, Biti was clear that the MDC’s original electoral message of “Mugabe Must Go” was now sterile. It had no takers among the electorate, he said.

Tsvangirai failed to win elections when that slogan was still seductive, yet he still uses the same language in his search for a “grand coalition”. I cannot perceive any meeting of the minds with Biti.

It is convenient for somebody intelligent like Biti to attack Zanu-PF for its “exhausted nationalism” and call for a new developmental state, yet at the same time he is fully aware of the need for something concretely national around which to build an enduring constituency. You cannot wish away Zanu-PF’s liberation legacy. You cannot dismiss with conviction its land reform and other black economic empowerment policies just because there have been rotten apples in the basket.

What will be the new message next time? It has certainly got to be more concrete than Zanu-PF violence and the absence of democracy and human rights.

So, there might be a facade of peace but there is a gathering storm. The battle for leadership is not over in MDC-T.

Joram Nyathi is the Zimpapers Group Political Editor