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Factmore Dzobo
THE MDC-T “renewal team” led by Tendai Biti and Professor Welshman Ncube recently revealed that they were currently courting other political parties including Zapu led by Dumiso Dabengwa, Alliance Khumbula Ekhaya and Federal Zapu among others to form what they termed a “grand coalition”, which they say will improve the oppositions’ chances in politics.
Biti’s “renewal team” faction interim national chairperson, Dr Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, early this week told Chronicle that they were pushing for an agreement with other political parties to form one big strong opposition to fight for change in the country.
Political analysts have described the envisaged grand coalition as a non-event and an exercise in futility.
“This is a futile exercise. It is doomed to fail and the idea is emanating from political failures, people who are devoid of national ideologies. How can they form a grand coalition where there is serious mistrust among them? This coalition will never make the ruling party lose sleep,” said political analyst Psychology Maziwisa.
Maziwisa said the only grand coalition that the opposition parties could form was with the people of Zimbabwe and not with any other party or individual.
Earlier this year, Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Professor Jonathan Moyo denounced Morgan Tsvangirai’s feverish push to form coalitions with opposition rivals saying this would come to grief as weak plus weak translated to double weak.
He said Zanu-PF’s emphatic victory in the July 2013 elections left all opposition parties disoriented and irretrievably weakened.
Political analyst Godwine Mureriwa trivialised the idea of forming a grand coalition aimed at dislodging Zanu-PF from power, saying it was a political gimmick serving as a marriage for convenience to lure the disenchanted opposition’s donors back.
“Over the past decade, the MDC-T has been spearheading a loose coalition of forces opposed to President Mugabe and Zanu-PF for different reasons. It has to be remembered that Tsvangirai with the likes of Biti, Chamisa and Prof Ncube used to work with various churches, labour movements and civic organisations.
“These forces galvanised into the then united MDC fighting against Zanu-PF. This kind of politics of the opposition is all about who should get what from their Western donors,” he said.
Mureriwa said the lack of tangible national ideologies, policies and greed for money had brought the opposition party to its demise.
“A marriage of convenience is only a political gimmick to lure back the disillusioned Western donors who of late have discovered it foolhardy to continue pouring their money into the MDC-T’s bottomless pit. Even if the opposition forms the so-called grand coalition, without tangible national policies and ideologies they will never win the hearts of the people ahead of the Zanu-PF’s national policies such as the land reform which has won the hearts of majority of Zimbabweans,” he added.
Early this year, Biti admitted that Zanu-PF’s land policy made it win last year’s July 2013 elections resoundingly, ahead of their former president’s Tsvangirai’s “Juicy” policy.
Critics says since its inception, the MDC-T lacked the political foresight in its ideologies and the first blunder made by the MDC-T was the dumping of workers to join the national politics, pushing Britain’s agenda of opposing the Zimbabwe’s land reform programme.
This they say the party alienated itself from the people who were expecting the party to address bread and butter issues.
Instead the opposition masterminded its own downfall when it started parroting and peddling the US and Britain’s hegemonic tendencies of democracy, human rights abuse, no rule of law at the same time inviting economic sanctions.
This was the greatest undoing and sign of ideological bankruptcy which led the party’s downfall.
Former Prof Ncube’s led MDC Bulawayo’s provincial spokesperson, Edwin Ndlovu who has since rejoined his former party MDC-T said all opposition’s rival parties and members should come back to rejoin what he termed the “Big tent” and go back to their party’s founding values and principal of removing President Mugabe from power.
To some political observers grand coalitions without a national ideology are doomed to fail.
Former legislator, Cde Munyaradzi Gwisai, leader of the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe at one time clashed with the MDC-T leadership over ideological differences Tsvangirai’s brand of politics bordered on neo-liberalism and disguised as a social democratic party.
Cde Gwisai differed with the party on the land reform programme and got the axe from the MDC for publicly standing up in support of the socio-economic justice programme and saying the party has been “hijacked” by neo-liberal forces.
Sometime in 2005, the MDC split over the issue of participating in the senatorial elections with Prof Welshman Ncube the then secretary general of the party leading the pro-senate faction and Tsvangirai leading the anti-senate faction.
Prof Welshman Ncube and company later on joined Professor Arthur Mutambara to fight Zanu-PF and MDC-T, but their coalition never materialised.
This time around, Prof Ncube is back, the likelihood is that he will join the “renewal team” whose members he said have the same fundamental values as his.
It is a matter of time before the nation can tell whether the envisaged grand coalition bears fruits or not.
“It is true that parties as well as governments come and yet again it is true as a principle of survival in eternity that parties and governments with a historically and revolutionary founded vision and mission will live and last forever due to their inherent capacity to stand for their own and guided by their own conscience and capacity to be innovative,” said Steve Biko, the late South African pan-Africanist.
This observation seems to capture the emergence and falling apart of the MDC faction riddled opposition parties.
Online Reporter