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Joram Nyathi Group Political Editor
MDC-T mobs want to lynch secretary-general Tendai Biti. (He has in the past ranted about mobocracy in Zanu-PF.) Biti’s sin is that he did the unthinkable. He told the truth about his party, against the cock-and-bull story preferred by the party leader.First, Biti went against the grain when he condemned violence in the party after the MDC-T’s deputy treasurer-general Elton Mangoma was beaten up outside Harvest House for merely repeating that Tsvangirai should consider stepping down as party leader.
When Mangoma was suspended last Friday, once again Biti stood up.
He told a press conference soon after Mangoma’s purported suspension that the action was “illegal, null and void”.
The decision was unprocedural.
There was no quorum and the SG, who should have drafted the charges against Mangoma, according to the party constitution, had not done so.
The national executive was not given the chance to examine and make an informed decision on the charges against Mangoma. Surely, you can’t deliver democracy by violating your party constitution, or can you?
This was a direct challenge and Tsvangirai was livid. He let it be known that he was the MDC-T, the face of the struggle. He told his supporters that all those who wanted him to step down were nonentities; that they should leave the party themselves because they were feeding on his popularity.
Which is partly true, but also the reason why he would be a dangerous leader in power. More on this later.
But Biti has become a serial offender. Before the Mangoma debacle, he had committed sacrilege when he told a stunned Sapes policy dialogue forum the previous day that Zanu-PF had won the harmonised elections of July 31 2013 free and square on the basis of its sound policies. (Never mind the flip-flopping. We have said in the past that the MDC-T leadership failed to properly manage its ignominious loss and sought to whip up public emotion by claiming electoral rigging and fairy-tales around Nikuv.)
He said while Zanu-PF was on the ground giving people land and launching community share ownership schemes to potential voters, the MDC-T was playing the “sophisticated” party, promising potential voters that its foreign friends would bring Zimbabweans free JUICE.
Let’s leave aside the issue of Biti’s obvious hypocrisy about the rigging mantra for the time being. It is a staple diet of the party.
Even the party leader for the first time complained about diplomats speaking against violence in the MDC-T.
These were internal matters and party members should sustain the party through contributions and stop relying on foreign donors, Tsvangirai told his supporters at a rally. The significance of Biti taking an independent position lies less in accentuating internal battles in his party than in exposing a conspiracy by the political leadership to lie to Zimbabweans and the world. He has told the world that the party leadership can in fact connive to tell falsehoods about the outcome of a national vote.
He has shown us that claims of vote rigging can be manufactured when the truth is a public secret in the party.
(Don’t forget the fictitious figures of assisted voters which was given to gullible Deborah Bronnert, which caused the British government much deserved embarrassment for its meddlesome nose.)
Biti has done more and he should stop worrying about dying rather than join Zanu-PF. He should be good as an opposition leader if he can muster the numbers. The big service is that he has taken away the straw of illegitimacy which Tsvangirai was clutching at in disputing President Mugabe’s electoral victory by claiming that the election had been rigged.
Under the cloak of a rigged election, Tsvangirai besmirched an otherwise peaceful election with the patina of “dispute”. His “popularity” is so great that his protest alone engenders a disputed election and automatically delegitimises the winner!
And the media have dutifully repeated. They are aghast at Biti’s betrayal and he is being chastised. How can he say the election was free?
Why doesn’t he join Zanu-PF!
But Tsvangirai’s hubris about his own popularity is extremely dangerous, especially when you then have his supporters declaring that they are prepared to kill for him personally; not any enduring principle which the MDC-T purports to stand for. Tsvangirai’s violent mob is fighting to give him a cult status which cannot be challenged even by some of the party’s most senior and more discerning members!
Then the party reinforces this by telling all gullible believers that its leader is the face of the struggle to give us a democratic Utopia. It makes one cringe.
Some of us have nothing to celebrate in the inexorable fracturing of the MDC-T. It is not good for democracy.
It is not good for the ruling party. In its vibrant form, its threat makes those in power less complacent, and more accountable. But their electoral loss appears to have left them completely disoriented.
The problem with the MDC-T thus far has been its over-reliance on foreign opinion to formulate “strategic” policy for the country; its disdain for national sovereignty, its opposition to fundamental policies like the land reform programme and indigenisation and economic empowerment. That obviously cost it votes, not Nikuv.
That is what Biti is telling the world.
Biti’s courage, shorn of his hypocrisy and collusion in trying to foment anarchy in the country by alleging election rigging so massive that the victory embarrassed Zanu-PF, is that in finally publicly accepting the truth of his party’s defeat, he has at once undermined Tsvangirai’s credibility as an honest loser while at the same time giving us a faint hope that we might, just might, in future have an opposition party which is prepared to concede defeat.
That can only be a party with its roots firmly grounded in local circumstances and looking for local solutions.
To a certain extent, Biti has always acted the maverick in the MDC-T.
I still recall that he was the first senior MDC-T official to publicly acknowledge that the country was under sanctions in 2009, and that these made economic recovery a Herculean task.
He was also the first to acknowledge that Treasury was not getting as much as it ought to from mining companies exploiting the nation’s natural resources. His boss must have resented this, but at least Biti did not question his authority.
A lie is difficult to sustain forever.
And it is disingenuous to spread lies about those with whom you later want to engage in so-called national dialogue and a possible unity government.
How do they know how many nails you are hiding in your velvet glove?
That is why Zanu-PF has told Tsvangirai to take his overtures for national dialogue elsewhere.
If the proposal for a national dialogue to resolve the country’s challenges is made at a party rally, why not complete the package by stating what his proposed solution is since he appears to be interested in discussing issues through the media; the same crime he accuses his subordinates of committing?
Online Reporter