MDC — the movement that cries for a democratic rebirth

Vincent Gono, Features Editor
DEVELOPMENTS in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Mr Morgan Tsvangirai are indeed ironic, they are a replay of the same political script with a different cast and setting.

The party’s recent announcement that it will circumvent primary elections ahead of 2018 elections makes a mockery of democracy as a term and a political system. This is however, not surprising as Mr Tsvangirai has always been found guilty of willy-nilly and wilfully flouting the party’s founding principle of democracy.

He has proved his rigidity, inflexibility, insensitivity and intolerance to the liberties enshrined in true democracy as a system of government and to divergent political views. He has shown all that he and those who have formed themselves around him are allergic to subjecting themselves to the people’s scrutiny.

His recent assault on democracy came out loud and clear when he said: “Our biggest problem, as a party, is the division of supporters and this is caused by elective congresses and primary elections.”

“Now I want to tell you, this time around, there will not be any primary elections. We will select our candidates through consensus. Those who want to contest in a particular constituency must discuss among themselves and come to a consensus. I am waiting to hear the names of the odd ones, who will say they cannot find common ground (and) I will ask them if they are MDC or Zanu-PF,” he said.

“As regards the Senate, this time, I will choose representatives on my own. I will personally vet those whose names will be put forward because I know every MDC cadre and their contribution to the party from the formation of the party,” he reportedly said.

Whatever the reasons, it is all too clear that he is not willing to embrace the term and pay the price that it comes with. This is not shocking as the party has always been found wanting when it comes to issues of internal democracy.

It has grown extremely intolerant to divergent political views with those who refuse to tow the political line exposed to harassment and torture. A deep-seated culture of violence, intimidation and harassment have always been the party’s essential ingredients to gag dissenting voices and this goes against the grain of democracy, something that has led to a significant but continuous peeling off of his party’s membership including the civic society and student movements.

Although the party has been working very hard to conceal its failure to adhere to democratic principles to the point of sometimes blaming other political parties and State security agents, it is all too clear that it has become its own democratic enemy. The recent attack on party Vice-President Thokozani Khupe and others in her faction who included party national chairman Mr Lovemore Moyo and organising secretary Mr Abednigo Bhebhe for expressing silently their reservations on the coalition issue was a case in point.

“The MDC is acutely aware that the CIO and other such detractors are having sleepless nights regarding the successful launch of the MDC Alliance at the Zimbabwe Grounds in Highfield… As such Zanu-PF regime will do everything possible to try and collapse the grand political coalition,” said MDC-T spokesman Mr Obert Gutu.

He was unaware that Mr Bhebhe had already placed the blame squarely on party leader Mr Tsvangirai for working hand in glove with the party thugs.

It was not the first time that the party had employed violence on its own and one will not be far from the point to say it is not the last too.

In fact it was only an issue of the same script, a different setting and a different cast with the February 15, 2014 violent attack on former deputy treasurer general Mr Elton Mangoma and former youth assembly secretary general Promise Mkwananzi.

The attacks pointed to nothing less than the suppression of democracy in the party. Factional fissures continue to form and widen with each passing day and the possibility of another split reminiscent of that of 2005 and 2014 that gave birth to a litter of parties whose rejoining has been celebrated as a coalition cannot be ruled out so soon.

Coincidentally despite Mr Mangoma and Mkwananzi just like Mr Bhebhe openly declaring that their attackers were fellow party members, the party finds Zanu-PF as a suitable scapegoat.

But now people know the truth. Even those in the party who have refused to be blurred by political gimmicks coming from its glib propaganda misfits tasked with the work of glorifying the party oftentimes testify to that.

Mkwananzi wrote in one of the daily publications describing his and Mangoma’s barbaric attack by youths whose actions were traceable to Mr Tsvangirai: “This situation was worsened by Douglas Mwonzora’s inaccurate and misinformation of the media thereby compelling Mangoma to respond to the media to correct and clear some of the misperceptions which were deliberately created by Mwonzora. Mwonzora and Luke Tamborinyoka pathologically lied to the press that we had been assaulted by Zanu-PF thugs. This, to me personally was as unjust and unfair as it was shocking,” he noted. Indeed the setting and cast has changed but the script has remained the same with Mr Gutu just like his predecessor Mr Mwonzora lying to the press and Mr Bhebhe just like Mr Mangoma then correcting the facts.

The question is, is there a shred of democracy in the MDC-T as a party? Or the term is just part of the name that has no meaning? Maybe like so many other names it has no meaning but is just a name, maybe just like Peter.

By definition the term democracy is derived from a Greek word demo which means people or majority and kratos which means power. In simple terms it means people’s power or majority rule.

And in most cases people in democratic societies are allowed to choose their leaders and Governments through the process of a plebiscite or voting done usually through secret ballot. In the case of the MDC-T however, the party seems to have thrown the democracy part of its name through the window immediately after its formation and endorsement by its Western sponsors.

As a result most of its congresses have turned out to be interesting factional fighting dramas characterised by violence with the founding president allegedly always dictating the pace while his praise singers would, through their blood, sweat and tears, be doing everything to protect his dictatorial tendencies which had become part of his DNA.

Insiders said despite Tsvangirai having gone beyond mere political exhaustion he expected to be listened to and obeyed almost without a question.

They said he was employing dirty tactics on perceived internal enemies because he was just not ready for an appointment with the political scrape yard.

And perhaps what is exacerbating his fears is that even his traditional backers and sponsors are standing aloof and also predicting another split, the first one, when he failed his first major democratic test which led to the split of the party after which there were a coterie of other minor democratic tests that never helped the situation leading to smaller other groups peeling off as well.

And now he is in another democratic examination room where developments seem to point to another dismal performance that may buckle the party’s knees and finally leave it in the abyss of political history.

Party sources in Bulawayo said their leader never learns from history, arguing that it was imposition of candidates that led to a dismal performance in 2013. They said the 2013 primary elections were undemocratic, twisted, controversial, totally biased and repressive and were punctuated by a home-boy syndrome.

“All what is happening now in the MDC-T are the long term effects of the congress of all party congresses that were held from 2011 where the mafikizolos and strangers were conscripted to positions of power, where the home-boy syndrome and tribal trump card took precedence over party interests. There is massive tempering with the party’s Electoral College,” said one party insider.

The MDC, like so many so called democratic parties in Africa, was sponsored by the West at the turn of the millennium to replace liberation movements that were regarded as no longer fashionable, confrontational, old and ideologically at variance with former colonisers. But behind the façade of promoting democracy through multi-party political systems that were not so common in Africa lies a real neo-colonial agenda.

And in a “he who pays the piper plays the tune setup” the resultant so called democratic parties were not only receiving money from the Western countries but they were also receiving ideologies of how to deal death blows to liberation movements whose unity of purpose has caused a headache among colonial powers.