adminAnd that b***h is the Zimbabwean electioneering season which has now reached fever pitch.
The first casualty of that season is the truth. The politicians can be forgiven because they are wont to stretch the truth to further their cause. Such is the nature of their game.
However, when it comes to analysts and commentators every dispassionate observer cannot resist asking the question: Is it a case of unmitigated intellectual dishonesty; professional incompetence or downright ignorance.
Ignorance, although detrimental to self and others, is no transgression. Blatant incompetence is not a virtue and ought to be frowned at.
However, intellectual dishonesty is an evil vice that is condemnable. Be that as it may, there comes a time when myths must be debunked; and intellectual dishonesty must be exposed.
The first myth that needs to be debunked in this election season is the Makoni factor. There are many theses that have been bandied about. The common denominator in these theses is the exorbitant exaggeration of the importance and influence that the person of Simba Makoni has on Zimbabwean political outcomes. Recently Dumiso Dabengwa was reported in one of the local newspapers claiming that, “I blocked Tsvangirai victory” and in the same article the MDC-T spokesperson gives credence to this when he is cited as having said, “they knew of the plot all along.” The nub of Dabengwa’s polemic is that the Makoni project, of which Dabengwa was one of the major protagonists, denied Tsvangirai outright victory in 2008. Dabengwa’s reputation as a liberation war time ZIPRA intelligence supremo should not hoodwink people into swallowing hook, line and sinker everything he says.
It must always be remembered that Dabengwa is an ambitious politician whose political star has been waning irreversibly in the past decade; and is therefore desperate for both relevance and salience.
That decline is mainly but not solely due to his numerous political faux pas. It must be borne in mind that the formation of the MDC coincided with a decline of Zanu-PF’s political fortunes in Matabeleland.
This is a self evident fact that needs no logical disputation to support it, and therefore Dabengwa’s decline before he jumped ship was partly linked to Zanu-PF’s waning fortunes in that region at the time. Dabengwa’s decline is just a digression but what needs to be subjected to robust but unbiased interrogation is his claim.
Did Makoni really cost Tsvangirai the victory in 2008? German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe counselled us that the devil is in the detail; we will heed his advice and excavate the details of the 2008 elections in search of the answer.
In the 2008 election, the Makoni Project garnered 207 470 votes or simply 8.31 percent. Where did these votes come from? If Dabengwa’s thesis (and it must be pointed out that it is not new and has in fact been peddled so often and often been naively believed) is correct then Makoni’s votes purportedly came from people who would have otherwise voted for Tsvangirai. These are MDC-T supporters we are made to believe. By definition MDC-T supporters vote for MDC-T candidates.
A supporter who votes for your opponent is simply not your supporter. MDC-T supporters would therefore be expected to vote for MDC-T parliamentary candidates. Since Makoni did not have any parliamentary candidates it would be expected that MDC-T supporters voted for MDC candidates for parliamentary constituencies, and then voted Makoni instead of Tsvangirai for the presidency. In this scenario the combined votes for all the MDC candidates should be more than Tsvangirai’s total vote. This is simple common sense and simple mathematics.
A simple analysis of the 2008 house of assembly results reveals that MDC-T candidates received 42.88 percent of the suffrage. Given that there were approximately 2 537 768 votes cast the MDC-T candidates amassed a total of 1 0879 69 votes. Tsvangirai received 1 195 562 votes. In other words Tsvangirai received 107 593 more than his parliamentary candidates. Tsvangirai outpolled his candidates, it is therefore puerile, infantile, unscientific and smacks of despicable illogicality to claim that there were MDC-T supporters who should have voted Tsvangirai but voted for Makoni instead. The evidence actually suggests that all MDC-T supporters voted for Tsvangirai, but not all supporters voted for MDC-T parliamentary candidates. Put differently, some voters cast their ballots for Tsvangirai in the presidential election and then cast their ballots for non MDC candidates in the parliamentary polls.
This is also true for the Senate election in which 43.56 percent of the electorate (1 105 222 votes) voted for MDC-T candidates; a combined figure which is less than Tsvangirai’s tally. This suggests that Tsvangirai actually benefited from votes from voters that were not necessarily his party supporters.
Most likely these were Mutambara/Ncube supporters especially in Matabeleland since that formation did not have its own presidential candidate.
Hold on! One might ask, “Does this mean that Tsvangirai is more popular than the MDC-T?” The answer is bad news for Biti and others who are reported to be eyeing Tsvangirai’s post. Tsvangirai the person is singly certainly greater than the sum of MDC-T’s parts. There is ample evidence to support this thesis.
In the 2000 elections, all MDC-T candidates put together received 1 171 051 votes but Tsvangirai singly mustered 1 258 401 votes in the 2002 presidential plebiscite. In 2005 all the MDC-T candidates put together harnessed 1 041 292 votes. This tally is less than Tsvangirai’s 2002 tally and also less than Tsvangirai’s 2008 tally. Whichever approach one chooses Tsvangirai has consistently outpolled his party candidates. This is more acutely revealed by a comparison of the 2008 tallies because in that election voters simultaneously voted for their parliamentary and presidential candidates.
How can Tsvangirai be more popular than the collective? The reason is simple. MDC-T as a collective campaign on the basis of policies, but Tsvangirai’s appeal to the electorate is personal. He may be brave or foolish or even both but the ineluctable truth is that Tsvangirai’s effrontery to compete with President Mugabe has won him supporters.
The message from the MDC-T constituency is that the supporters are not drawn and enamored by the policies, but by Tsvangirai the individual. This does not bode well for the party in the forth coming elections. Sleaze has mortally wounded Tsvangirai’s reputation casting serious aspersions on his electability.
The question still remains unanswered. Where did Makoni get his votes? In the first round President Mugabe received 1 079 730 votes, but the Zanu-PF candidates put together garnered 1 165 608 (45.94 percent) votes. Put differently as many as 85 938 voters elected Zanu-PF candidates for the parliamentary vote but did not vote President Mugabe in the presidential plebiscite. This is the quantum in numerical terms of the “Bhora Musango” phenomenon. Who did these people vote for? It is common cause that most of the “Bhora musango” advocates were rooting Makoni for the presidency.
Thus we can safely conclude that of the 207 470 votes cast for Makoni, 85 938 came from Zanu-PF supporters who should have voted for President Mugabe. Makoni’s candidacy therefore impacted President Mugabe’s vote more negatively than it did Tsvangirai’s.
If the 85 938 assumed Zanu-PF supporters who purportedly voted for Makoni are subtracted from Makoni’s total there still remains 121 532 votes. Where did these come from? To understand the source of this block of votes one has to understand the arrangement that existed between Mutambara and Ncube on one hand and Makoni on the other.
The Mutambara/Ncube candidates were actually urging their supporters to vote Makoni for president. This explains why Makoni did particularly well in some of the Matabeleland constituencies in which the Mutambara/Ncube candidates also performed strongly. Does this mean to say that Makoni did not have his own supporters? No; not at all. Makoni has a special appeal on an emerging black quasi middle class and quasi intellectuals. This is a miniscule and infinitesimally small fraction of the electorate.
To his credit Makoni has succeeded in projecting himself as the quintessential technocrat and a paragon of virtue, but his achievements have never been interrogated. Much has been made about his job at Sadc; but if truth be told that job was largely administrative and is totally stripped of executive authority yet Makoni conducted himself during his tenure as if he were the prime minister of Sadc.
Beyond his grandiose verbose but vacuous pitches, Makoni has no value, in terms of votes, to add to any coalition; grand or otherwise. If anything, facts and figures seem to indicate that Ncube and not Makoni was the spoiler in 2008, and he is set to repeat that this time around. Ncube seems to be self aware of his salience but Tsvangirai’s obtuse mindedness and hyper-inflated ego blinds him to this obvious fact.
Is this to suggest that Ncube should have been part of Tsvangirai’s coalition? Only a simpleton would do that. For all his lack of political dexterity and sophistication, Ncube is not a buffoon. Tsvangirai has neither the rectitude nor reputation nor track record to be expected to keep promises if he wins the election. There are too many hangers on in Tsvangirai’s cortege all overly eager to get plush jobs should he win. There will just not be enough jobs for these hangers on and for the so called coalition partners for Tsvangirai to keep his promises.
The other myth often peddled within Zanu-PF circles is that President Mugabe would have won the 2008 election if it was not for the Bhora Musango phenomenon. Well if all the people that voted Zanu-PF candidates had voted for President Mugabe he would have received a total of 1 165 608 votes which was still 30 000 less than Tsvangirai’s first round tally of 1 195 562. Zanu-PF for whatever reason, possibly because of disunity and factionalism and the consequent bhora musango phenomenon, did not mobilise effectively for that election.
If that complacency is repeated in the forth coming elections; the results will not be any different.
History is of the past, yes, but he that cannot learn from history also cannot create the future. The details from the 2008 election are portentous. The voter turnout in 2008 was 42.5 percent. Given the increased salience attached to this election by the different competitors, it is predictable that the turnout will be better this time around but based on previous elections it is unlikely that the turn out will exceed 50 percent.
Compared to other democracies where voting is not obligatory, a voter turnout of 45 percent is not too bad and certainly not uncommon. Assuming a 50 percent voter turnout and also assuming that there are about 6.2 million eligible voters, 1.6 million votes will be required to avoid a run-off. This is the magic figure. What does contemporary history teach us about this figure?
MDC-T has never come close to this figure. In the 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2008 elections, MDC-T mastered 1 171 051, 1 258 401, 1 041 292 and 1 195 562 respectively. These figures fall well short of the magic 1.6 million. To get to that figure the MDC-T would need to mobilise at least 400 000 more voters compared to the 2008 figure which was their best ever performance.
There is no iota of evidence to suggest that the MDC-T can muster such a massive tally. In fact in recent history the 1.6 million threshold has only been surpassed three times since 2002 when President Mugabe recorded 1 685 212, in the 2008 run-off election in which President Mugabe scored 2 150 269 under conditions of indisputable extremely high political consciousness and heightened contestation, and in the recent referendum characterised by consensus and cooperation among the main political parties.
In 2005 Zanu-PF came close to breach the 1.6 million threshold by recording a total of 1 569 867.
Historically, only Zanu-PF has surpassed the 1.6 million thresholds.
Based on this historical analysis, only one candidate can win the presidential election without the need of a run-off and that candidate is President Mugabe.
For that to happen, heightened political consciousness of the salience of the election must be coupled with effective and efficient mobilisation of the electorate.
Online Reporter