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Michael Mhlanga
The upcoming MDC-A elective congress will seal the fate of the struggling political outfit. Age and tribe will decide fate for many, while once again, insincerity on gender empowerment will manufacture a political narrative that wants us to see the outfit as a gender champion.
Yet, they will hand pick “certain” women they want in their circle whom they can easily control and will never advance the interests of the historically marginalised group.
Again, like in 2005, 2013 and 2014, the party will split after regional and party quotas agreed on will never be respected. Debilitating the most, is the question of which constitution the party will use, whose answer is futuristically destructive to the likes of Tendai Biti and Welshman Ncube, let’s not even think of Jacob Ngarivhume, the (re)tired Agrippa Mutambara, and Daniel Shumba; those are now spent forces.
Ignoring such intricate values of procedure sets an already questionable precedence of disrespecting a social contract within the party whose life support is the party constitution.
Not that the supreme law of the party is sanctified anyway, numerously have they molested it and conveniently used it to parade as an organised organisation. From the past failures and disrespects of contracts by the party, many should have learnt of how indifferent they are; in Ndebele we say ngu 6 lo 9.
In June 2018, I wrote that to best describe the character of MDC Alliance from where I am standing, I draw an excerpt from Luis Bernado Honwana’s We Killed Mangy Dog. Honwana, in his voice says: “Mangy-Dog spent most of his time sleeping but sometimes he walked, and then I liked to watch him, with his bones all sticking out of his thin body, and his old skin full of white scars, and lots of sores. I never saw Mangy-Dog run, and I really don’t know if he could, because he was always trembling all over even though if it wasn’t cold, and swaying his head to and fro like an ox, and taking such crazy steps that he looked like a rickety old cart”.
It was true then and still is now. Mangy Dog best represents what was a coalition whose intention was to dislodge Robert Mugabe, whose age and recent history has overtaken. For two decades, like Mangy Dog they had failed to live up to the billing of being scary, strong and protective like what is expected of a dog. Let me use Honwana’s lens in articulating the developments in the soon-to-crumble coalition, sermoning realities that most are in denial of.
Firstly, the coalition is reported to be dead in the coalition camp, a denial rhetoric kept by the MDC (then T) to bank the little yet important votes in the run up to July 31 elections. In June 2018 I said that the coalition is now a political party and “small guys” like Biti and Ncube are so ashamed to admit it; a statement they denied then, yet it was true.
They were blind when the volcanic clash between MaKhuphe and Chamisa erupted, theirs was a thirst and hunger to save faces and souls from political desolation after one’s ouster from PDP and the other’s dreadful and imminent political ghostly after these elections. I said the truth, did I not? Aren’t they in MDC-A wishing to be elected?
Again, I said, in most instances, a grand coalition is a death sentence to viable political parties. However, observation shows that only terminally ill political parties contemplate the prospect of grand coalitions as a last shot at survival and this is exactly what happened to the most principled lawyers who compromised principle for political survival and expediency. And again, is that not what happened?
Like Mangy-Dog, we have always watched opposition, “with his bones all sticking out of his thin body, and his old skin full of white scars, and lots of sores”. Since inception in 1999, MDC has been in brawls with and of itself.
The bones sticking out of his thin body tell of monetary and ideological bankruptcy that has battered them, no doubt, Obert Gutu must be turning in his political grave. For a long time being financed as a regime change project, the West had become weary of failed sponsored thinking to the extent of opting to engage the establishment. Currently, to avoid shame, they are boasting of being broke and struggled to finance their campaign and that has been dreary for their political marketing. The rewards are obvious, like Mangy-Dog, skeletal appearance is a sign of abject poverty, sanctioned hunger and an institutionalised lack of a plan to politically resurrect.
The sores and scars are evidence of battles mostly lost because a hero not only survives, but avoids brutal stamps at all costs.
The Alliance is a product of 2005, 2013 and 2017 violent splits that have cost limbs, lives and eyes to many. Mangy-Dog’s scars and sores narrate an agonising story of copious battle fatalities and are a testimony of undoubted weakness: That is why Honwana tells of Mangy-Dog not scaring chickens to the point of cringing for a dust mound made by hens to relax: how comical and pointless Mangy-Dog is.
The sores will not heal anytime soon as the Alliance has brewed a battle for itself. This time Zanu-PF is not their enemy, unknowingly, they are going to their own ballot box to contest principle, history, legacy, honesty and unity within themselves. The exchange of verbs and insinuations of uselessness have become suburban in the campers’ mouth.
Not forgetting the July 31 nomination court scuffle where Ncube’s candidates in Matabeleland North and South were denied signatures and MDC-T candidates were imposed, the battle had already begun before they knew it. Undemocratic tendencies of imposing Nelson Chamisa’s camp candidates erupted and this left Ncube’s camp so vulnerable that for the next five years they will not taste Parliament benefits. Coupled with those who won seats both in National Assembly and Local governments, not in their party names but as MDC Alliance — a party, it means that their president is Chamisa who has power to recall people from Parliament, not their spent forces of presidents who have been relegated to VPs, Deputy of Chairs or nothing at all in the party.
In June 2018 I wrote: What has literally happened is that the coalition is no longer a convergence of parties to support a single presidential candidate but still retaining their party name and agreeing not to contest each other.
They have been warped into and under a single registered party — MDC Alliance and PDP ka Biti and MDC led by Ncube no longer exist and we shall not see them on the ballot paper, at least on July 30. Everyone contesting under the Alliance banner is subject to the Alliance’s dictates and should they not satisfy the leaders, they risk being recalled. Did they not deny this? Is that not what happened? They did not see this coming and the elective congress will be a seal of what I predicted.
Another interesting dynamic at this elective congress is informed by what happened in 2018. Back then I argued that there is a high likelihood of Ncube’s 92 000 votes he scored in 2013 disappointing the Alliance because they feel betrayed. They are an irate lot who feel the leader’s choice has cost them their choices and they are willing to mutely punish such ruse.
These are loyalists who did not exit the MDC in 2005 because of the principles fight between Ncube and Tsvangirai, but left because of their ethnic convictions. These are the lot that has morphed and integrated into the Mthwakazi movements or simply refrained from politics. Banishes of 2005 are fresh in them and Chamisa still represents the tribal MDC of then so they believe. They didn’t opt into this Alliance, they were led into it with promises of numerous yields which have dubiously vanished.
With evident bankruptcy, a repetition of deception, an angry section of the Alliance surely becoming a history, the Party-Alliance has succeeded in consolidating its base in the largest coalition but that will be short lived. We are going for splits in the Alliance where in much of the constituencies they will win we shall have by-elections. For Advocate Man-of–the-Cloth, this is a victory, a victory not to be celebrated of course because one cannot celebrate hungry.
This time bazayifunda ivaliwe.
Yikho khona lokhu!
derick.khumalo