admin
DAYS before the election of mayors and their deputies, MDC-T leaders went about seeking to strengthen the party’s grip on towns and cities whose councils it controls. Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, the party leader, personally handpicked persons, whom he ordered councillors to elect as mayors. The argument was that one of the reasons why MDC-T lost the July elections was the electorate’s unhappiness with the corruption and generally poor performance of its urban councillors. Therefore, to prevent a recurrence of that in the next five years, Mr Tsvangirai decided to have trusted lieutenants elected to strategic positions as mayors, deputy mayors and council chairpersons.
His spokesman, Mr Luke Tamborinyoka spoke about the towns and cities whose councils it dominates as “zones of autonomy” which must excel in government on behalf of the party and be ring-fenced from possible Zanu-PF encroachment.
However, it turns out that the obtaining autonomy is not the sort the MDC-T leadership wanted to nurture and enforce. The town councils have made themselves veritable zones of autonomy, where councillors are most defiantly asserting their sovereignty, even from their party. For MDC-T, they have become zones of rebellion, off-limits to the party whip.
In Mutare, Harare and Gweru, Mr Tsvangirai personally interviewed officials whom he then ordered councillors to rubberstamp into office as mayors. In Bulawayo, he separately interviewed three aspirants for a few minutes, and shortly after, proclaimed academic, Dr Mandla Nyathi the party candidate. The Nust lecturer was, however not elected because the law says only elected councillors can be elected mayors.
But the July 31 experience when supposed safe MDC-T seats voted for Zanu-PF, replicated itself on Monday last week. Councillors, who were too afraid to publicly object to imposed candidates during caucuses, used the anonymity of the secret ballot to reject imposed candidates and elect alternatives.
Councillors in Mutare, Victoria Falls, Kwekwe and Redcliff went to the extent of voting for Zanu-PF mayors and deputies despite the fact the revolutionary party theoretically had no chance as it has fewer councillors than MDC-T or both equally shared seats. In Gweru, councillors voted for Clr Hamutendi Kombayi, not Clr Charles Chikozho, Mr Tsvangirai’s pick. Their counterparts in Mutare elected Clr Tatenda Nhamarare instead of a preferred councillor.
It was only in Harare and Bulawayo where councillors accepted recommendations from their national leadership to elect prescribed figures to the highest civic posts in both cities.
However, that is not enough to assuage what must be seen as the second successive election defeat for Mr Tsvangirai and his party within 47 days.
Both defeats must be seen as self-inflicted as they are a consequence of failure by the MDC-T leader and those closest to him to uphold basic democratic principles. He imposed candidates in at least 30 National Assembly constituencies prior to July 31. The result was a foregone defeat in most of the 30 and many more across the country.
This time, he attempted to impose himself on councillors but they gave him the same lesson. Leaders must not come from the top, they told him through their vote; they must come from the people, going up.
Many wonder if it is a lesson Mr Tsvangirai and his lieutenants will ever grasp. Instead of respecting the will of the electorate, who in this case were elected councillors, what does he and his senior colleagues do? They take another bad decision, supposedly to flaunt a kind of authority, which they actually do not have.
The party has “fired” its democratically elected mayor for Mutare, Clr Tatenda Nhamarare and three other councillors for rejecting the party’s preferred candidate, Clr Thomas Nyamupanedengu.
But it is in Gweru that the MDC-T will practically collapse the entire council if a proposal by the party’s Midlands South executive to fire Clr Kombayi and nine other councillors is endorsed. Apart from Mutare and Gweru, the party is witch-hunting in Redcliff, Victoria Falls and Kwekwe.
The party refuses to accept that the fallout is not, per se, a manifestation of indiscipline on the part of councillors, but their defiant expression of how democracy should work. They are not responsible for the embarrassment, but the national MDC-T leadership which continues to disrespect democracy.
It goes without saying that the purges are only nominal as the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, Dr Ignatius Chombo has already made it clear that the intra-party squabbles would not result in councillors losing their positions.
The voting trend we saw in Mutare, Gweru, Victoria Falls, Redcliff and Kwekwe, again, reveals much more than what we have seen. It exposes the shortcomings of the whipping system in smaller parties; for that is the status the July 31 harmonised election reduced MDC-T to.
We saw this sort of indiscipline in August 2008 when MDC was helpless seeing some of its representatives in Parliament, among them Abednico Bhebhe, Njabuliso Mguni and Norman Mpofu, voting for an MDC-T candidate, Mr Lovemore Moyo to the speakership, disregarding their official party candidate, Mr Paul Themba Nyathi.
Four years later, MDC again failed to whip into line five more legislators, Ms Nomalanga Khumalo, Maxwell Dube, Thandeko Mnkandla, Dalumuzi Khumalo and Kembo Dube and 49 councillors whom it accused of working with MDC-T.
It is difficult to enforce discipline in a small party, which is not only small, but also on the decline. MDC failed to control its elected members and on July 31, the party was virtually condemned to history. We wait to see how MDC-T, which is facing a similar problem, would survive the next five years given the foregoing and a full-spectrum dominance of Zanu-PF.
Events since July suggest the British-backed party would be fortunate to last the next five years. At least three by-elections have been held already after Zanu-PF and MDC-T candidates scored the same number of votes in July. MDC-T has lost all.
In fact, based on the returns from the three wards in Kusile, Mutasa and Kadoma town, the party is worse off now than it was two months ago.
Cde Masha Katanha was elected unopposed in Pfura District Ward 32 last week after MDCs, failed to field candidates. With two more local authority by-elections to be held soon in Victoria Falls and Gokwe South, the trend looks set to be maintained.
A political paralysis is evident in MDC-T since the harmonised elections. Donors, who have supported the party for 14 years are already keeping their money after seeing their investments in the party collapse.
The party, which had become associated with opulence, now cannot pay salaries for its workers and is being forced to retrench in Harare and Bulawayo. Its former ministers, who had gotten used to subsidised lives, are reportedly out of pocket so soon after they left government.
That MDC-T had become a factor in local politics was also because of the millions it received in foreign funding which created a persona of seriousness and enhanced morale, among its leaders. Many were attracted to the party, not exactly by a sensible political message, but the prospect of money.
Without money, morale within its ranks will most likely decline and their brand of donor-funded politics as well.
The July tsunami, as political scientist, Professor Eldred Masunungure said of the MDC-T loss, and resultant apathy within its ranks and divisions emanating from a leadership contest between Mr Tsvangirai and his secretary general, Mr Tendai Biti might be too much for the party to recover from, even in the so-called zones of autonomy.
Online Reporter