A panicky president Emmerson Mnangagwa has resorted to bussing supporters to impromptu rallies as a way of creating a picture of political popularity and to intimidate internal rivals within Zanu PF through a make-believe strategy that he enjoys huge support within the party.
The command-rallies are also aimed at countering opposition
MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa, who has been drawing huge crowds in his
“meet the people campaigns” in hitherto no-go rural areas, analysts have said.
Mnangagwa was served with court papers recently in a case
where Sybeth Musengezi, a Zanu PF youth league member, is challenging the
constitutionality of his ascendancy to power following the 2017 coup.
Musengezi filed papers at the High Court in October seeking
an order declaring illegal the November 19, 2017 Zanu PF central committee
meeting that removed the late Robert Mugabe as the party leader.
The court action is viewed as part of wider factional
fights within Zanu PF pitting Mnangagwa and a faction allegedly loyal to his
deputy Constantino Chiwenga.
Analysts said Mnangagwa, who is facing growing anger from
the general citizenry and within the party over an imploding economy, has been
forced to default to Mugabe’s strategy of bussing supporters to rallies to push
back threats to his presidency.
Upon his return from Glasgow, Scotland on Thursday where he
was attending a United Nations climate change summit (COP26), Mnangagwa was
welcomed by hundreds of people that had been bussed from all corners of Harare
and further afield.
An internal party communique gave specific instructions to
all Zanu PF district chairpersons to make sure that they get at least 300 people
from each district brought to the airport to meet the president.
The instruction also advised the district secretaries for
transport to collect buses provided for the purpose from a designated location.
The following day after the Harare command rally, the
president went to Matabeleland North to preside over the graduation ceremony at
Lupane State University.
As happened in Harare, Bulawayo Zanu PF structures were
ordered to organize a huge rally to welcome Mnangagwa when he landed at the
Joshua Mquabuko Nkomo airport.
Hundreds of people were, therefore, bussed to the airport
to cheer the president at this impromptu rally.
Most of those that get on the busses are usually those that are benefiting
from Zanu PF system of political patronage and fear victimisation and
depravation.
They have been allocated market places, received
controversially allocated residential stands or owe the party one favour or the
other.
The fear is that if they do not participate in this
self-ingratiating exercise by the party leader, Zanu PF would withdraw whatever
freebies they have.
“The idea of Mnangagwa commandeering Zupco buses to bring
crowds to his rallies is a clear sign of his fears of the on-going internal
power struggles within Zanu PF.
“Bringing crowds to himself is a push back on calls within
the party and outside for him to leave office for allegedly failing to deliver
on his promises.
“So this is a show of force and support, but unfortunately
this is abuse of state resources,” political analyst Rashweat Mukundu said.
“This is a replication of history from what we were
witnessing with Mugabe in the past when every time he felt under threat he
would seek to demonstrate that he was still wanted by bussing people to such
impromptu rallies.
“We are back to the same scenario under which there is this
growing fear in Zanu PF that Chamisa is demonstrating his support base, and so
they are being forced in a way to respond by attempting to show that Mnangagwa
has power.”
In 2007, former war veterans’ leader Jabulani Sibanda led a
“million-man” march on the streets of Harare in support of Mugabe’s candidature
to contest the following year’s 2008 elections.
Many thousands of Zanu PF supporters were ferried into
Harare from all over the country by busses and trains.
Even school busses were commandeered to join this political
gamesmanship without the consent of parents who own the buses.
In 2016, former youth leader Kudzai Chipanga also mobilised
a “one-million-man” march in the capital in support of Mugabe amid infighting
in Zanu PF.
Chipanga also mobilised weekly youth interface rallies in
2017 where supporters were bussed to attend Mugabe prop-up rallies. These
rallies, however, eventually backfired and led to the overthrow of the
president in November of that year.
Bulawayo-based commentator Effie Ncube accused Mnangagwa of
bleeding the struggling Zupco for political expediency.
The party survives on abuse of power and corruption. It is
feeding from state resources and abusing state institutions, commandeering a
parastatal like Zupco to transport party supporters to a rally,” Ncube
said. He said this abuse of state resources for electioneering
purposes was likely to lead to disputed elections in 2023.
“The contest has already begun in various political parties
and individuals and, therefore, what Zanu PF is doing is contributing to the
2023 elections, and clearly with the abuse of state resources, elections are
already not free and fair even before they start.
“We are already in a crisis that will lead us into a
disputed election because Zanu PF using Zupco to bus people to its rallies is
an abuse not only of the law, but it is against the provisions of the
constitution that govern elections.”
Mnangagwa was endorsed as the Zanu PF 2023 presidential
candidate during the party’s recent annual conference.
Zanu PF will hold an elective congress in 2022.
Chamisa has also emerged as the MDC Alliance presidential
candidate to square off with Mnangagwa for the second time in as many years
after narrowly losing to him in the disputed 2018 elections.
The Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (Zimcodd), a
debt management and public finance accountability research institute, said the
abuse of Zupco buses feeds into auditor-general (AG) Mildred Chiri’s reports
that public institutions are collapsing because of abuse.
“We have a lot of case studies where parastatals fail
because of misuse and being used for partisan or political rallies and
whatever.
“For me, as a taxpayer, I would want to know if they (Zanu
PF) are paying for these services because this is taxpayers’ money.
“Zupco is a state enterprise and if you look into the AG’s
reports, most of them are in arrears on everything.
“This is because the resources are used for political party
politics,” Zimcodd’s Florence Ndlovu said.
Mukundu said probing whether Zanu PF was paying for the
Zupco services in the spirit of accountability and transparency was difficult
because of the naked conflation between the transport company and the ruling
party.
This, he said sounded a death knell to Zupco and
inconvenienced the commuting public a great deal.
“The challenge to the state owned enterprises is that they
are essentially cookie jars for Zanu PF and there is no attempt at all to
ensure that these entities are transparent and are managed in a manner that
promotes the interests of the people of this country,” Mukundu argued.
Government spokesperson Monica Mutsvangwa promised to
respond to emailed questions on the issue, but had not done so up to the time
of going to print yesterday.
According to Ndlovu, approaching the courts to seek redress
on the abuse of these public assets such as Zupco was not likely to yield
results. Standard
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