ZANU-PF’s Wednesday St Mary’s rally was a turning point in several ways. Of course, the most obvious marker were the numbers that attended, something even the blind could see and feel.
I cannot dwell on what is available to all; it’s no matter
for the political inner eye.
Enter Mugabe Junior
Robert Mugabe (Jnr) made a dramatic appearance at that
rally, to very warm reception from the Party of his late father and his family.
He did not disappoint, reminding all who cared to listen that politically,
Zanu-PF is all he has known from birth. Ordinarily, this is a banal remark to
make, given whose son he is. But read against November 2017, and of course the
aftermath, this was a profound statement of position, of endorsement. And our
snappers did not disappoint; they showed Robert hugging the President, now his
political father. They showed young Emmerson and young Robert, both true chips
off the old ruling blokes, together. The message was clear: an alliance that
transcends generations, adversity even. Those of us who see things from the
inside are not surprised. So much has happened and, like water, has slipped under
the bridge since the passing on of our founder President. Like I keep reminding
all who care to listen, kune hushamwari hweropa, bonds sealed in blood.
Hukama hweropa
Robert is the late President Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s first
living son, the elder one. He carries his father’s name and, God knows what
else politically. Alongside Bona, he is the sober one, quite suave and of
thoughtful temperament. Alongside the mother, former First Lady of Zimbabwe,
Amai Grace Mugabe, he tended to his father’s inexorably failing health, right
to the very end. He lived true to his mission as the elder son, and would have
got his father’s last words. Amidst a turbulent relationship between the former
First Lady and the new Zanu-PF, Robert retained his cool. As did Bona and his
hubby who often frequented Munhumutapa long after the demise of our first
President. Both called for calmness and reconnection, often forcing it through
foreboding silence in a season of loud, intemperate acrimony. Not many knew or
know of this subterranean knot that binds the two iconic families in
Zimbabwean’s Struggle and turbulent post-independence politics. As if to
solidify this inter-generationally, Robert (Jnr) and Emmerson (Jnr) are
friends, have been for a long time.
A web of relations
It is inconceivable Robert (Jnr) would have made this
unexpected and unprecedented journey to St Mary’s without the family’s say-so,
the widow of the late President especially. Whatever happened behind the
scenes, the symbolism was loaded, both for the Mugabes and for Zanu-PF. Not to
mention the Mnangagwas. Or, as I even daresay, for the Chiwengas who share the
same totem with Amai Grace Mugabe. The ruling Party’s Political Commissar is
brother to Amai Mugabe. You couldn’t have missed the significance.
A plebiscite which is foreign policy
Last week I said the by-elections we have today are both
superfluous and yet significant. Superfluous by their spurious origins;
significant by augury in relation to the watershed 2023 harmonised elections by
which the quality of the Zanu-PF win will determine the fate of illegal
sanctions that have been an albatross since 1998. I vehemently maintain that
the 2023 elections, while playing out domestically, bear down heavily on
ZANU-PF and Zimbabwe’s desire to engage and re-engage the world. That plebiscite
is a foreign policy; should and will be
fought and won as such.
So many haggard, shattered faces
Robert (Jnr) chose his moment carefully, and the intended
message rammed home like Putin’s hypersonic missile. The resultant rabble still
reveals many haggard and shattered faces, foremost that of Nelson Chamisa who
now stands denied of any opportunities for pilfering liberation wartime human
symbolism for use in today’s by-elections, and again for use later in the 2023
Harmonised Elections. Jesu akati, Zvapera! It’s finished and Chamisa has to
look elsewhere for electoral symbolic capital. I hope he reads, listens, and
that if he does both, he comprehends and has a creative team to evolve new
strategies that redeem him, now and in future. His record so far makes this a
forlorn hope though. He is surrounded by sharp lawyers who are politically
daft, and by parasitic academics who know no ABC of basic politics, their
loudness notwithstanding. And he knows it, which is why he has chosen to
outsource advice, and to pursue the path of schizophrenia: appearing to battle
Zanu-PF electorally, while courting the same through a multitude of emissaries,
in the hope of post by-electoral and pre-2023 election accommodation that would
suspend harmonised elections. Both can’t. Some day names of his go-betweens
will be revealed, to great shock of several Western embassies here. About that,
let little be said for now.
The she-goat with a dry udder
Saviour Kasukuwere, too, has his haggard face in shards.
Wedded to, and milking the late President’s dunzvi (she-goat) — one Patrick
Zhuwawo — and milking it to dryness, he cannot do that anymore. Patrick is only
a nephew, a bad one too; Robert is the son, the cool one at that. Patrick’s
udder is shrunk, it’s teats broken and dry. And much stress already shows in
Kasukuwere’s camp, which was already in disarray anyway. South Africa no longer
provides succour, beyond remaining a place of refuge. Tellingly, both Professor
Jonathan Moyo and Walter Mzembi have turned elsewhere towards Chamisa, the
former, paring down his association with Kasukuwere to perfunctory contacts.
Reckless Walter
Walter Mzembi remains connected to Kasukuwere, principally
at human and financial levels. Politically he has gone elsewhere, even with
astounding, impolitic recklessness inspired by panic. Ahead of today’s
by-election, he cheered and mobilised for Chamisa’s Masvingo rally, and did so
overtly, but impotently. Alongside Dzikamai Mavhaire, another in his league.
But the net never forgets, or even forgive. Whatever he saw from afar, those of
us in situ do not see it. Let the by-election result chastise him suitably,
hopefully teaching him to walk the political terrain more gingerly, and with a
dignified step.
Harnessing the Mugabe legacy
The Second Republic’s attitude and handling of the Mugabes
was always bound to levy fairly significant political repercussions for
Zanu-PF. Right down to communities, should a perception have been allowed
suggesting the Mugabes were being handled vindictively, vengefully. There is no
denying the late Robert Mugabe was a deep, grassroots politician and a
long-time leader. His legacy cannot be evanescent; it lingers on, well beyond
his grave. President Mnangagwa has handled this legacy issue with utmost sensitivity,
and largeness of heart, which is why Robert (Jnr) materialised in St Mary’s
which the rumbustious Job Sikhala pretended was a no-go constituency for
Zanu-PF.
Taking the war to the enemy
In St Mary’s it was that Sikhala met his American embassy
friends, a few years back, boosting Zanu-PF’s propaganda chest. In St Mary’s,
President ED chose to make a forthright statement about his capacity and
determination to break the jinx of low urban support for him and Zanu-PF. The
message hit home. Today Sikhala, alongside his American Embassy wardens, watch
in horror as President ED and ZANU-PF collected mammoth multitudes so close to
the by-election. The multitudes mobilised by CCC for Zanu-PF, thanks to CCC’s
abysmal and rotten show as governor of municipal councils. President ED chose
to use St Mary’s as the best setting for his urban electoral comeback, and for
the Mugabes’ message of support to him and Zanu-PF, ahead of the impending
by-election and, in fullness of time towards his bid for re-election. St Mary’s
is thus a microcosm of things to come electorally.
The future is urban
St Mary’s was significant in more profound, concrete ways.
Going forward, the present century and all centuries to come, are inexorably
urban centuries. The world, Zimbabwe included, hurtles headlong towards its
urban futures. The pastoral, the rustic, is dead. The noble savage, that
personality of pristine countryside innocence, is long dead. His vote won’t
count for much, going forward. Rural Chiredzi makes way for urban Chitungwiza;
Harava for Harare, both demographically and politically. There is no third way
to this overbearing drift towards global urbanisation. What may vary is the
pace and degree of verticalisation and densification of towns and cities in
their inexorable swell to mega-ness. As they do, they continue to attract and
agglomerate huge mass of humans, much like moths to a naked flame.
Go the City, my dear Zanu-PF
Which means what? Simply that ZANU-PF must learn to
politically minister to a totally new persona electorally. The future of
politics, here as elsewhere in the wider world, is the city, and with it, the
young urban man/woman. I tried to get this point appreciated by ZANU-PF leaders
during the First Republic. I wasn’t very successful as the leadership then
clung to a false 60/40 rural-urban spatial settlement statistic. That amounted
to wilful denialism. Even then as MDC rose and grew tremendously in urban
areas, grabbing the urban, but with no plan thankfully. As Zanu-PF’s urban
support shrank, MDC’s protest support swelled exceedingly, but helpfully
without growing its politics.
Repurposing Zanu-PF
Soon after November 2017, I picked up the same sermon,
advising the new leadership the late Robert Mugabe had wrung dry the aura of
Liberation Struggle, rendering it virtually negatory as a galvanising theme or
governing myth, post-November 2017. The new leaders, I opined, have to reinvent
Zanu-PF, principally its message, its vision, its demographic focus. The ruling
party badly needed repurposing, lest like Zambia’s UNIP, it would soon wither
and die. Happily that happened, which is why the Second Republic now has a
message second to none comparatively. And why Chamisa is in such a mess
politically. But the message still needs refining, targeting, before the urban
voter is won once more and returns to Zanu-PF, his original political home.
Forcing house of history
ZANU-PF must learn to govern from cities, with the youths
and in a digital age. As we say in development studies, towns and cities are
“humankind’s laboratories, the forcing houses of history”, to quote from Ben
Wilson’s Metropolis: A history of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention.
Rural Zimbabwe and it’s loyal denizens, is quickly dying, vanishing physically
and electorally. Whether in Nzvimbo or at Murambinda, rural Zimbabwe is
retreating before emerging, virile nodes of nascent metropolises. And with that
is emerging new political sensibilities, attitudes and outlooks. Alongside
digital technologies, towns and cities connect diverse, teeming humanity
through a countless myriad of networks. The young dominate, themselves a very
volatile constituency.
Fickle urban voter is the future
Cities know no taboos, no static moralities, no permanent,
staying loyalties that governed the “noble savage” in his pastoral idyllic.
Cities are havens of change and iconoclasm, of strong anti-establishment
feelings and sentiments. The human type inhabiting them is fickle and
capricious, so wont to changing thinking, sides, friends and allies, as behoves
chances, opportunities and sheer expediency. The age of set principles and of
set outlooks is dead and gone; the time of expediency, opportunism is come,
meaning there are no permanent friends or bedmates. No loyal, stable
constituencies. Only shifting alliances. As with urban sexual mores, political
fornication thrives in the urban man/woman. Dalliances are forged on dimly lit
dance floors; the dance style is all quick step. As darkness gathers, heads
lose sobriety, and judgments get blurred, fornication in pursuit of chance,
economic gain and sheer survival abide. This is the new normal, more
far-reaching than nappies pasted across our faces by Covid-19.
Harnessing DIY towns and cities
And to the name, to the place, to the country, to the
continent, to our whole globe, towns and cities are runaway formations. In
their rise and growth, they outpace law and order, plan and purpose. Most towns
and cities have their beginnings in DIYs, do-it-yourself we fondly call
informal settlements. These are overpopulated by lumpens, who are the new
voter. Think of Epworth and Harare South as metaphors of the city as a DIY! How
you engage or repurpose the DIY town and/or city could very well deliver or
deny, add or abridge political tenure. The noble savage hunts for the stomach;
the DIY town and city fabricates, cuts corners and feeds from shelves with price
tags. The noble savage thinks about the catch, the crop; the lumpens worry
about the job, the title deed, efficient amenities.
Changing Milieu for Political Organisation
There are many social texts which help one read this new
age, with its vertiginous shifts for humankind and political organisations. One
negative way is to look at latest generation in human weaponry, in human
destructive power. Warfare is fought through missiles delivered from
extra-territorial platforms, to raze tall buildings to the ground. We see it
today in Ukraine. Human weaponry responds to human settlement patterns; it’s
that simple. A more positive way is to look at how man avails and stores daily
food supplies. Zimbabwe is going through an unprecedented expansion phase of marts,
wholesales and mega shopping centres, all of them decentralising to small towns
and even villages. As I write, Chivhu, previously Enkeldoorn, is now a town. As
you approach it from the capital, a new mart has just sprouted in the middle of
nowhere. You never put up such huge structures to service small human
settlements. Or to the pastoral man who hunts and grows what he eats. You do so
in anticipation of a waged society, a human mass divorced from the pastoral,
from land and agriculture. Enter the urban man, and Zanu-PF beware!
When winners are unfit to rule
Let me leave the academia and get back to easy-to-grasp
political matter, simplified even for the reading of fools. And contentious
too, forthright enough to raise your bile! Who cares? Columnists don’t write to
please; to be agreeable. Only to ventilate truth, however painful, odious.
Zanu-PF is very lucky, maybe because it carries the will and mission of our
ancestors. Its gift has always been some foolish, unthinking opposition, one
after another in seeming, endless succession. When Tsvangirai’s MDC grabbed all
towns and cities, the MDC showed its incapacity to bear the burden of
governing. That damned it, which is why I said while its urban support swelled,
its politics dwindled. Protest urban vote favoured the opposition; realities of
municipal governance severely questioned its fitness to rule. That is the story
from all our opposition-controlled municipalities.
Zanu-PF finds idiom for CCC-created favelas
As I write, today the loser from the old protest urban vote could very well emerge the winner. Zanu-PF is beginning to re-invent and repurpose itself as a party for the metropolis, but retaining its deep rural roots. The transformation continues, the pace gathers. CCC proves an alliance of the proletariat and impulsive students ironically benefits Zanu-PF against whom it is intended. The alliance forces the ruling Zanu-PF to introspect and reform, often with a little bit of assistance from the very alliance meant to rival and wrestle power from it. That is why MDC – now CCC – supported November 17, creating something that now bites them well away from State House they aspire to occupy. St Mary’s strongly suggests ZANU-PF now has an idiom for the urban voter. It now can speak and address him in his milieu, in his harsh social conditions created by failing CCC-municipalities. The boreholes which President ED launched in St Mary’s; the massive roads repaired and rehabilitated under an emergency urban renewal programme, while small and symbolic, gave a peek into Zanu-PF’s politics repurposed for denizens of favelas, barrios or townships which the opposition spawned in its twenty-year long reign. And St Mary’s loved it. Sunday Mail
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