Sometime in 1979, when I was still in my teens, I had my
first harsh encounter with the racist colonial police.
One of my maternal uncles, the late Raphael Mushava, was
employed as a medical assistant at Mvuma District Hospital.
Then, I was a school boy at Fletcher High School in Gweru
and during some school holidays, I would stay with my maternal uncle and his
family in Mvuma.
Along with a group of other young and radical black youths,
one day we picked up a quarrel with the white district commissioner, who stayed
at a house somewhere in that small town.
He was a rabid racist who was in the habit of routinely
ill-treating and harassing black residents. He was a much hated man within the
predominantly black community. For our troubles, we were picked up by the
police and locked up in the cells at Mvuma police station.
There were about 12 of us, all juveniles and we were
detained for 10 days without being taken to court. We were eventually released
from the cells and sent back to our different homes.
That was the first time I was locked up in police cells. Looking
back, this nasty experience radicalised me and in a big way, excited the
political animal in me.
At the University of Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, I became
a member of the Zanu University Branch. This was my very first time buying a
Zanu membership card. During my time at university, the predominant political
parties were Zanu followed by PF Zapu.
Later on in life, I became a passionate MDC activist before
formally joining the party soon after its formation. In the year 2000, I was
elected MDC Harare North district organising secretary.
Over the years, I rose within the party ranks until I was
elected the national secretary for information and publicity at the MDC fourth
annual congress in 2014.
During its formative years, the MDC was a formidable
opposition political party that was bench-marked on the values and ethos of
social democracy.
Birthed by the labour movement, the Zimbabwe Congress of
Trade Unions (ZCTU), the MDC propagated pro-poor policies that easily resonated
with the interests of the urban working class.
Little wonder, therefore, that the MDC support base is
still predominantly the urban working class up to this day. With time, however,
the MDC’s ideological benchmark became blurred, conflicted and confusing.
The majority of white former commercial farmers, who had
been dispossessed of their farms at the onset of the Fast Track Land Reform
Programme, became major funders of the MDC.
Naturally, because of their immense financial power, these
white former commercial farmers began to develop a vice-like grip on both the
party’s ideological reconfiguration as well as the general trajectory of the
party in both the national and international context.
Gradually, the MDC became increasingly reactionary by
playing to the whims and fantasies of its chief financiers — the white former
commercial farmers as well as powerful Western countries who poured millions of
dollars into the party both overtly and covertly.
Therein lay the foundation for the inevitable collapse of a
once mighty and powerful opposition political party.
The nationalist and progressive social democracy ideology
was promptly replaced by a clearly reactionary and anti-nationalist sentiment
that deliberately lampooned and poured scorn on anything associated with
nationalist and Pan-African ethos.
This includes respect for the armed liberation struggle as
well as the revolutionary thrust to empower historically disadvantaged
indigenous people by giving them land that was previously owned and occupied by
white commercial farmers.
Indeed, it was an incredibly racist set-up that ensured
almost 90 percent of the fertile and arable commercial farming land in Zimbabwe
was owned and occupied by about 4 500 white farmers.
The MDC was virtually hijacked by powerful local white
interests as well as the invisible, but clearly powerful hand of influential
and rich Western nations.
It was apparent that the main agenda of these alien
interests was essentially to reverse the gains of the land reform programme,
hence the fervent interest of white former commercial farmers in the affairs of
the MDC.
Even the first split of the MDC in 2005 had the hidden hand
of these powerful alien interests.
The handlers of the MDC were becoming disenchanted with the
late Morgan Tsvangirai and they sought to influence the rise of a new party
leader whom they deemed better educated and more acceptable to the design and
construct of the main funders of the party.
Smart propaganda was disseminated in order to portray the
late Morgan Tsvangirai as an uneducated dictator who was deviating from
democratic notions and values.
Alas! The grand plan was to torpedo Tsvangirai’s hold on
the party and to make sure that the labour-backed founder members of the MDC
were slowly, but systematically displaced from positions of power and influence
within the party.
Put bluntly, the ideological decomposition of the MDC had
begun in earnest. Intra-party fighting, violence, intolerance and factionalism
became the norm within the MDC ranks as opposing factions fought for control of
the levers of power within the party.
With time, the party had its founding values of peace,
tolerance, empathy, solidarity and social democracy virtually completely
eroded.
It became a dog-eat-dog affair that only worsened with the
unfortunate passing on of Tsvangirai in February 2018.
The violent scenes that marked the funeral of the late
Tsvangirai at Humanikwa village in Buhera clearly depicted that the party was
now gravitating towards a self-destruction trajectory.
Some power-hungry and unprincipled individuals had found it
fit and proper to unconstitutionally usurp power even before the late
Tsvangirai’s body had been removed from the mortuary in South Africa.
Personally, I wasn’t impressed by this thuggish and uncouth
brand of politics and I promptly resigned from the engulfing madness. I was not
going to be part and parcel of a violent mob that was only interested in
grabbing power at whatever cost.
This was anathema to my own personal values, beliefs and
principles. In its factions, the MDC is currently ill-disposed to win any
national elections.
The party has never been this divided in its entire
history. The leadership in the factions are deeply divided and polarised.
The level of intra-party hatred is unprecedented. There’s
an entrenched lack of party cohesion and there is too much negative energy. Alternative
views and opinions are routinely shot down.
Hero-worshipping is now in vogue. There is no way in which
I could continue to associate with such an organisation in any of its factions.
The lack of decisiveness in calling for the unconditional
lifting of all forms of unilateral and punitive sanctions imposed against
Zimbabwe made it impossible for me to continue associating with the party.
Actually, I had had it up to here!
After reaching my Damascene moment regarding sanctions, I
could no longer associate with a political party that effectively propagates
and lobbies for the continued imposition of these evil and satanic sanctions.
These sanctions have caused and continue to cause untold
suffering to the majority of the people of Zimbabwe.
MDC is literally a house on fire. It is a crumbling
edifice. Regardless of the denialist tendencies of some MDC leaders, that party
has pressed the self-destruct button and at the harmonised elections in 2023,
it will suffer a humiliating and crushing defeat at the hands of a resurgent
Zanu PF.
Opposition politics in Zimbabwe right now is toxic,
divisive and directionless. That is their Achilles’ heel.
Instead of mobilising and effectively growing their support
base on the ground, opposition political parties are busy being swayed and
fascinated by social media popularity and activism.
They will surely reap their miserable harvest in 2023. I am
not saying that Zanu PF is perfect. No.
There is no political party in this world that is perfect. The
thrust of my argument is that Zanu PF has a clear and well-defined ideological
template.
They are a nationalist and Pan-Africanist revolutionary
party that fervently advocates for the total and complete political and
socio-economic emancipation of the black majority.
I have joined Zanu PF to serve the nation and not to be
served. I am perfectly comfortable with being just an ordinary card-carrying
member. I am not a position-oriented party cadre. More and more MDC politicians
will be defecting to the ruling Zanu PF party in the coming weeks and months.
Few people are able to tolerate the ongoing erosion of
internal democratic practices within the MDC’s various formations. Many
supporters are completely disgruntled and totally disillusioned.
Obert Gutu is a
Harare lawyer and former spokesperson for the Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) party.
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