Self-indiscretions: MDC’s bane

THE MDC is stuck in a twist. It is in no man’s land. It is trying in vain to portray itself as a democratic movement. Yet, its actions speak of an autocracy. It is at the clichéd sixes and sevens.

It does not know how to extricate itself from the undemocratic mess it created for itself after Morgan Tsvangirai’s demise.

It is deflecting blame to everyone and anyone, except itself.

The mirror image in unenviable. It is despicable.

I have been trying to stay away from the hocus pocus politics unravelling the MDC.

It is an unsatisfying exercise given the paucity of democratic principle, dearth in legal principle, shallowness of arguments and outright crass ignorance of what it means to be a Movement for Democratic Change.

At inception in 1999, the MDC touted itself as a custodian of democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law.

It fronted itself as a movement borne out of a desire to entrench democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe.

It even called and continues to call for the tightening of the illegal sanctions regime, accusing Zanu PF of not upholding these key tenets.

It projected itself as the epitome of democracy — an alternative to Zanu PF, which it inordinately accuses of being undemocratic.

Events in that party from 2005 have shown a party hell bent on entrenching autocracy in Zimbabwe’s democracy.

Its ideological apparatus in the form of a motley host of opinion leaders drawn from civil society, media and academia has always sought, but are now finding it hard to mask the false democratic credentials of the MDC.

Democratic paucity and power struggles

At the centre of the internecine fighting in the MDC has been power. Power to control the movement. Power to control the donor purse. Power to impose structures and candidates.

There is nowhere where people are a factor in the MDC. It is all about power.

At national level, it is still about power. When the MDC wins in local authority or parliamentary polls and gains power, they are democratic, but when it loses Presidential elections as it has perennially done, they are rigged, simply because it cannot secure the powerful office.

The MDC from inception has resorted to internal and external unorthodox, undemocratic means to harness power, terrorist activities, unbridled violence within and without, looting and sanctions-begging.

In 2005, the late party leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai could not stomach a National Council vote which favoured participation in Senate elections and vetoed the decision, resulting in the first split. There emerged the MDC-T led by Tsvangirai.

Elections are the hallmark of any democracy, be it endogenous or exogenous.

Welshman Ncube, the now vociferous defender of illegality, was ejected then on the false accusation that he was a Zanu PF poodle.

Never mind the violence meted against Trudy Stevenson by the violent Democratic Resistance Committees (DRCs). Ncube led the splinter MDC-N, which subsequently further fragmented with Arthur Mutambara fronting MDC-M.

Munyaradzi Gwisai left the movement and started the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) because the MDC lacked a sound ideology.

Job Sikhala, yes, the bellicose one who often threatens high-sounding hot air, formed his now defunct MDC-99.

Elton Mangoma left with the ever-angry Tendai Biti and formed the MDC Team Renewal, which subsequently split with Biti forming the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

Biti and Mangoma were served with a dose of violence from the Vanguard (the renamed DRCs) for good measure.

Thokhozani Khupe was jettisoned after Nelson Chamisa usurped power after

Tsvangirai’s death. She faced the violent Vanguard goons, who even attempted to burn her alive.

She subsequently led a faction of the MDC-T, while Chamisa led the MDC Alliance coalition (an amalgamation of seven political parties) ahead of the 2018 harmonised elections.

Alex Magaisa, a staunch MDC activist and academic, described the unconstitutional take-over in stinging terms, saying, “the succession episode was a dark moment for the democratic movement because it should have been more prepared for it.”

He added, “I did not agree with how the succession of Morgan Tsvangirai was handled. I voiced my opinions on the matter. They were unpopular, but I have never shied away from expressing unpopular opinions.”

Another staunch Chamisa supporter, Hopewell Chin’ono, when he still had his thinking cap on in 2018 at the height of the illegal take-over by Chamisa wrote that there was dissonance pitting two groups in the MDC family, “one led by rationale and logical thinking hinged on constitutionalism and one led by sycophancy and a popularity contest that doesn’t want to subject itself to the legal dictates of the MDC-T constitution and one that refuses to show respect in death”.

Chin’ono rightly pointed out that, “the party of democratic values, rule of law and constitutionalism disappeared a long time ago, we were left holding on to an idea. A dream deferred”.

Hypocrisy and double standards

Magaisa and Chin’ono rightly pointed out the folly of the dearth of constitutionalism and democracy in the MDC. Chin’ono’s article was aptly titled, “Chamisa has chosen toxic path for MDC”.

However, two years down the line, the two have made an inexplicable U-turn, blindly justifying Chamisa’s undemocratic actions, and lampooning Khupe, Douglas Mwonzora and Morgan Komichi as Zanu PF quislings.

Their crime? — following a Supreme Court ruling, compelling a “democratic and constitutional” movement to be democratic and constitutional.

Magaisa is a law lecturer at the esteemed University of Kent in the United Kingdom.

He ought to be a guarantor of constitutionality and legal process, but has stooped, so low as to justify the breaking of constitutions at a whim all in the name of sycophancy, to borrow Chin’ono’s analogy.

Magaisa in his latest cumbersome sycophantic read unashamedly declares, “in many ways, the current saga is a symptom of a failed succession process,” but justifies his brazen support for Chamisa’s autocracy, claiming that, “I also recognised that the movement is a voluntary organisation with the ability to make and unmake its rules to advance its main political agenda, which is to win political power. Rules are meant to serve the party and not the other way round. A person who plunges into a flooded river because he is following unbending rules would be considered foolish.”

How Magaisa manages to identify that Chamisa unconstitutionally usurped power, but justifies it claiming constitutions can be broken so long the end justifies the means is crass hypocrisy.

This is the same guy who week in, week out berates Zanu PF for amending the Constitution, not following the rule of law, being undemocratic — a basis him and his ilk use to justify the illegal sanctions.

What is lost on Magaisa is that rules indeed can be amended and changed using the majoritarian principle, before, not after the fact.

Chamisa should have sought a change in the rules prior to taking over.

Magaisa abuses his presumed knowledge of law to hoodwink people declaring that the “principle of majority rule is paramount and that what the majority wills stands, as long as it is done through the organs”.

No Magaisa. Organs are a product of the MDC constitution, not vice versa.

The principle of majority rule is paramount and that what the majority wills stands as long as it is done through the constitution.

Which is why Zanu PF is pushing for constitutional changes through Parliament (an organ and product of the Constitution, using its two thirds majority (principle of majority rule).

The MDC ought to take invaluable lessons from Zanu PF, a democratic party which follows the Constitution to the letter and spirit.

In traditional Shona parlance, Chamisa arumwa nechekuchera (Chamisa is paying the price for his constitutional indiscretions).