Haruzivishe represents everything wrong about opposition politics
AYOUNG member of the MDC formation led by Nelson Chamisa, Makomborero Haruzivishe, was sentenced to 14 months in prison by the Harare Magistrates Court this week for inciting public violence.
While many blindly joined the faction in baselessly condemning the presiding magistrate Judith Taruvinga for Haruzivishe’s new circumstances, very few took time to assess the faction’s hand in his incarceration.
This is because since 1999, the various formations and factions of the opposition outfit have used emotions to hoodwink their followers into believing that the role of the opposition is only to remove Zanu PF from power, nothing more, nothing less.
For this reason, they, especially the youth, have been reduced into mere tools for an opposition which does not care a hoot about their welfare and future. The MDC has used its youth as tools against internal opponents and perceived external opponents such as Government and, by extension, Zanu PF.
The 2000 Constitution
Right from the beginning, the MDC did not have a defined agenda or strategy for the benefit of the youth in the very unlikely event of it landing State power and in the intervening period.
Some youths followed the party, not because of its pro-youth manifesto, but because of the youth’s natural attraction to new things. Over 20 years later, the situation remains the same in the several MDC factions and formations.
Less than two years after its formation, the MDC used the youth drawn largely from the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU), to campaign against the 2000 proposed constitution ahead of the February 12 and 13, 2000 referendum.
This resulted in Zimbabwe rejecting a very good constitution, which had been drafted by the Constitutional Commission that was chaired by the late former Chief Justice, Godfrey Chidyausiku.
This cost the nation millions of dollars, all in the name of spiting Zanu PF.
Land
Following the United Kingdom’s refusal to deliver on its Lancaster House Agreement pledge to fund Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Programme, Zimbabweans were left with no choice except to get their own land back in January 2000.
This saw white former farmers supporting the MDC in the vain hope that the party would unseat Zanu PF and assure them continued tenure despite its skewed nature.
The main reason why the liberation struggle was fought was to gain ownership and control of the country’s resources, the main one of which is the land.
Instead of fighting to ensure that the youth had land, the MDC gladly received countless cheques from the former farmers to help it to fight its own people to secure tenure for the farmers.
When the white former farmers finally realised that they were fighting a losing battle, they abandoned both the land and the MDC.
With the land liberated, one would expect that the MDC leadership would realise its error and support the land reform programme so that the youth among its supporters would
benefit.
Instead, the party denied the youth a meaningful future by discouraging them from applying for land, arguing that it was a Zanu PF project. It discouraged them from participating in other youth empowerment initiatives such as the funds which were provided by corporate citizens like Stanbic Bank and Old Mutual through CABS.
The party killed a whole generation’s future by politicising the land reform issue for narrow political ends.
The opposition outfit also barred its youth from participating in artisanal mining, opting instead to take advantage of the resultant economic frustration and harnessing it against Zanu PF, Government and the people of Zimbabwe.
Today when the youths who benefited from the land reform programme post on social media the impressive economic progress they are making on the land, the likes of the MDC Alliance formation’s Gilbert Mutubuki post images of their criminal handwork — public and private buildings defaced by opposition political graffiti.
Haruzivishe is 29 years old and has nothing to his name because his MDC formation taught him nothing meaningful to do with his life and hands except to mindlessly fight Zanu PF and Government.
Out of the 32 urban local authorities in Zimbabwe, Chamisa’s faction of the MDC controls 28, but there is no single income generation project for the youth in any of the councils and municipalities. This is because the faction does not have the youth at heart and is generally bankrupt of meaningful ideas and strategy.
Youth only good as DRCs and the Vanguard
When Chamisa’s predecessor, Morgan Tsvangirai tried to hold an unsanctioned political meeting in Harare’s Highfield high density suburb on March 11 2007 under the guise of a Save Zimbabwe Campaign event, he and other opposition leaders and anti-Government activists ran into the cross hairs of law enforcement agents.
In the ensuing running battles with the police, Tsvangirai and others sustained some minor injuries.
In revenge, he constituted violent youths in his party into groups of vigilantes called Democratic Resistance Committees (DRCs). These went about petrol-bombing police stations in the country.
Affected police stations included the Harare Central Police Station, Marimba (Harare), Chitungwiza, Gweru and Sakubva in Mutare.
The Marimba incident resulted in three women, including a police officer, sustaining severe burns.
Following public outcry and the arrests of the DRC members, the vigilante group went underground, but every now and then the party would threaten to reconstitute it.
The terror group was eventually replaced by another militant one named the Vanguard.
Tsvangirai used it to deal mainly with internal opponents such as former MDC-T treasurer general, Elton Mangoma.
He set the Vanguard on Mangoma in February 2014, when he and the then secretary general of the party, Tendai Biti, pushed for leadership renewal following Tsvangirai and
his party’s poor electoral showing in 2013.
Tsvangirai sent the Vanguard to Bulawayo to assault his then deputy, Dr Thokozani Khupe, in August 2017 for refusing to support his idea of a coalition of opposition parties.
During Tsvangirai’s funeral at his Buhera home in February 2018, Dr Khupe and the now MDC-T leader, Douglas Mwonzora, had to be rescued by the police from a thatched rondavel into which they had been violently herded by some Vanguard members who were about to torch it.
The following month, Chamisa dispatched the same group of violent youths to assault Dr Khupe and her then driver, Witness Dube to force her out of the party’s Bulawayo offices.
The youths who demonstrated were “stupid”
While the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) was still seized with collating and announcing the results of the 2018 presidential election on August 1 2018, Chamisa, sensing defeat, sent youths to violently protest on the streets of Harare ostensibly for the delay in announcement of the results.
In November the same year, Chamisa described the participants as “stupid” during an address at Harvest House.
It is sad that youths in Chamisa’s MDC faction continue to be used by senior party members only to be abandoned.
In 2011, party youths, Last Maengahama, Tungamirai Madzokere and others were arrested for the murder of former Zimbabwe Republic Police Borrowdale Deputy Officer in Charge, the late Inspector Petros Mutedza.