When small men cast large shadows
When Dr Thokozani Khupe was handed charge of the MDC-T by the Supreme Court in March 2020, she might have been forgiven for believing, in the euphoria of the moment, that it was just a stepping-stone to the permanent prize.
The court held that she was to be the acting president of the party, giving her the authority to convene an extraordinary congress which would be seized with the task of choosing a substantive president. This must have seemed like a mere formality. A deputy to Morgan Tsvangirai since the first split of the MDC in 2005, Khupe had always regarded herself as the natural successor to Tsvangirai, such was her estimation of her political stock.
It is a mark of her limited political astuteness, despite years in politics, that her antennae did not pick up the apparent threats to her lofty ambitions. If she were a lioness, she made the mistake of allowing stray males into her pride, without any appreciation of the dangers that she was posing to her young male cubs. It is those stray males that did what they are wired to do: they have devoured all her male cubs.
It is difficult to imagine how Khupe, who can rightly claim the use of the title of a veteran opposition politician, failed to see what was apparent even to amateur observers of Zimbabwean politics: her new allies saw an opportunity to advance their flailing political careers, having found themselves stuck in murky waters in the MDC Alliance. They were not returning because they had any regard for her as a leader. She was just going to be a seat warmer while they prepared their path to take the crown.
Her fate was sealed on December 27, 2020, just two days after celebrating Christmas, when the party held the mandatory extraordinary congress after a couple of false starts. By the time she arrived at the Rainbow Towers, the plush venue normally reserved for government functions, Khupe had already lost the war. When the results were announced Khupe was a distant second to Douglas Mwonzora who had 883 votes. Khupe managed a paltry 118 votes, by all accounts, a dismal performance for an incumbent.
The other two candidates barely registered a mark on the political scale. It was not even a tremor. Elias Mudzuri walked home with 14 votes while Morgen Komichi took hold of the proverbial tail with just nine votes. If Komichi had been asked to field a football team, he would have been one player short even if he had included himself as a player-coach. Clearly, the ambition and ego of the two men had led them to overestimate their political worth.
Komichi had earned more than 1 000 votes at the MDC Alliance congress back in May 2019 when he lost the race for the vice-presidency. Now after the switch, he got just nine votes. Here was a man who, in a fit of petulance, had migrated from the rainforest to settle for a place in the desert. For her part, Khupe cried foul, storming out of the election venue before the conclusion of the process, alleging that Mwonzora had rigged the election. In a move that demonstrated how out of touch with reality she was, Khupe even declared that the congress had been cancelled and that she had fired her rival, Mwonzora. It was an ignominious end to a fairy-tale return to the leadership of the party that had begun earlier that year.
Khupe’s strategic miscalculation
Khupe was soon to rue the moment that she welcomed her allies in the wake of the Supreme Court judgement. There was a reason why Mwonzora and Komichi had stood outside the Supreme Court, literally celebrating a judgement which was supposed to be a blow to their party at the time, the MDC Alliance. It was their victory. Elias Mashavira, whose legal application led to the controversial Supreme Court judgement, was the proverbial tortoise on a lamp post. Back then the BSR referenced the wisdom of the saying that when you see a tortoise on a fence post, you know it did not get there by itself so, someone must have placed it there. Mashavira had not climbed to the top of the fence post on his own. The architects of his legal action were the celebrants at the Supreme Court.
Mashavira was not the first tortoise on the fence post. Mwonzora had posted one before, but that tortoise had not lasted long atop the fence post. That was when one Patson Murimoga back in 2016 made an ill-fated attempt to challenge Tsvangirai’s appointment of Nelson Chamisa and Mudzuri as co-vice-presidents of the party. The Mashavira challenge had a better reception, culminating in the Supreme Court decision which torpedoed the MDC Alliance and has been the source of turbulence, distress, and discomfort for the country’s main opposition party over the past year.
The important thing in all this, which surprisingly eluded Khupe, was that she had no serious hand in that legal drama. She forgot, in her said victory, that the judgement was no more than a Trojan horse, which contained men consumed by a hunger for power and who would ultimately terminate her ambition to lead the party. Safely ensconced in the party, and directing operations, they went after she and Mwonzora emerged with the biggest prize. Khupe’s success at the Supreme Court turned out to be what she had missed: a Pyrrhic victory. She might have seen herself as the bride preparing for the crowning moment at the wedding, but to her new allies, she was merely the handmaiden accompanying the bride.
Had she been gifted with political astuteness, she could have used the leverage she had over her newfound allies at the very start of their renewed relationship. Mwonzora, Komichi and Mudzuri had abandoned her in 2018 when they went with the MDC Alliance led by Nelson Chamisa. They had an opportunity to leave and join her when she left to form her entity which she called the MDCT. They did not join her because they knew her electoral prospects were poor, and their political fortunes were better served at the Chamisa-led MDC Alliance. They took the easiest way into Parliament — as senators earning their seats through proportional representation.
As senior officials at the MDC Alliance, they fought and defeated Khupe, even mocking her in the process. Khupe did not appreciate the weight of these acts of political opportunism. Now they returned to her in her hour of “victory”, declaring that they were complying with the Supreme Court judgement, masquerading as allies. The reality, though, which was plain to all but Khupe, was that these were disgruntled men who were bitter in the wake of the MDC Alliance congress in May 2019. The common denominator between the three men was that they had all lost at the MDC Alliance congress and were facing a bleak political future.
A Godsent opportunity
This set of circumstances meant that when the Supreme Court judgement came, it was a godsent opportunity for the men to escape the humiliation they were experiencing at the MDC Alliance. The refuge had suddenly been presented at the judicially reconstructed entity under the charge of Khupe. For Khupe, it was an opportunity to revive a political career that had been stuck in the doldrums following a dismal performance at the 2018 general elections. She had presented herself at Mnangagwa’s court when the Zanu PF leader created Polad, which he described as a platform for dialogue with the opposition. But Polad was merely Mnangagwa’s façade to give the impression that he was engaged in some constructive dialogue with his adversaries. In truth, it was designed to dilute his main rival Chamisa by putting him in the same basket with minor opposition players.
Therefore, Khupe was already at home as Mnangagwa’s ally. The judgement was a bonus that allowed her to get one of over her rival Chamisa. But in truth, it was Mwonzora and allies who were the major beneficiaries of the judgement. Reduced in rank at the MDC Alliance, here was an opportunity to rise and claim a leadership role. The three losers from the MDC Alliance looked at Khupe and fancied their chances. They had worked with her before and they believed she was beatable.
For her part, Khupe was naïve to this circumstance. She did not appreciate how valuable the newly reconstructed platform was to the three men. They needed it more than she did. Perhaps in her fantastical view of the world, she thought it would be an easy ride and that as the more senior politician, she would prevail. She did not see the need to extract some concessions from the defectors to ring-fence her position. That was a gross mistake on her part. She failed to make use of the leverage that she had at the start.
As already stated, Khupe had leverage over these three men after they had left to be with the MDC Alliance. They had breached the party constitution. Indeed, the same men would use this very ground to sack MPs and councillors from Parliament and councils, claiming that they had joined another party. They were accusing them of doing exactly what they had done.
Mwonzora’s long game
This duplicity eluded Khupe, probably because she was consumed by her myopic vision of getting back into Parliament once spaces had been opened by the expulsions. She did not see the long game that Mwonzora was playing. The removal of MPs and reentry of Khupe and her allies into Parliament would make him look bad, but it was a necessary sweetener to lure them into believing that they were on the same team. Meanwhile, his eye was on a bigger prize — the presidency of the party, while Khupe’s eye was dimmed by the promise of a parliamentary seat. They were all chasing the kudu, but in that cacophony of the hunt, Mwonzora released a hare and Khupe ran after it and forgot about the elephant until it was too late.
If she were more astute, she could have made the return of the men conditional upon certain undertakings including a deal regarding the election at the extraordinary congress. If all those who had joined the MDC Alliance were ineligible, then the three men were also ineligible unless she exercised forbearance. They were all desperate for a political home. Khupe exercised forbearance, but extracted no concessions from the men who had betrayed her.
But worse political misjudgement on her part was to follow. Instead of using her leverage, she allowed them to set the agenda and to control the party. She was not in charge. This explains why at the congress she appeared more like the outsider, not the incumbent. She did not even have control of the voters’ roll. She had ceded control over that crucial document, which determines the voting pool, to her main rival, Mwonzora. The naivety is astounding. It meant the race was lost well before the first guests arrived at Rainbow Towers. She was played by a more cunning operator. Her claims of rigging will take her nowhere. She had it within her grasp, but she dropped the ball and Mwonzora ran away with it.
But although Mwonzora succeeded in that battle, he must now carry the burden of victory and it is by no means a walk in the park.
l This is an extract from Alex Magaisa’s Blog, TheBig
SaturdayRead.