e political scene now a dog’s breakfast
THE Zimbabwean political scene has become a dog’s breakfast; there are signs of putrefaction everywhere both in the ruling party and the opposition.
Muckraker thinks this untidy situation was inevitable after the demise of the two men who dominated the political scene for nearly 20 years.
Robert Mugabe bestrode the whole scene like a colossus, to borrow an expression from Shakespeare.
Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar said to Brutus: “Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world.
Like a Colossus, and we petty men.
Walk under his huge legs and peep about.
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.”
ere is something timeless about e Bard, as Shakespeare is popularly referred to. Cassius could have been any of the securocrats who conspired to get rid of Mugabe — ED Mnangagwa, perhaps. Brutus could be any other — Constantino Chiwenga, very likely. Or the reverse!
ose are the two who have emerged to be the masterminds of the whole political assassination of Zimbabwe’s founding father.
“Men at some time are masters of their fates.
e fault, dear Constantino, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
ey took things into their own hands and got rid of Mugabe so they didn’t remain underlings. But as in Caesar’s case the situation wasn’t that simple. Zanu PF, the monster party that Mugabe nurtured over decades had itself become the Frankenstein Monster which before it destroyed itself wished to destroy its creator.
is is what spawned the factionalism that pervades that party now. By the time of Mugabe’s departure from the stage the party had splintered into three – perhaps more — splinter groups.
Team Lacoste
AND when Team Lacoste thought they had wrapped it up and had scattered around the world its chief pretender to the throne — the socalled G40, out re-emerges the Gamatox outfit.
e tripartite struggle is playing itself out in Mashonaland Central the home of former Veep Joice Mujuru who was the Gamatox commander-in-chief but who is now being overshadowed by Nicholas Goche. But there’s also Saviour Kasukuwere the G40 kingpin in the province. Goche and Kasukuwere are veteran political gladiators and they are pitted against Kazembe Kazembe, a crocodile hatchling.
Poor Goche, he is now up for stock theft! If convicted he will spend the rest of his days breaking large rocks into small rocks at Chikurubi.
e Mashonaland Central scenario is just a microcosm of what’s happening in all other provinces and it’s getting dirty — very dirty.
What happened in the Midlands city of Kwekwe over the weekend is an example of how dirty the whole situation can become.
Factions
WHEN factionalism begins to manifest as gun battles, then it has reached another level. It’s real dog-eat-dog.
But if Mugabe was the Colossus that kept the monster under lock and key, his opposite, Morgan Tsvangirai, was a claimant, an apparition who had no teeth, no balls, no spine. People feared him the way children fear ghosts.
His trail as leader of the opposition MDC — beginning when the party was only five-years old — is littered with fragments, not factions. is is why the country saw leaders jumping through windows to grab power even before his body had reached rigor mortis,
Factions are more solid because they stand for something and each one of them is capable of standing alone and forming a government; not so with fragments which can never be put together to form a whole again but can only murmur in the wilderness for recognition not as part of a whole but as, well, fragments.
Weak
THE leadership of MDC fragments in all their guises is woefully weak. By Muckraker’s tone, some may think he is celebrating this. Oh God no! It’s the betrayal of the promise that irks.
Over the years the MDC’s Achilles heel has always been it’s reliance on foreign tutelage, which fact Zanu PF has exploited to the optimum. But voters, over the years, have seemed not to mind that because the lure of the promise for change was too powerful to resist. e thinking was change overrides all, no matter how it comes.
But Muckraker is beginning to discern as whiff of disillusionment among some of the staunchest supporters of the opposition. e reasons are not too far to find. e MDC has performed disastrously in local government yet they control almost all urban centres. For 20 years urban voters tended to ignore this but how much longer can they continue to do so? Add to this the corruption that has become palpable in these towns and cities they control! e party leadership has failed to stamp its authority on the councils which are dragging the opposition’s name into the mud.
e line the opposition uses to explain this is that it all boils down to ruling party shenanigans. But this is to fail to understand the nature of political contestation! In every country the world over, political contestation is dirty because the aim is always to portray the opponents as incapable of taking the country forward. e buck stops with whoever loses this contest; one can’t blame the enemy for one’s loss.
No chance
POUND for pound the MDC fragments don’t stand a chance in heaven against the ruling party and they know it hence they look up to external forces for salvation.
Just go on social media, particularly Twitter, and see who each and every leader tags when they want to point to injustices committed by the ruling party! In the end any reader can see who is pulling the puppet strings!
Pound-for-pound Tsvangirai put up a good fight but that was until his hopelessly flawed character came to the fore and showed he was a mere phantom. But when Muckraker looks at the present crop, he thinks they can’t say they fought the good fight; they kept the faith. But is there method in this madness?
For Zanu PF the method is simple: kick them hard while they are down using all means fair and foul. For the MDC, especially the Alliance outfit, it’s also clear: defensive thanatosis, in other words they are feigning death in the hope the enemy will let them be. Muckraker says stop playing possum. Stand up and fight.