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Qhubani Moyo
THIS year saw three major political events happening in the body politics of Zimbabwe which changed the political landscape of the country. As the year draws to an end, it could be important to take a clinical dissection of these events and their meaning to the future of Zimbabwean politics.

The long and short of my argument is that 2014 was an action oriented political year which will go into the annals of history as the year that made the future of our politics. The year began with the fragmentation of the MDC-T the main opposition which saw the split which resulted into two fragments one led by Morgan Tsvangirai and the other on led by Sekai Holland/Tendai Biti.

The other major political event was the was the construction of a new political outfit comprising Sekai Holland /Tendai Biti and the MDC led by Professor Welshman Ncube to create what they want viewed as the United MDC. The party which is currently at the embryonic stage of architectural construction is likely to be a something in the future of the country’s politics as well.

The most important political event was the structural reconstruction and sanitisation of Zanu-PF through dealing and elimination of the group led by the then Vice President Joice Mujuru which had gone all systems out to usurp power from the party using all means including attempted criminal elimination of the President from the political stage. The Zanu-PF congress of 2014 not only dealt with the internal party revolt but delivered a new leadership with greater determination and impetus on how to deal with the country’s major political and economic questions of the day. The outcomes of the congress make a strong mention and indication that for sustainable policy implementation to be achieved at government level, there is a strong need for the party to be the key driver of this development because it party government setup like ours the party is supreme to the government.

In my view the future of the country’s political arena will be defined and influenced by these three political configurations albeit with different levels of impact. I thus present an organic analysis of the three in the context of the structural mix of the future of Zimbabwean politics.

For the purposes of a fair approach in the analysis I would start with Zanu-PF on the basis of its being the party of government and therefore in charge of state apparatus and therefore the biggest player in the country’s politics. Zanu-PF as the party of government undertook a major internal cleansing exercise have since added a new impetus on its ability to effectively deliver as the party that is in charge of government. In the past few years Zanu-PF had been defined by two distinct political fractions each position itself to take over at one stage or the other when President Mugabe leaves office.

The two groups one which were distinctly different in that the other one lead by the then Vice President Mujuru wanted to accumulate power for its personal and individual interest while the other group wanted to take over control of the party to redefine and make it a much more efficient and dependable vehicle for service delivery. The unfortunate problem is that in the past few years the group that wanted to grab power for the sake of its own agenda had more people in the strategic party positions and was thus able to manipulate processes to be on the driving seat.

The same group also held important positions in the government and was thus able to manipulate political systems for their own economic benefits. It was also able to frustrate, weaken and even sabotage any attempts for successful implementation of key government policies in fear that a stable economic and political environment defined by proper public administration would frustrate their wealth accumulation schemes. The group that the recent Zanu-PF congress defined as the cabal of quislings and fifth columnists used amongst other strategies corruption and short-circuiting of government procedures for wealth accumulation. The modus operandi was personal enrichment than citizens’ benefit.

The same group also took a dig at any policy review clearly because of their realisation that any new economic order was a threat to their wealth accumulation scheme. The fixated policy rigidity saw then fighting tooth and nail against the revisiting of some of the key government polices like indigenisation clearly to frustrate its rationalisation to meet the new national and global circumstances. The disagreements that took place between Professor Jonathan Moyo’s cabinet public presentations on the rationalisation of the indigenisation laws and the rebuttal by the then minister of indigenisation, youth and economic empowerment Francis Nhema showed the extent of the gulf that had been created amongst the party and government officials and that was to affect service delivery. What the Mujuru group seemed to ignore but were fully aware of was that there is nothing called rigid policy consistence.

In the policy world, “consistence is only the virtue of a donkey”. Policy review is part and parcel of the process of policy implementation and policy implementation is part of the process of policy formulation. Public policies cannot be stagnant, they respond to changing environment and circumstances and they are adjusted according to the new realities. In that regards and fully aware of the importance of empowering the local Zimbabweans the new proposals as was presented by the government spokesman Professor Jonathan Moyo was to reflect the government realisation of policy stagnation and the need to rationalise to ensure maximum benefits for its intended beneficiaries the people of Zimbabwe. The Mujuru group knew all this but had their fears that this was going to expose their opaque and unorthodox operations.

Parenthetically, in a bid to entrench itself on the pedals of power and thus maximise the benefits for accumulation of personal wealth the same group used its access to the economic recourse to manipulate party structures and systems for their own benefits with an agenda to finally knock off the pilot from the driving seat at the 2014 congress and thus create their own economic kingdom.

On the other hand was a group that understood that when a liberation movement survives a political onslaught that even saw it lose its majority in the previous elections but was likely to be restored back to power by such a huge mandate it would of serious importance to utilise that mandate for the service delivery of the cities. This amongst many other ways meant moving towards policy reconfigurations and review for the better and more sustainable and measurable benefits to the citizenry. However, this group met serious resistance from the wealth accumulation group which used its hold on party structures as a way of blocking any reforms which could have led to the bursting of the international economic and political embargo. While debate and different views on delivery issues are common in any political establishment when they begin to be major policy differences the danger is that they soon graduate to be ideological differences and that destroy the party internal cohesion. Yet the party is supreme to government by virtue of it being the one that creates the government from a citizen’s electoral mandate and as such any discord or fissures in the ruling party affect the operations of the government.

It was thus important to deal effectively and ruthlessly with the discord and the discontent that had characterised the party before it became ideological and thus lead to split. This was imminent because what binds political parties together is ideological identity, and out of that identity arise policy congruency. The reverse process is that entrenched policy differences lead to ideological differences and thus affect cohesion. By extension parties that find themselves entrenched in major differences at an ideological level inevitably affect the central pillars upon which those parties are founded. Part of the revelations of the major differences capable of lading to their disintegration can be seen on the relations that one side differing sides begin to create.

For instance where you have entrenched problems with the West and you are now looking east to create economic opportunities for the country and the then Vice President continues to have unexplained middle of the night engagements with the Americas, it show how deep and wide and therefore fractural the differences are. Where differences reach that level, they would have ceased to be mere contestations internal party control for leading it within the confines of its ideology but rather grabbing of power to change its character, ideology and relations and thus replace its legacy and history with a new and foreign one.

The ruthlessness but procedural way with which Zanu-PF dealt with the internal insurrection clearly shows that it means business and its intention is to create a new order out of chaos created by the Mujuru group and reinvigorate the national delivery processes for all to benefit from the economy. The real issues of how to move the country forward are well constructed in the Zim-Asset policy document and the basis of enhanced and accelerated implementation were well pronounced in the just ended Zanu-PF 6th Congress.

The MDC-T is also worth talking about as the official opposition and major players in parliament. The MDC also went to its own Congress which passed with limited national excitement and saw no major leadership changes. It also did not provide any clarity on the opposition party’s perceived economic and political roadmap for the country. They seemed more as a fulfilment of a fixture and extension of Morgan Tsvangirai’s reign and he presides over the party whose fortunes seem going down everyday. Except for the spectacular defeat of Nelson Chamisa who had been nominated by 11 out of 12 provinces nothing can much be remembered from that event. That defeat on its own, without a clear sign of problematic party construction in that one with so much nominations losing the final ballot tells a tale about how structural incoherent that party is. It is however not by intention to deal much on that political normally as it bear no impact on the future of the country but focus on the MDC-T as it stands.

The Morgan Tsvangirai outfit is clearly at its weakest ever. Never in its history has it been hit by such fractural fissures. While, it has suffered and survived another split in 2005, the difference is that that they managed to deal with that split by localising it Matabeleland and thus besmirched the Professor Ncube group as a tribal outfit. This assisted them reconstruct themselves with the aid of a strong donor base, supportive media, financial resources and a supportive independent media.

The donor community poured money into its coffers with a firm belief that in he enjoyed insurmountable amount of support in the rest of the country. In Matabeleland which was seen as the potential stronghold of Prof Ncube’s formation huge monies were poured in through civil society organisations that acted as the MDC-T commissariat. The strategy was ably supported by the sanctions imposed on the country which hurt the economy fuel a protest vote.

The result of 2008 in which Tsvangirai prides himself as having been a triumph and victory over the Ncube formation and Zanu-PF to me was actually not his history. It was a victory that was created in the capitals of the West and inflicted to the people of Zimbabwe in the most painful of ways. It was a triumph of the economic embargo the people’s interests. The real opposition to Zanu-PF in that election was the economy and the fissures in the party that were created funded and supported through the Mavambo Kusile. But this this time around, the split is real and has impact in all the provinces of the country and has even gone to hit them in the media, donor community and civil society. It is very unlikely that the party will recover this time around the way it survived the 2005 split because the variables have changed significantly. If anything the pointers are that the party will go further down and lose significant strength in most of its stronghold yet still remain relevant in the future of Zimbabwean politics.

The new formation that consists of the Ncube and Biti/Sekai Holland is still in the initial stages of construction but there seems to be a strong eagerness to quickly consummate the newly found love. The key challenges that the party is likely to face is twofold, the discontent in the renewal team in which there is strong group that feels that Elton Mangoma by virtue of being the one who gathered courage to deliver that letter of dismissing Tsvangirai he should be at the helm of the party.

On the other hand there is a strong side that feels that Tendai Biti by being the most senior should lead the party. While differences in views on who should lead are common in political parties it is the nature of rift caused by the different choices that become dangerous. The danger therefore is that Mangoma and Biti might not pull together much longer. The organisation can suffer fragmentation even before birth. Coupled with this is the view by the renewal that they are the big brother, a view that is certainly likely to be unacceptable to the Ncube group which even though having not done well in the last election sees itself as a political organisation with fully fledged structures and therefore deserves more respect that being treated as smaller boys by people who are not defined structurally as a political party. In that regards many in the MDC green will feel that the Holland- Biti group is behaving as if they are a lost desperate group that is being saved from sinking by joined the Holland-Biti group. The problems will persist as the anger especially by many in Holland-Biti group subsides and this can affect their strength.

The other major problem is the fixation with the MDC formations to the name MDC, so desperate about it that at one stage they had come to be known as the Democratic Union only to suddenly jump back to MDC this time prefixed by United. Prefixing the name with united is unlikely to make the people of Zimbabwe believe that the party is indeed the united MDC. The problem with this is that in the absence of Tsvangirai in any MDC formation its supporters will not see it as united no matter how many times you prefix the name MDC with united.

The MDC was built as a personality cult of Morgan Tsvangirai and his absence in any construction calling itself MDC will not be acceptable to the electorate. I am sure the fear amongst the Holland-Biti group to migrate properly from MDC is how to deal with the fragile issue of the parliamentary seats they won under Tsvangirai. It is a matter that is obviously a time bomb as it has high chances of upsetting them. Be that as it maybe if they successfully manage to solidify their union with Ncube they will be another player in the future of the politics of this country albeit in a smaller way than Zanu-PF and MDC-T.

The true likelihood of Zimbabwean politics is that it will continue to be defined a bi-polar political system but with another small party lurking in the background. In that regards and having made my arguments for all the parties my view is that in 2015 and beyond especially as we begin the countdown to the watershed 2018 elections the major political players will be Zanu-PF and MDC-T. The MDC Ncube/Holland-Biti is likely to be just another party in the background. This is despite the reality that in terms of the personnel it has a significant number of players that are much better than some in Zanu-PF and the MDC-T. It is a matter of political reality that unfortunately we can’t wish away. Of major the bi-polar parties Zanu-PF, if it uses its leadership configurations and accelerated policy implementation as a priority, it is likely to maintain its stronghold on power and maintain its two thirds majority. The MDC-T will remain there but with reduced tally and the MDC Ncube/Holland-Biti a distant third.

Qhubani Moyo is a policy and political analyst from Bulawayo East Constituency. He is contactable on [email protected].