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Perspective Stephen Mpofu
IF you have all your senses in the right place and in top gear, you cannot mix sand and ashes and present the product as a cake to people waiting with their mouths watering. This pen suggests that to do so amounts to an absurdity of absurdities. Yet believe it or not, like it or not, that is precisely what grand coalitions now in purview in some countries in Africaamount to and with Zimbabwe also shamelessly part of the charade to which a righteous name tag of plural democracy is attached.

Or let us put it in this way for the sake of clarity in this argument: if you mix poison with, say, a less dangerous chemical or with beer or Coca-cola or with any other beverage for that matter, the poison will dominate and alter the character of the cocktail because of its potency.

Now let us suppose that the concoction above represents a grand togetherness of political parties and a picture emerges of the confusion or directionless of such a grand jamboree resulting from disparate or dysfunctional ideologies, or a lack of such guiding political principles, and you have a headless political beast running hither and thither and charging at no particular target of challenges facing a nation such as ours or any other for that matter.

In this country, five small opposition parties out of as many political entities opposed to the ruling Zanu-PF have formed a so-called grand coalition in a bid to remove President Mugabe along with his party which ushered freedom and independence in 1980 in a revolution that today remains a guiding star for Zimbabwe as it were.

A similar grand coalition of opposition parties has been formed in the Democratic Republic of Congo with thinly veiled support from the West and America, in particular the United States of America, to remove President Joseph Kabila whose apparent sin is that he has been in power longer than what his opponents stomach as they are rearing to get into power, not necessarily for the betterment of the country socially or politically but as it is for an obscene appetite to enjoy the frills of power while their appetite for it remain vivified.

An opposition leader from the Island of Zanzibar which with mainland Tanganyika formed the union of Tanzania has recently been visiting Washington to seek support against the Tanzanian government of the ruling Chama cha mapinduzi party in another example of Big Brother bootlicking by an African leader whose own opposition party boycotted his country’s most recent general election.

Therefore consider the following as what is likely to happen in some, if not all of the countries on our continent where with some luck grand coalitions worm their way into power, given desperate or non-focused political thrusts to underpin national issues or a clear vision for the masses.

A hunter driven by a desire for big game meat decides to invite other people from his community to join him in a hunt concluding that his own scrawny dog cannot singularly course and kill big game.

A coalition of hunters go for the hit, but trouble comes after the dogs have made a kill and the meat must now be shared among the hunters.

Some of the individual hunters keep their preferred meat cuts even while the dogs are still chasing the wild animal, and they make their choices known when the animal has been killed, skinned and it is time for the meat to be shared.

“My dog Bhoki, fell the animal by grabbing its foreleg and so I want the liver and the other insides in addition to another big part of the game meat,” cries one of the hunters. “No,” counters another hunter, “it was my dog which grabbed the animal’s neck causing it to fall and die in the process before the other dogs caught up with the fallen animal.”

A third hunter says the animal fell after his own dog grabbed the hind leg, and yet another hunter says his own dog ripped open the animal’s belly, causing it to fall to the ground and so he should get the biggest chunk of the meat.

Other hunters refuse to take smaller cuts of the meat, claiming that their own dogs played a huge role in cornering and finally killing the animal.

There is a stalemate as a result of the failure by the hunters to reach an amicable solution and so they turn to their knobkerries and spears to put the misunderstanding to finality.

But before any blood is shed, a stranger who has been following their every step offers to take charge in sharing the meat amicably among the men so that peace and harmony is restored in the community.

The graphic story is that because they are power maniacs who lack outstanding leadership qualities, the heads of the coalition parties, or the big game-hunters, will start to haggle, or even fight over who becomes who, or occupies which fat position in a new government with the coalitions becoming Trojan horses of postmodern colonisation of their people.

That way, this pen finds it almost impossible for small, weak and virtually directionless grand coalitions to become panaceas of peace and stability and national cohesion for unimpeded economic and social advancement in countries where they become a phenomenon.

But, of course some individual parties or the coalition itself is often wont to be at the beck and call of imperialists who give the moral or financial support or both because the foreigners believe Africans are malleable, like putty, and can therefore be easily shaped into an object or governments that kowtow to big powers that bankroll them.

Are parties in Zimbabwe’s political coalition aware of the snare set by foreigners with ulterior motives for their support of the political groupings, or do the coalitions regard support by foreign powers a better evil than the incumbent ruling party whose ouster they seek with a blinding passion?

This pen challenges leaders of the parties in the grand coalition to publicly say on whose side they are: the Zimbabwean masses who desire peace and stability or on that of foreign governments dangling a succulent carrot in order to achieve hegemonic desires not only in this country which is rich in natural resources, but also in other African states that attract their imperialist eagle’s eye?