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Mr Tsvangirai

Democracy, freedom of expression and ambition are on trial in MDC-T.
In his later-day version of The Night of the Long Knives, MDC-T leader, Morgan Tsvangirai moved on Thursday to ruthlessly crash democratic expression against him by expelling four senior party officials. Deputy treasurer-general Elton Mangoma, national executive member Last Maengahama, youth secretary general Promise Mkhwananzi and former director in Tsvangirai’s office, Jacob Mafume were purged from the Western-backed party for insubordination and violating its constitution.

For exercising their freedom of expression in calling him to step aside; for exercising their democratic right to question his leadership credentials and for associating with a section of the MDC-T that is unhappy with Tsvangirai’s leadership, the quartet was expelled.

The ruthlessness and scale of the purges remind many of fascist German leader, Adolf Hitler, who in three days carried out a series of targeted political murders of his opponents.  Hitler, who presided one of the world’s worst dictatorships took out leading figures over whom he held old grudges and those he deemed threats to his leadership.

Some of the murdered were open-minded former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Gustav Ritter von Kahr whom he had not forgiven for suppressing his ill-fated bid to stage a coup, the Munich Putsch in 1923.  Hitler went hard  after Ernst Rohm and his paramilitary wing for their independent minds and outspokenness. More internal critics of his regime were also eliminated in a quick-fire assault that claimed hundreds.  His Gestapo, the secret police conducted the purges.

While no-one was physically eliminated in MDC-T on Thursday, The Night of the Long Knives has become a political metaphor for any drastic sidelining of people with whom one bears grudges or those he sees as threatening his rule.  We have to point out, however, that Tsvangirai’s shock troops pounced on Mangoma a few weeks ago for calling on him to resign.

For trying to moderate what clearly is descending into an internal dictatorship averse to criticism and accountable leadership, Tsvangirai has not forgiven Mangoma, Mafume, Mkhwananzi and Maengahama, so got them fired.

The official position is that the MDC-T national council voted 131 to one at the meeting to expel them.  They were already on suspension on older charges, but the official line is that the final decision was made not on these, but subsequent ones.

Mangoma’s court case in which he is suing Tsvangirai for suspending him was the final straw.  But we feel he had no choice.  He had lost confidence in internal structures for redress. He knew Tsvangirai had put together a compromised tribunal to try him, therefore he sought the more credible process of an open court.

Yet the big question is where to now for the real brains behind the Mangoma-Tsvangirai fallout, Tendai Biti, the secretary-general.

He defended Mangoma when the former deputy treasurer was manhandled at Harvest House.  Widely acknowledged as the prime mover behind Mangoma, and the principal beneficiary in the event of Tsvangirai stepping down, he has largely been quiet. But we see his walking out just before the vote on Thursday, supposedly to rush to court, as another hint as to his feelings in the MDC-T power struggle.

It was a symbolic message that gives credence to word that he wants out to found the United Democratic Front.

Biti has not taken Mangoma’s frontal approach, seeing it as imprudent for now.  Mafume dropped a clue last Friday at a briefing in Harare.

“At this present moment,” said Mafume, “what is needed is to protect the democrats in the MDC who are genuinely calling for renewal, that they are not indeed victimised by those who are breaking away from the values of the party while trying to create the impression that they are in the majority when clearly they are in the minority within the MDC in terms of issues around strategic renewal, leadership renewal.”

Biti sees it as clever politics to remain imbedded within the party, mobilise within, waiting for an appropriate time to play the last card.

He is aware that his loyalists are being systematically haunted out of MDC-T across the country. Tsvangirai is out to whittle down his internal power base so as to leave him in a hollow position of a commander without troops.

But as Tsvangirai eliminates his internal opponents feel-good style, he is ignoring the fundamentals that have left his party in this predicament. As long as there is no internal democracy in MDC-T; as long as free speech is a punishable offence and as long as those who campaign for democratic change within the party are beaten physically and banished, he will fire and fire until there is no one else to fire.

In the final analysis, the discord in MDC-T is sweet music to rival political parties and Zimbabweans at large as Tsvangirai’s brand of politics is an affront to what they aspire for, their nationalistic agenda.