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Stephen Mpofu
In communicology, a mass demonstration – or one by a lone person – is considered a statement of support for a cause or a system, or against both such a system and a cause.

In a party state the inherent system of government rarely or even allows demonstrations to take place as the authorities endeavour to present a façade of artificial calm reigning in the country to try to earn kudos from the world at large.

Zimbabwe is a multi-party democracy in which opposition parties are free to express a statement through demonstrations against what they may consider dysfunctional, to try to find their way into the hearts and minds of prospective supporters and voters wielding the trump card to catapult the party into power.

However, red lights lie ahead and against which a party, whether in opposition or in power, will proceed to condone actions that the wider public regard as dysfunctional or repugnant.

In the circumstances, is not the opposition Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai not violating a political red light by planning a demonstration in Bulawayo in support of councillors under attack by the government and by members of the public for alleged corruption and running down the city?

The demonstration planned for next month reportedly is meant to prop up the MDC-T run council and against Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister, Cde Saviour Kasukuwere, who has demonstrated an unflinching intrepidity in cleaning up the rot in local authorities around the country, in keeping with the powers vested in him by his portfolio.

Residents in the City of Kings and Queens have sent a petition to Parliament through the Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association into alleged land grabbing involving some councillors.

Does MDC-T support the alleged illegal actions by its councillors even before those people are cleared of any wrong doing by an investigation?

In short, what does the MDC’s publicly pronounced stance say for the image of a political party that desperately wants to get into power?

For instance, is one to read into the party’s utterances that it will turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to charges of corruption against its councillors when it gets into power?

The mind boggles at the prospective answer to the question above.

At any rate, it is utterly untrue to claim that Bulawayo City Council is right now the best-run local authority in the country.

That alleged record is nothing but a proverb of a city the administration of which was, for a lack of a better adjective, excellent when Mike Ndubiwa was the Town Clerk in the years that preceded Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980.

In Harare MDC-T is in a confrontation with Minister Kasukuwere by blocking a forensic audit at Harare City Council owned companies which the Minister has ordered in the wake of reports that the entities have never declared dividends to council, a situation raising fears of either mismanagement or looting by some officials within that council.

MDC-T spokesperson Obert Gutu charged; “Minister Kasukuwere has got no business ordering the City Council what to do or what not to do. He has absolutely no constitutional mandate and/or basis to order that particular audit.

‘‘This is a witch hunt. We know it. He’s motivated by utmost bad faith.”

But surely, Minister Kasukuwere is taking the measures in point not in his personal capacity but as a servant of the government of Zimbabwe to restore order and sanity in governmental institutions such as local authorities that appear to run amok, so to speak.

Now, is the uncompromising position displayed by the MDC-T not to give an impression to the outside world that the opposing party is running structures parallel to those of the Zanu-PF government which they (the opposition party) want to remain as a no go-area for the incumbent government?

Or what exactly does MDC-T want to achieve by making councils that it runs untouchable by the government of the day, or is it a way by which MDC flexes its muscles against the ruling Zanu-PF to try to show the stuff of which it is made to woo more members to its self?

The question that right thinking people might ask is why MDC-T appears to be afraid of transparency in the manner in which its councillors administer things at the party’s run local authorities?

To come to the bottom line of MDC-T’s  concerns, is the party aware that its councillors sit on Pandora boxes that a microscopic gaze in the form of an audit will expose to the party’s embarrassment and to the potential demise of its public standing?

It is hoped, following the mayhem caused by MDC-T youths who rampaged through the city during a demonstration in Harare recently, that this will not be repeated in Bulawayo during that party’s planned demonstration in May.

The police must maintain a no-nonsense stance to protect lives and property against any rogues taking the law into their own hands, at the behest of their leaders or out of control of the authorities.