Will The Real Zimbabwean Opposition, Please Stand Up.

Early this week ZimJournalists Arise, circulated a piece by MDC Chief Policy Co-ordinator General Eddie Cross, who seems to have thrown in the towel and has left it to the Gods to deal with Mugabe. His spokesman Nelson Chamisa, predictably cried foul over the rural district elections. ZimJournalists received the following responses from some of our readers.

Letter From Clayton Peel, former Chronicle Journalist

Eddie Cross's article, 'How Long, O Lord?' and Nelson Chamisa's celebration of the MDC's gains in local government elections, suggest that the opposition is continuing to underestimate the resolve, not just of ZANU-PF but its allies in SADC and the African Union, to prevent the removal by democratic means of Mugabe and his successor regime. Cross believes the demise of Mugabe and the disintegration of ZANU-PF thereafter or the lack of stature of any of his possible successors, should provide an opening for the MDC even if, as he admits, the 'machinery' that has kept ZANU-PF in power remains in place. Chamisa goes further to define that 'machinery' as militarized electoral management, which he says has to be 'removed from the clutches of ZANU-PF', otherwise ' the electoral route will continue to breed illegitimate and sterile outcomes'.
I am not about to argue with the core of these gentlemen's articles, which is, that the democratic struggle is far from suppressed, and that the ruling establishment is confused about the route to take post-Mugabe. These are both good omens for the opposition. What I am against is that flawed assumption, made before (principally in the 2001/2 elections), that popular sentiment, economic hardship and disunity within ZANU-PF will necessarily hand victory to the MDC. In Africa, it does not always work that way.
Cross and Chamisa are no doubt aware that after the humiliating defeat of Dr Kaunda and UNIP in Zambia, followed by the ouster of Dr Banda and the Congress Party in Malawi, the former 'liberation movements' of the SADC region met (in Pretoria, as I recall) for a formal summit, chiefly to strategise on how to prevent the downfall of ex-liberation movements across southern Africa and block the rise of new political elites which appeared to have western backing. The result of that summit was a commitment by those movements to support each other, a party-to-party pledge which is being executed through the facility of governments controlled by those parties. Hence, you will not hear a SADC government attack ZANU-PF, and there will be no shortage of endorsements from each of these governments for elections held in Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique and other SADC countries - even when their election monitors are caught up in the election violence, as happened in 2001.
There you have it. The might of South Africa and SADC will continue to sustain ZANU-PF, however many more 'Murambatsvinas' and fraudulent elections there may be. 44% of the rural vote in an election is a fine achievement by the MDC and let no one - least of all me - belittle it, but that is not a sign in heaven that victory will be achieved via the ballot box. Nor is it just enough to, as Mr Cross says, 'sit tight' and wait for Mugabe's exit. Nyerere, Machel, Chissano, Nujoma, to name a few, are gone, but their parties remain firmly in power.
Well, those are my thoughts.

Peel got this response from Mike Davies Chairperson of the Combined Harare Residents Association had this to say:

A useful contribution. The MDC seems dominated by an evangelical element who believe that their god will save us or somehow make everything nice nice again. I largely respect religious beliefs when they are kept private but I do not accept such faith in divine intervention when it comes to governance! The State is a human creation and will only be altered by human intervention. Appeals to supernatural agency betray a lack of strategy and vision. while 'sitting tight' is a middle class option based on preserving what little is left of the comfort zone that exists for that diminishing group - there is no such comfort zone for the poor.
Power is never surrendered willingly by the elite which must be 'persuaded' to relinquish power through incentives to do so. These 'incentives' are varied and include the threat of revolutionary overthrow. The MDC, like so many naive Zimbabweans, appears to believe that by engaging with zanu-pf, the latter can somehow be reformed or persuaded to relinquish power hence the continued participation in the fraudulent and perverted institutions of the occupied State like parliament, elections, the courts and other such irrelevancies instead of incentivising change. One of the biggest demobilising influences for strugglistas has been the failure of the MDC to think outside the box, to challenge the political culture of Zimbabwe rather than merely seeking to replace the faces. Many of us feel that the MDC would at best replicate the Chiluba phenomenon in Zambia as a new lootocracy takes over since there are many in the MDC who are indistinguishable from the dinosaurs in zanu-pf, the chefs with their pajeros, claiming to be defending the last available democratic spaces whereas in reality they serve to perpetuate the system while feeding on the table scraps.
If the MDC is serious about wresting power from the elite, they need to implement tactics that will achieve that goal. Let them pursue the illegitimacy angle and hammer home the illegitimate nature of this regime. Stand for every election but then resign immediately to cause a by-election, stand and resign again, thereby creating a constitutional crisis. Mugabe's biggest weakness (and he has many) is his egotistical desire to be perceived as a 'liberator', as a legitimate leader rather than as a common tyrant like Amin, Bokassa, Pinochet, etc which is why we still have the appearance of parliamentary democracy in this country, even though the institutions have been eviscerated. The participation by the MDC in the fraudulent processes of the occupied State perpetuates this facade.
In 1980, a militaristic movement inherited the structures of governance from an oppressive racist regime and did nothing to transform the institutions and processes of a commandist centralist State " geared... to the protection of certain interests" (Cliffe in Zimbabwe's Inheritance ed C Stoneman 1981) because it suited both their purposes and their nature. Structure determines content. Without a fundamental structural change, even those MDC politicians who are genuinely concerned with transforming the nation will fail to make headway against the array of elitist vested interests who control this country and who have made it a house of hunger for so many generations.
Well, these are my thoughts...
Mike Davies
See also my letter "Nationalist elites reach out to sustain each other" Independent, 17 January, 2003.

Response From ZimJournalists Arise

Journalists should not let the MDC get away scot-free from stating whether or not they have failed to find a solution to the Zimbabwean crisis. We think both MDC’s have a case to answer here. Can they come up with a plausible and clear answer to whether or not mass action is going to take place, if not what is their strategy. We are well aware of Mugabe’s evilness and the man is not going to change or negotiate with anyone. One wonders if Professor Jonathan Moyo was right after all about a third force. So journos lets not hero-worship these guys and let them get away with their vague rhetoric, so we avoid what we did when everyone thought Mugabe was a hero, only to realize he was an ineffective villain all along.