Zimbabwe Times
January 5, 2010
By Clapperton Mavhunga
After 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party defeated Chiang Kai-shek and banished him to Taiwan, Mao’s regime was in the habit of establishing and promoting these ‘mushroom’ parties that created the facade that China tolerated dissent.
In reality, these were ‘dummies’ that operated via leash under handlers in the Chinese Communist Party. The idea was to flush out those members of the public who might be gullible and uncooperative with the CCP and eliminate them.
So what is the connection of this with Zimbabwe? The first cadres to go abroad and train from ZAPU (before ZANU’s formation) were sent to China in 1961-2 thereabouts. (Of course, it is a matter of conjecture whether they really trained militarily). The trend at that time was that African states and anti-colonial movements were sending their cadres to China to imbibe education that was alternative to western (imperialist) education. The Chinese used them as instruments for Communist indoctrination of Africa. These human vehicles returned with ideologies of state that had already started entrenching under Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere.
The Zanu-PF government in particular took pages from the Chinese, North Koreans, and Soviets and perfected them. When you trace Zimbabwean history, you will notice that the first seven years were spent on liquidating ZAPU. Afterwards we became a de facto one party state. But to window-dress our system as a ‘democratic state’ and thereby curry favor with western donors and aid-giving countries, we needed the Chinese model of ‘dummy parties’ – the Forum first, ZUM, NAGG, the Egypt Dzinemunhenzva parties, and the countless independents, then the Mavambos. And ZAPU?
From the start, the ZAPU revival had all the hallmarks of a dog under its master’s leash. The trend is that these ‘franchise parties’ will be in media circulation awhile, and then as they fail or succeed in their purpose they degenerate into well-publicized internecine squabbles and then become extinct. Their purpose in the specific case of Zimbabwe is to act as ‘credible alibis’ for taking votes from the main opposition and putting them in their box, or simply as substitute candidates against who Zanu-PF can run if the MDC decides to boycott, or simply a hoodwink on the public.
One quality of an alibi is that, first and foremost, it must be credible beyond any reasonable doubt. The calculus is that it must be capable of pulling a specific electoral demographic with it – urban intellectual formations in Forum’s case, urban workers in the case of ZUM, and the Ndebele people in the case of ZAPU.
Anticipating that ZAPU will deny this, I would say that the re-formation of this party suffers from a serious credibility deficit already because of its very tribal nature. The names of officials in its executive speak for themselves. It is just one of those parties designed for Ndebele people, full-stop. It has no 21st Century outlook; it is trapped in the sort of schisms that bedeviled the old ZAPU, a failure to realize that what is necessary for Matabeleland to be treated equally with Mashonaland is a coalition of people who think of themselves as humans first, Zimbabweans second, and locate themselves as Zimbabweans who happen to speak Ndebele last.
If Barack Obama has run a Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton-style election campaign targeting only blacks and preaching a message to “make the whites uncomfortableâ€, he would not even have made it past the primary. Zimbabweans who care for Matabeleland as part of Zimbabwe – and I am one of them – would be better served to learn from this Obama moment.
For as long as there are Ndebele people who strongly think that they can be listened to as a Ndebele party, Matabeleland will never develop. What the region needs is a coalition of Zimbabweans across the ethnic and racial and even transnational divide who can marshal their conscience to the realization of the region’s economic and infrastructural status.
As far as I can see, ZAPU is not the forum for that agenda.
People will say whatever they feel about Jonathan Moyo, but of one thing Tsholotsho will always beware: while he was a minister this politician drew the maps of government and Zanu-PF patronage to converge economically in Tsholotsho. Moyo knows that politics is a game of trickery: the mathematics of it is that one can be a puppet outside, even as his subservience to a system that caused Gukurahundi is engineering material rewards for him and his constituency. Granted, whether he used these riches wisely is another thing. But by hook or crook he saw to the development of his constituency by some margin.
My point is not to encourage politicians to loot government coffers surreptitiously in order to develop their constituencies and assure votes at the election. Rather, it is to say that even in America where democracy is reputed to thrive, key Democrats held out their vote on the Senate version of the health bill until certain earmarks had been given to benefit their constituencies. Right! If you can’t get my vote the bill doesn’t pass; we can avoid that by inserting in this bill a sub-section authorizing funds for road development ‘in the least developed and most arid regions’ of the country.
That eliminates most of Mashonaland, so that allocation goes to Matabeleland.
That means that Matabeleland has to get its agenda right also. Given the pain of Gukurahundi, the question is how best to articulate justice to make the point. Right now there are two choices, the third one, ZAPU, being just an unnecessary distraction that will make noise, but won’t yield much. People like Obert Mpofu, Khaya Moyo, and Jonathan Moyo have chosen – as politicians from the region – to articulate the region from Zanu-PF. Others like Sam Sipepa Nkomo, Lovemore Moyo, and David Coltart have chosen to speak through the MDC.
Sometimes we often see things in black and white terms, or as Zanu-PF vs MDC. Yet in the calculus of these people, this is a good time to go to Harare and use the party as a platform to articulate the issues of the region.
Party affiliation only sugar-coats the tone and provides the linguistic register within which to articulate, but the issue for these politicians should be Matabeleland’s development. That of course does not make them any lesser nationalists or Zimbabweans. Quite to the contrary, I may be more inclined to respect them as visionaries who realize the dangers of historical regional imbalances to torpedo the future of one-Zimbabwe under one flag.
For them to elect to articulate such an agenda under a national party, as opposed to a tribal one, in a national institution (Parliament) and through central government as a vehicle is, to me at least, the ultimate embodiment of true nationalists.
Of course, our criticism of Jonathan Moyo is based upon the extent to which he was willing to go to buy favors for his constituency. That critique does not necessarily hail from his constituency, where a borehole is a borehole no matter who sank it. It may be a good thing that a new code of ethical journalism will soon arise where the media does not bamboozle us with the national wrong- or right-doings of politicians and the enchantment of their rhetoric, but writes the substance of their conduct and suitability for higher office not from Samora Machel Avenue, London, or Washington DC, but from the mouths and stomachs of constituents they serve, giving testimony to their great works.
As currently constituted, our journalism has not yet reached that stage. We are still enchanted by a centrist critique of these politicians.