MDC Alliance and the consensus nonsense

Published: 22 May 2018

When the Movement for Democratic Change was formed in 1999, it pivoted around the word democracy. There is no doubt the catchword "democracy" earned the party unlimited intimacy with Western Europe, a continental bloc that swallowed the idea that there was no democracy in Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular, hook, line and sinker.

The MDC became sweet music to Western Europe and America and indeed millions of dollars in funding flooded its pockets to bursting point. MDC did not know what to do with the money and new found love. The leadership bought fancy cars, houses and married expensive women.

Riding on the post-colonial era desire to get rid of revolutionary parties that liberated Africa, the MDC provided the real platform and plinth that Europe wanted to use in dislodging Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe the same way it had routed Kenneth Kaunda's United National Independence Party (UNIP) in Zambia.

But Zanu-PF proved too strong and has stood the test of time until today.

And, indeed, like that silent fart that announces itself through smell, the MDC-T's ideological bankruptcy, undemocratic tendencies and power hunger announced themselves and today Western Europe no longer fancies going to bed with smelly opposition outfits.

Now, the reality of it is that today, the name MDC has lost its intended tomfoolery, lustre and meaning and exposed that party as an undemocratic political outfit whose leadership is a bunch of thugs that uses bully tactics to usurp both party and Government power.

It is that party that has no respect for the rule of law and constitutionalism. It has no respect for women, ask Jessie Majome, Thokozani Khupe, Linda Masarira, Lucia Matibenga, Priscillah Misihairabwi-Mushonga and many others.

The name has lost its meaning. Democracy is now a far-fetched idea. It is a mirage. Even the breakaways that resulted in the formation of MDC 99, MDC-T, MDC-M, MDC-N and MDC this and that nonsense, is a result of failed internal democracy. Do village elders not ask, what is in a name?

Today the party is vying for the crucial 2018 elections against a revived Zanu-PF that has used party structures to run elections in a test case that has proved internal democratic systems beyond any doubt. Like any new system, there are bound to be technical glitches but the intention to democratise the party cannot be doubted.

The hullabaloo you hear about this and that problem in the Zanu-PF primary elections is actually an endorsement of internal democratic systems. The people are allowed to choose who should represent them and they indeed have a right to complain where they feel short-changed. That is democracy. The reruns also confirm, internal systems correctional measures. That is what defines democracy.

Now go to MDC Alliance, they talk of consensus among candidates. What about the voters? One really has to be very stupid or mad to believe that two aspiring candidates agree on who should represent the people as if the people are not in the country. And then MDC Alliance brazenly seeks endorsement from the same voters it did not allow to choose who should represent it?

Does it make sense to anyone that two or three people decide for the rest? Is that democracy? Is that what a movement for democracy does? A movement by definition must have grassroots structures and the grassroots structures should drive the agenda.

The grassroots should speak to its needs. The message one gets is that the MDC does not have any grassroots. It is a hanging party that only looks for a grassroots to endorse it.

Is it too hard for a party that is two decades old to go to congress and choose a leader as per its constitution? Is it too hard for a party that is almost two decades old to hold national primary elections and let the people choose who they want?

At this point you do not need a political scientist to tell you that Nelson Chamisa is a power-hungry clown who is joining rat-tags to make an imagined rope to take him to imagined power. He should have allowed democracy to prevail.

But as Karitundundu the ageless village autochthon of wisdom and knowledge aptly put it, if you take a goat skinner and anoint him king, he will rule with goat-skinning tactics, for, that is all he knows. Was Chamisa himself elected democratically and is it not expecting too much to make him lead a democratic process? Is it not akin to expecting honey from a fly?
- the herald

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