By Takura
Zhangazha*
Someone
accused me of betraying the mainstream opposition political movement. I laughed out quite loudly. I have not been involved in opposition politics
for at least eight years. I however am a
founder member of at least two organizations in the mainstream civil society
and opposition politics.
The first
being the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) which I left after internal disagreements
about the format of changing it into a political party. The second being the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) which when we formed/formalized it in Chitungwiza in September 1999
what we considered a proper working people’s leftist movement.
So I know
most of the actors’ in the current debacle about the future of the national
political opposition. Including those who have passed on and those that are
alive. I also know those that joined
well after. Either in opportunistic or religious fervor.
I am also slightly
tired of the tag that I could have been a better political leader in one
respect or the other.
And for
this reason I will explain my personal political journey in Zimbabwe’s opposition
politics between 1999 and 2008. After that I have had temporary solace in
working in the development NGO sector.
As abstract
as it may seem, I was involved in the formation of the original MDC at the National
Working Peoples Convention in 1998 through to its launch via the Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) in 1999.
I was also
a bit part player in the negotiations that led to the Global Political Agreement
on an Inclusive Government of 2009 until 2013. As facilitated by SADC under the
aegis of the legendary former South African president, Thabo Mbeki.
I never
worked for the inclusive government but I understood its nuances and its
mechanics. By the time the inclusive governments tenure was over, based on
constitutional court cases, I also quickly realized that opposition politics in
Zimbabwe had changed.
Within the
then social and civil society movements we had already done the Zimbabwe People’s
Charter, one that was deemed too ‘leftist’ to receive international rightwing
support. The NCA had also decided to transform
itself into a political party, a decision me and a few colleagues agonized over
and eventually had to leave the organization because we saw a regrettable lack
of organic political direction. An issue which still vindicates us today.
But back to
the inclusive government and the failure of the opposition to defeat the ruling
Zanu PF establishment in 2013. To be honest we were shocked at our electoral
loss. We assumed it was a given that the
vote would go in our oppositional favour.
We had failed to factor in the rural vote, the changes in urban settlements
and also the moral questions around our then national opposition leader.
But we
lived to fight another day in one form or the other. We were products of two processes. The labour unions and the students
unions. The front runners were the ZCTU
and for us, as leaders of students unions was the Zimbabwe National Students
Unions (ZINASU). For the latter our able
leader was Hopewell Gumbo, popularly referred to as “Msavayha” because he was
studying surveying and our Secretary General was Nelson Chamisa who was at that
time studying marketing at the Harare Polytechnic.
There were
many other comrades that helped with the expansion of opposition politics in
Zimbabwe. Suffice to say it was both the
labour and student movements that formed the mainstream opposition as we know
it today.
The key
point however is to explain the disastrous state of our opposition politics
today. We were originally leftist opposition
comrades. We derided ESAP and also
initially argued for a land reform programme before the Chinotimba war veterans
started invading farms in what they called the 3rd Chimurenga.
We argued
among ourselves about what should be the way forward and the legendary Morgan
Tsvangirai accused us of being ‘nhinhi” for refusing the new constitution in
2013. A term we accepted after the 2013 referendum
‘yes vote’ as the peoples will.
But the question
remains about the state of our contemporary opposition politics. I have not been involved in it for at least
ten years. What I know is that it has
lost its organic link to the working people of Zimbabwe
It has a
new mix of religion, politics and a very abstract populism. It does not belong anymore to the people as
it used to. Never mind the vote
counts. It remains a created construct
that many comrades flow toward because of materialist reasoning and inferiority
complexes.
Personally,
I take responsibility of the state of affairs of the opposition given my own history. We saw what was coming. We did not think through it. And we are between a rock and a hard place.
But we will recover.
Takura
Zhangazha writes here in his own
personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
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