Maravi

(TALKZIMBABWE) Zanu-PF politburo reflects party's strength

Zanu-PF politburo reflects party's strength
Mon, 15 Feb 2010 01:14:00 +0000

IF anyone still needed to be convinced that Zanu PF is the dominant political party in Zimbabwe, the evidence of the final nail on that truth must be the overwhelming interest from across the political divide in last Friday’s eagerly awaited announcement by President Robert Mugabe of the party’s Politburo which had media houses and news websites buzzing with excitement and speculation before and after it was proclaimed.

Surely, there is no way people would be interested in their unprecedented numbers in President Mugabe’s Friday announcement if the Politburo was a meaningless body or if Zanu PF was irrelevant to the current and future political stakes of the country as some self-indulgent pundits would have us believe.

It is therefore opportune to unpack this interest by probing the meaning of the new Zanu PF Politburo which was a subject of excited speculation especially among the party’s usual detractors.

Six considerations stand out:

First, it is instructive to note that some media hacks linked to the MDC-T went overboard with their speculation by repeatedly tipping targeted Zanu PF Central Committee members, including this writer, for appointment to this or that imagined Politburo post ahead of the Friday announcement. Elsewhere in the civil world, people are tipped for appointment to national political positions on the basis of well-informed expectation. Not in Zimbabwe.

Here, as John Makumbe would say, the tipping of selection for political or even Cabinet positions has become a “tired and detested” malicious ploy to use newspapers and other media outlets on the Internet to de-campaign some individuals for one reason or another.

Of course, there are exceptions but they prove the rule.

And so it is that those among us who were taught by our mothers not to believe everything we read know that in Zimbabwe, more often than not, the opposite is always true when anybody is repeatedly tipped for a post in high political office. This explains why, with the exception of one or two cases, all the “tipping” of who would get what Politburo post in Zanu PF was spectacularly way off the mark.

Second, the hyper-speculation which preceded the announcement of the Politburo dramatised once again that some sections of the media in the country and their surrogate websites with an interest in our national politics do not yet understand the different dynamics of “appointed” offices versus those of “elected” offices in the political class.

Whereas elected office is generally resolved through a transparent contest among interested candidates, appointed political office is often, if not always, an outcome of an opaque selection of people who have not even applied for the position by the appointing authority.

In this regard, Faith Zaba wrote an astonishing article in the Zimbabwe Independent last Friday with the usual malicious “tipping” which claimed, among other ridiculous things, that this writer’s “nomination to the Politburo” was facing stiff resistance from Vice- Presidents Joice Mujuru and John Nkomo and from the new National Chairman Simon Khaya Moyo, who collectively make up the Zanu-PF Presidium along with President Mugabe.

This claim was nonsense because there are no “nominations to the Politburo” in the same way there are no “nominations to the Cabinet”. None whatsoever! These are jobs with no applicants. They are just appointments made by the party’s Presidium at its pleasure to which it is fully entitled in accordance with the Zanu PF constitution.

In Zanu PF, there are nominations only to the Presidium and Central Committee made by the party’s provinces to Congress which elects the Presidium and Central Committee members.

The Politburo is appointed by the Presidium from among Central Committee members without any nominations in the same way the Cabinet is appointed among Members of Parliament without anyone of them being nominated to be a Cabinet minister.

While appointments to high political office are a very important part of public life, it is more important to understand that they are always a reflection of the choices and prejudices of the appointing authorities.

In public life many are appointed but only a few are elected. In Zimbabwe, for example, there are some 250 000 civil service officials who are appointed, most of them as applicants, and an insignificantly tiny fraction of that are elected politicians.

As such, appointments do not have the same quality as elections. Whereas appointees serve their appointers, electees serve the people. This is why in politics it is everywhere and always far better to be elected than to be appointed.

As a matter of fact, President Mugabe’s most outstanding strength over the years, which should be a priceless lesson to those who seek his office, has been his direct connection with the people through direct election by the people and his readiness to always speak and act with the people in mind. Others seem to suffer from a “groupie mentality” and they are often afraid to be with the people and so they seek refuge among their unpopular and incompetent cronies whom they tend to prefer to appoint.

It is no wonder that unelected and unelectable politicians not only here in Zimbabwe, but also around the world tend to be arrogant against the people in pursuit of self-preservation and such politicians typically make myopic appointments that reflect their factional and even personal interests which have little if anything to do with the broad interests of the masses which should matter the most and therefore should come first in progressive politics.

Third, it is notable that some significant amount of the commentary around President Mugabe’s announcement last Friday has sought to juxtapose the new Politburo with the MDC-T’s national executive.

This juxtaposition has focused on the presumed average age of the two. For example, much is being made about the age differences between Zanu PF’s Secretary for Information Rugare Gumbo and his MDC-T’s counterpart Nelson Chamisa.

But the comparison, which is intended to politically advantage the MDC-T and present it as a better party purely on account of Chamisa’s immature age, is both mischievous and hollow not least because age is indeed nothing but a number.

Just ask the Chinese whose communist gerontocracy spearheaded the transformation of China into a vibrant and globally leading society where young people are blossoming today.

While it is true that there are some old-aged people in our country who are beyond midnight, it is also true that there are some young people, like Chamisa, who just don’t get it. In any event, there is a truism that the older one gets, the younger they become, at least at heart.

The view doing rounds in some quarters that the Zanu PF Politburo should demographically match the national executive of the MDC-T is reactive and retrogressively so. It is plainly ridiculous for anyone to suggest that the average age of members of the MDC-T national executive constitutes a template that should be used or followed by other political parties in the country when filling their leadership ranks.

Let’s face it, many of the young people in the MDC-T leadership are well-known hooligans who skipped school because of their academic truancy and social deviancy and they are only now attending night school in the hope of catching up with their peers who were better disciplined. Truant and deviant youth are not leaders.

The bunch of truant MDC-T chaps is not an example for any serious young person in independent Zimbabwe and it is an insult for anybody to think that the average age of such a hopeless bunch should be a model for the Zanu-PF Politburo.

Zanu-PF is a leader and not a follower in our national politics and that is yet another explanation why there was big time interest in and speculation about the announcement of the party’s Politburo last Friday.

Parenthetically, the self-evident weaknesses of the MDC-T young hooligans in that party’s national executive should not blind us about the demographic realities of our country. Ours is a nation whose majority are young people and this is becoming increasingly so.

It is absolutely necessary that the language and practice of our national politics should reflect this fundamental fact. So far, Zanu-PF has done very little to reflect this fact. The continued emphasis by some insensitive Zanu PF leaders on a selfish past, with claims we hear these days that “those who were not in the liberation struggle were not there and should not be there now” are simply not helpful to the party and are, in fact, counter-revolutionary.

It is very difficult for many well-meaning Zimbabweans who are committed to safeguarding the gains of the liberation struggle to understand how or why some Zanu PF leaders who now make up the party’s critical old guard seem to have conveniently forgotten that they impacted and shaped our national politics in the liberation struggle when they were young people.

Put simply, our war of liberation was fought by young people who are now old, wise and who must for that reason facilitate the participation of young people in the new struggles for the defence and consolidation of our natural resources and people’s empowerment.

Yes, our liberation fighters grew in and into the struggle to the old guard they are today but they did not start or shine in their old age but they did so when they were tender but determined liberation souls. It boggles the mind why people with such a glorious experience and who are loved and appreciated by most Zimbabweans are nevertheless apparently reluctant to allow Zanu PF to move on with the changed and changing times to secure the future of our country on the basis of the very solid foundation that our liberators created and for which the nation is eternally grateful.

While, as recently admitted and confirmed by Chamisa that the biggest problem facing the MDC-T is corruption in the party’s ranks especially among its councillors across the country, the biggest challenge facing Zanu PF is the party’s apparent inability or unwillingness to foster change within its ranks in a manner that would inspire the youth who now make up the voting majority in our country. The cliental politics of factions remains the order of the day in Zanu PF and something needs to be done about that in the interest of the party and the revolution which it has led for the benefit of the masses.

Fourth, one characteristic feature of the Politburo announced last Friday which has escaped the attention or scrutiny of available commentary on the matter is the fact that its composition is deeply rooted in Zanu PF’s formidable history in the foundation of our independent country. This is an important feature because it distinguishes Zanu PF from all other political formations in the country.

As foreign founded and funded political formations, the likes of the MDC-T can afford to have fly-by-night leaders and structures that have no history and thus no roots. Indeed, such formations can afford to blow with the winds because they are rootless.

Zanu PF and indeed other political parties around the world that have history, including Labour, the Conservative and Liberals in Britain and the Democrats and Republicans in America, cannot afford the same.

Although history is an undisputed strength of Zanu PF as exemplified by the composition of the new Politburo, it stands to reason that a party with a strong history but without an equally strong present or future cannot survive. Political parties are not museums frozen in times gone by. Rather, they are a living reality with a dynamic momentum into the future. It is one thing for a political party to have history and quite another thing for it to be history.

Zanu PF has history, but sadly, there are some comrades who want it to be history.

Some African parties that became history as a result of abusing their history include Unip in Zambia, MCP in Malawi and Kanu in Kenya. Zanu PF better beware by taking a leaf not only from CCM which re-invented itself well in Tanzania, but also from sister revolutionary parties closer to home in Mozambique and Namibia where Frelimo and Swapo respectively continue to muster commanding electoral majorities despite facing formidable challenges from imperialist and neo-colonial forces.

Fifth, and most importantly for Zanu PF members who for one reason or another were not entirely happy with the Politburo choices made last Friday, we must at all cost avoid falling victim to the politics of positions which the MDC-T has sought to introduce and entrench in the inclusive Government under the false cover of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed by Zanu PF and the two MDC formations on September 15, 2008.

For the MDC-T, the GPA and the inclusive Government are all and only about jobs for Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s cronies and his masters such as Roy Bennett. In the MDC-T positions are supreme over policies and that is why that party has not been able to deliver anything to the people since becoming part of the Government on February 13, 2009.

In Zanu PF, comrades in the Central Committee and the other structures of the party from the provinces to the districts, wards, villages and streets or cells should know that good politics in the service of our country bids them to act in the national interest where they are and as whom they are and that they should always be guided by the enduring principle that leadership is not a position but a disposition.

Sixthly and finally, Zanu-PF’s detractors who have been running around since last Friday falsely celebrating what they see as the party’s challenged Politburo on the scores of age and competence better take note of the fact that while Zanu PF has over the last decade focused on the restructuring of its participatory organs, now the new focus is on the multi-structuring of the party.

In fact, a cursory but informed review of the Zanu PF Politburo since 2000 would readily show that it has not necessarily been the pivotal or only structure or organ to spearhead the mobilisation of the party’s membership and the masses for electoral purposes.

One could even argue that, with factionalism taking centre stage at the apex of the party, the Politburo has not been a factor at all in the mobilisation of Zanu PF members and the masses in general over the last 10 years. Instead, there has been a multi-structural approach within which the Politburo has served the purpose of ensuring the cohesion and unity of the party while other intertwined national structures have discharged the mobilisation function especially for national elections.

This development, which has transformed Zanu PF’s vanguard role into a multipronged thrust operating at multiple levels, has been made possible by the historical fact that Zanu PF, which is now an organic product of Zipra and Zanla forces, has become inextricably embedded in the fabric of our society to a critical point where every Zimbabwean is consciously or subconsciously Zanu PF at heart. It’s only some heads that occasionally get messed up from time to time but “vano penga vachidzoka” because of their wholesome hearts which are rooted in our revolutionary experience.

In the light of the foregoing, those with malicious interest in and those who made fatuous speculation about the new Zanu PF Politburo have cause to reflect again for their own sake given that things out there are not what they seem to be. There is clearly more at play than what meets the eye.

Labels: ZANU-PF

posted by MrK @ 5:10 PM