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(NEWZIMBABWE) 2011 - the year sanctions will go

2011: the year sanctions will go
by Nathaniel Manheru
10/01/2011 00:00:00

I HAVE seen and read many prognoses for 2011. Most of them strike me as uninformed, puerile and even childish. It is clear that from the point of view of media outputs, 2011 is going to be just another year of out and out journalistic drudgery. Make no mistake about it, media forecasts are no talisman’s game.

They are a function of good analyses grounded in solid sources. And solid sources are not charlatans in the mould of little, impressionable fellas like Takura Zhangazha. Real sources come from movers and shakers, people well placed to act decisively, or to influence decisive actors. Real sources are cultivated, won by depth, kept by trust. No one deep throats pedestrian reporters who cannot distinguish between a sound-bite and wisdom.

Forecasts are about extrapolating from clear trends, never a matter of handiwoniwoni — the-blind-man-who can’t see game we used to play by August moonlight, back in the village of our youth. There is copious copy from lot-casters who leave one wondering frankly why such a literate country is so poorly served.
Midgets who can’t shut doors

Take the issue of the much hyped impending MDC-M Congress. Simply what is in it for this country, for 2011? How will it affect the body politic, that non-event by a bundle of political marginals whose value only arises from occasional altercation and tussle between the two big-boys? But without imposing their will on either side, let alone on both! Simply playing active spectator and making plaintive pleas! How can the little convocation of such midgets switch off the lights, shut the doors? Come on guys, let’s be serious.

The negotiator with no principal
You talk to the negotiators and they will tell you that one negotiator who never had the burden of reporting to a principal was Welshman Ncube, the man now “tipped” to “take over” from Mutambara. This column dubbed Mutambara “the nearly man” of narrow, tribal politics as these politics sought national pretensions and decency then.

Frankly, he came in with nothing to give him a claim or foothold on MDC-M. He agreed to be the gloss Welshman needed to sound national, and for that, I think he is being served his just deserts. After all gloss in not the product. For an early while, he tried to play MDC-T politics in the MDC-M of an angry Welshman Ncube, which is about when the clock started ticking down for him.

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Against the bitter rancour of the split, a salesman with good customer knowledge would never have played a sided conciliator. Arthur did, and lost much love. A while later, Arthur discovered the new customer he was angling for, the customer to whom he hoped to deliver MDC-M —Morgan Tsvangirai — not only did not have a mind of his own, but could never have given his quisling and self-admitted humble circumstances. Slowly, he grew disenchanted, both by where he was coming from and where he had hoped to go as titular leader who sought more.
The customers Arthur never knew

Unexpectedly and through repeated interaction with Mugabe, he met filling depth, inexhaustible profoundness, vast accommodation and an alluring myth from which he found much to tap to build his own aura. To see the two together was like seeing a revolutionary grandfather trying to impart and inspire an eager youth so hungry for fame. Arthur has imbibed a lot from the old man, which is what will never make him the same, whatever his circumstances in the MDC-M. But he did much more.

In leadership joint sessions, often he represented MDC-T when its leader either lost, or misunderstood the script drawn up for him. Or simply did not have the courage to present it. Arthur brags about it. That gave him a larger role, well away from what his title as MDC-M president behoved. Arthur may have had a lasting glimpse on national leadership which makes his eviction from MDC-M not such a terrible spit out, only an onward march away from politics he has since outgrown. He is not a tragedy, not at all and this piece need not read like a requiem.
Chastised by time

I put “tipped” and “take over” in brackets. The apartness of Welshman and Arthur is no older than their partnership in MDC-M. It still baffles me why Welshman thought he would play local godly West to a literate activist that Arthur is, play god the way Dell and other US ambassadors do to Tsvangirai. Arthur has always had a mind of his own, a script of his own, which is what made him quite refreshing to interact with. He never gave you rehearsed positions . . . or held back to consult.

He would settle it there and then, much like a substantive leader. Which I guess was probably his real problem in a movement he headed without being expected to lead. The movement sought orthodoxy from its titular head; but the head’s hyperactive mind gave it own reasoning, which is why he was such a clever misfit that could only be chastised by time, by the leadership cycle signalled by congress.

See how he has blunted Welshman’s cudgels simply by not offering a frontal response to the leadership challenge. Quite a smart response which saw Welshman throw gauntlet against . . . well, himself and shadows. Welshman has been made to look brazenly ambitious, inconsiderate and narrow about it, with Arthur appearing the older, more mature and national side.

I said Welshman was a negotiator without a principal. He was his own principal and his incorporation of Priscilla into the negotiating team made him complete, gave him a thinking alter ego, a sounding board. Much happened between them; much got settled that way. He thus cannot be “tipped”; he thus cannot “take over” what he has always had. Such epithets serve shallow journalism.
The tribal pool

But he faced new situations, intervening situations which the media have not covered. The oppositional traditional leadership of Matabeleland, typified by the late Chief Ndiweni, wondered why these youngsters the region had sent to eat big book, were in the habit of ceding leadership in the name of creating national character in political terms.

The late Gibson Sibanda was president of ZCTU but ceded leadership to his secretary-general on grounds of “minority” tribe claims. He never emerged from the shadows, and with him “the region”, “the tribe”.
The argument got even more cogent after successive elections.

Matabeleland had always delivered a consistent vote to MDC, a sustaining vote at that, against an impenetrable rural Mashonaland. Why was this vote failing to translate to leadership? So embittered were these traditional leaders that they decided to punish Welshman Ncube whom they blamed for correctly excising Matabeleland from MDC at the time of the split, only to surrender it back to Mashonaland by way of Mutambara’s appointment.

Tsvangirai was no different from Mugabe, which is why Welshman did well to take Matabeleland out of MDC. But why take it back to Shona leadership. Did it mean the region only sires underlings, those traditional leaders asked?
Weak incumbency?

The argument got even more sophisticated and unselectively blighting. Post-split, post 2008, “Matabeleland” counted its gains and it soon discovered that across the political divide, it had collected more seats — influential seats — than any one region. It was true in Zanu PF, true in MDC-T, true in MDC-M itself, indeed true in all the parties put together.

Yet “development” was not coming to Matabeleland! How so? Could it be that the issue was not posts but the quality of incumbency in those posts? Gentle reader, you know my views on this very subject and how contemptuous I am of narrow politics whose bloodstains besmirch our otherwise clean escutcheon.

I have dwelt on writhing motions of this despicable politics, using even its warped vocabulary to trace the essence of the politics we now have evolving in our Western part of Zimbabwe, pushed by the very men and women who must deliver us from them. It is this thinking which has solidified MDC-M agenda ahead of the so-called congress, which to me is just a formalisation of what obtained under a gloss of tribal inclusivity.
Enter Priscilla, Methuseli

We saw this formation’s narrow manifesto adumbrated by Priscillah a few weeks, under the title, “Ndebele President: The Secret Fear”. It was an article that sought to speak to the Western region, a political mea culpa by Welshman and his party to an imaginary electorate he thinks will be actuated by a tribal sentiment.

The reaction to that article founded on ahistorical postulates, reaction from rival political parties revealed the depth of this shared tribal electoral construct. Dabengwa’s Zapu deployed Methuseli Moyo to do a yawning one on the 1987 Unity Accord, again based on glaring historical inaccuracies. You cannot seriously pretend to represent liberation history by asserting a shootout between Zanla and Zipra in Tanzania in 1977. Or to suggest there were no Ndebele commanders in Zanla, no Ndebele songs.

Such appalling level of ignorance from a man who ran a whole broadcast station in that region? True, he may be young, too young to have seen any liberation action, but why not read, why not interview Dabengwa, Ngwenya, men he cites? Above all, why not be humble when reporting events you were too young or unborn to have witnessed? Why borrow false anger to buttress your tribal sentiment?

Merchants of tribalism

Except that was not the goal. The goal was to checkmate MDC-M in playing salesman to the tribal sentiment. To say Zapu is a better tribal party than MDC-M. We have got to that in this country. For me that is the tragedy.

The comical launch of Umthwakazi Liberation Front (MLF) becomes a serious affair when one asks what political ecology and possibly shared temperament makes such a political proposition conceivable, nay bold enough to suggest itself, put itself publicly without a tinge of obscenity. But that is to be unduly pessimistic. Reader reaction to both Methuseli and Priscillah is most reassuring. Readers reject and denounce their philosophy of tribal supremacy. Or their wish to build a grievance against a region, indeed to profit from it.

Of course you also had a vicious parley between “Shona” and Ndebele tribalists. On balance, the national sentiment reigned, which is what takes me to my main point on this small issue.
Conte the future?

MDC-M, Zapu, or MLF, anyone who seeks to canvass support on the strength of tribe or region is fated to negotiate with victors. He or she will not be the victor himself or herself. And given the ineluctable onset of disenchantment with politics of inclusivity, the next poll will see outright winners, outright losers, no hang-result, no run-offs.

In that scenario, little tribal parties shall be buried, will vanish the same way Conte’s little tribal party vanished. They should visit him to visualise their future. At least he had Amakhosi to go back to. In the case of Welshman Ncube, he did not have to chequer his political career. He had big book behind him, a big ministry through which to build a national profile, friends and associates he was beginning to pick across the political divide.

Above all, he was among the generation poised to take over. But he has now messed it up and people wonder and worry why Dell could have been so accurate, and Welshman himself so reluctant to prove Dell wrong. Tribal politics makes him highly divisive, something Dell claimed for him. He made a statement on beneficiaries of land reforms which frighten me to this day. And he stirred his mess into a thicker cocktail. He pronounced himself against empowerment and real measures proposed against interests of those countries imposing sanctions. While tribal politics takes him to a past he cannot recreate, recapture, his stance against empowerment places him beneath a future he must shape.

Small “p” versus big “P”

But his present is no terra firma either. Just watch this. His narrow programme has now been misread as a tribal pogrom by his non-Ndebele supporters. Masvingo has angst. Mashonaland Central is now in doubt. Other provinces outside the Western region are wondering. What is needed is not the success of Masvingo in blocking him, merely their attempt to do so which gives him and his MDC-N a political stigma. Hoping he remembers securing presidency of MDC is but a small prelude to bidding for Presidency with a capital “P”.

His very success for the small “p” could stymie his bid for the bigger “P”. It is important for him to allay fears, create a broad church which gives him the numbers that matter in polls. In the box votes are 1,2,3,4. They are not Ndebele, Shona, Ndebele, Shona. Even if they were, they would be Ndebele, Shona, Shona, Shona, Shona, Shona . . . not by anyone’s conspiracy, but by the sheer logic of tribal demography once politicians are reckless enough to play that card.

Which is why for me the switch from Mutambara to Ncube is as much a matter of alphabetic course as “M” is of “N”. You inevitably start with “M”, thanks to Ncube’s invitation. You inevitably get to “N”, thanks to the alphabet. The only issue is: shall it be a big “N”, or a small one. For me that is the little significance which cannot shape 2011.

Containing “TB”

What then does? Equally it’s not Tsvangirai’s blocking of MDC-T congress, in order to stop the outbreak of TB in leadership. I don’t think the TvsTB battle makes new votes. It can only block old ones by way of its factional impact. That cannot make history. MDC-T apathy shall, which is what WikiLeaks will prove not “the loud thunderclap”, but the deadly striking lightning that delivers well ahead of the clap.

MDC-T apathy shall, which is what makes the debate on indigenisation so key, so central to dynamics that will shape Zimbabwe. I don’t know what Chamisa calls this one. Maybe a gentle but unremitting heat from the ascending sun sure to lead to a stroke. You start by casting away your jacket, then your clothes, then your undergarment until a-ah you want to rip off your rind so the vital organs can breathe.

These guys have made “change” such a Western proposition that Zanu-PF shall shit on the word, leaving it smelling thick and foul, more or less like a fresh fart from a greedy eater of mutakura or boiled and crushed roundnuts.

Building on sanctions

MDC-T apathy shall, which is why the issue of sanctions shall define 2011. It does not matter which direction the debate on this one cardinal matter takes, Zanu PF shall be in the saddle. Sanctions shall explain. Sanctions shall indict. Sanctions shall mobilise. Indeed sanctions shall win.

Someone has suggested the West will attempt a fast one by removing them to deny Zanu PF a campaign platform. That would be very good for the country, much better for Zanu PF. But it is unlikely. Both politically and practically. European sanctions are not written into law, which is what makes them flexible in declaration, applications or removal.

American ones are, which is what makes them injudiciously ponderous both to apply and to remove. Europe cannot leave America in the lurch and America cannot remove its laws so quickly. I challenge it. But also all that is to assume MDC electoral prospects are what guides European and American policies here. MDC has only been such a useful tool, and tools have no stake anywhere in the world. Americans and Europeans have definite interests here and much shall depend on how these are met, unmet or defeated.

Year of hard choices

When I listen into the Zanu-PF camp, I thought I picked a determination not to be a victim anymore, not to be on the receiving end anymore. We had a foretaste of that in Mutare. We will have the elaboration of that threat in 2011, the election year.

If the past gave us pleas, 2011 shall see hard choices targeting specific countries, specific interests here. But also real mobilisation of Zimbabweans against sanctions, itself part of the mobilisation for the polls. It may be very difficult to be a bystander: politician, ordinary person or corporate body.

Choices will have to be made; the foreign interests may have to earn their stay here. If we thought the land reform shook Zimbabwe to its firmament, let us see what 2011 does. In all this little “ps” and little congresses won’t matter. I hear the rumble of thunder still far away, still distant but traditional wisdom counsels: never look for the sheltering cave after the rains. It’s no use. Icho!

Nathaniel Manheru is a columnist for the Saturday Herald.
E-mail him: nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw

Labels: 2011 ELECTIONS (ZIMBABWE), ARTHUR MUTAMBARA, SANCTIONS, WELSHMAN NCUBE, ZDERA

posted by MrK @ 7:10 PM