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(HERALD) Manheru:- MDC: The Implosion that might come sooner

Manheru:- MDC: The Implosion that might come sooner
Saturday, 27 August 2011 02:00

My heartfelt condolences to Amai Mujuru and the rest of the family, and all those comrades which the fallen General Solomon Mujuru worked with to deliver freedom and Independence to you and me, the unbelieving. By the disposition of the present generation, it all appears a thankless effort. Except the earth rewards.

So also does history which never forgets, distracted though it may be, from time to time. Whoever thought that Nehanda's prophecy would beat time, people and place, pronounced as it was in an oral era, delivered as it was all to foe, in complete absence of any from her own? Yet that prophecy beat time, place, settler barriers, and even the great church vaunted for greater prophecies, all to reach the village, to haunt the small men and women of history, to arm a cause that got us to where are today. Truth, like a silent fart, is soon to announce and assert itself.

History re-written

It is all never in vain, dear departed comrade. We shall forever remember, forever strive to fulfil. But the immediate duty is to defend your person and cause against a malignant history, against shameless misappropriation by wretched causes which seek to embrace you, baptise you even, as at one with them. I am referring to those inglorious politics of treachery so fond of pasting themselves on cadavers of men and women of honour, vainly hoping for respectability and legitimacy.

They are hard at work, pushing hare-brained theories, these our advanced medical experts impeccably trained in a school of journalism! Just two weeks ago, I wrote about history and those who seek to own it, about history and those who risk losing it. That concern too applies to the just departed, more so when even America's Uncle Toms seek association and relevance.

But hark, much more has happened on that front. That same week, I anticipated another attempt at writing or re-writing history.

Today I am happy to tell you that Mhanda, better known as Dzinashe Machingura, has since launched that effort. I have no knees to jerk, and so shall give you a considered appraisal of his narrative once and when the time comes. But much more happened. Another publication, this time by an intellectual warrior of the empire, one Richard Bourne of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at London University, has been released. It bears out my concern, does it not? That there is a concerted effort to own us in the unknown future by owning us in our known but undocumented past? For whom the bell of history tolls indeed!

This week I focus on an occurrence which might come sooner than Zanu-PF will have budgeted for, namely the collapse of the MDC formations as we have known them to date.

There are deep, fundamental developments in that camp, developments sure to shake this whole British/Western Trojan horse to its very firmament. And the political flurry we saw a few weeks back, involving Morgan Tsvangirai, underlined mortal weakness soon to overtake that ill-fated party, on whose limbs the onset of rigor mortis begin to register.

This column has always maintained that this thing was meant to be a political lightning, quick to strike and bellow when the rains are still thick and intense, soon to peter out and rumble distantly, once these rains ebb into a shower and a drizzle.

Great lessons from Zambia

The creators of the MDC formations never meant a political long haul. In fact it is in the nature of these democratisation movements spawned by the West to be winning political flashes in the pan. This is why they do not need structures, why they do not need to be steeped in the history of a given country, let alone to batten on enduring grievances of a people. This, indeed, is why these politics need well-funded shock tactics, virtually akin to putsches in history.

The moment those against whom they are intended survive the initial intense onslaught, to begin to stretch these politics beyond their dramatically short life-spans, these politics will begin founder, fumble and falter, before they fizzle out. Where they win and survive - as happened in Zambia and Malawi - they quickly reconnect with the founding politics of nationalism to win life and respectability, even confronting their initial western parentage, to gain rootedness.

But not before spawning corrupt kleptocracies, not before creating conditions of decades of setback from the tenuous gains of Independence. Is that not the story of Zambia between Kaunda and Banda; Malawi between Banda and waMutharika? One could go on and on, across our continent and the story will be the same. Under Chiluba, Zambia's assets were up for sale, including its home-grown policies.

A false start called Inclusive Govt

This is where Zimbabwe is a bit different, and balks the dominant African experience. Zimbabwe has compendiously had its own Chiluba, Mwanawasa and potentially a moderate and reconnecting Banda, without sacrificing its own Kaunda. We have travelled through all those dispensations without moving an inch epochally. Where others have needed to live through false starts, we have experienced it without having to live through it.
And the false start is now, nicknamed the Inclusive Government where everything comes to a standstill. Where others have had to return, to rehabilitate and reconnect, we have had to have the false alongside the genuine, both juxtaposed. And since the false means nothing, no sinews will be needed to return, to reconnect and rehabilitate.

Not many know that all the constitutional clauses responsible for legitimising the Inclusive Government are timed to fall off with it, the day it fails! It's quite a neat way of cleansing a system!

Taming spurts and sequences of history

Rendered more explicitly, we have had our Tsvangirai, Mutambara and Welshman Ncube without losing our Mugabe, indeed their MDC without losing our Zanu-PF.

In fact, we have kept our Mugabe, ensuring he keeps above and beyond the flash in the pan, which is what the Inclusive Government is.

Whereas it took terms for a retroactively vindictive Chiluba to make way for a Mwanawasa who at once rehabilitated a nationalist past while persecuting a pro-democracy recent past, in our case we have had both tendencies in one fold, often doubly playing, if the rupture between Tsvangirai and Ncube, and then Ncube and Mutambara, or prospectively Tsvangirai and Biti, are any equivalents to go by!

And we have made sure these convulsions are tightly straitjacketed by Zanu-PF, so they don't rattle the body politic. Zimbabwe has always been a compendious example, if you ask me. That way, it has always averted problems which elsewhere come in historical spurts and sequences. We are a concurrent people, often Janus-faced, and therein lies the tragedy of the MDC formations.

The delights of the illicit

Like the naive sibling, the MDC hoped it could jump into bed to emerge chaste on the morrow. What is worse, I jumped into the same bed again, again, again and again! Today it no longer wants to leave that bed of Inclusivity, wishing mukoma a happy, longer stay in the village, or better still in the afterlife!

The MDC does not want elections anymore, themselves its hallmark demand before it tasted the sweetness of that stolen night of illicit delights. You talk of elections, the MDC will draw a revolver! That is as fearful of elections as it is now. Let us see how it fared once in that illicit bed of nuptial defilement.

The change that it was not

In Government, MDC has been an out and out disaster. Foremost, it has been completely unable to cause the change it claimed it was. Not because it could not, but because it would not. Zanu-PF had laid the agenda for the Inclusive Government, well before its acceptance and admittance.

The core policies remained and remain remarkably Zanu-PF, something MDC's sponsors now point out to, all to damn it.

They tell it that this is proof enough that it cannot be trusted to bring about change, or at the very least, to put the hated old Zanu-PF ethos to notice. Much worse, the co-habitation has seen Zanu-PF expanding its policy base, all under the nose of the sniffing MDC.

The land acquisition was completed under the Inclusive Government, something the white farmers, themselves the proximate bedrock of the MDC, are quite mad about.
Indigenisation has taken root, threatening the mining sector which the white world hoped would be the gain on the roundabout, all to compensate losses incurred on the swings of land reforms. Today that, too, stands imperiled, MDC yakangotarisa. MDC has become a blunt tool whose efficacy is no longer doubtful, but absent. International capital is up in arms, preferring to now cut deals with Zanu-PF towards moderation on Indigenisation

Loaned governance

Much worse, the western world has given MDC policies it can neither sell nor enforce in the Inclusive Government. The World Bank, the IMF , individual western governments, all have tried to get the MDC to displace Zanu-PF as an author of new policies, in their favour. Starting with the Government Work Plan (GWP) ending with the latest Mid-term review which was heavily coloured by the IMF, nothing from abroad has taken off during the life of the Inclusive Government.

This has led to two outcomes: disappointmenton the part of those who authored those rejected policies; a clear warning to all Zimbabweans that an era of MDC "rule" shall be a borrowed dispensation of loaned governance. Not the crush courses at the Kennedy School of Government has made the MDC any able to conceive and make policy, let alone policies that brings about a change in governance.

So the ZANU(PF) dispensation has persisted, mildly stymied by MDC's prodded opposition. So MDC's borrowed change has remained unincorporated, remarkably un- understood by its supposed salesmen and women who cannot be trusted to conceive any idea, let alone own one. How to build a convincing and galvanizing vision against the persistence of a ZANU(PF) ethos in an era supposedly jointly defined by both parties, is for MDC the real challenge. How to prove that they own any idea against compelling evidence of net borrowing and peddling of foreign ideas, is their real challenge, both to the voting suitor and the sponsoring paramour. Neo-colonialism needs competent proxies and MDC is no one such.

Moral deficit, incompetence

But this is not the worst for them. The worst is their record as co-governors in the Inclusive dry-run. They have shown a frightening moral and competence deficit. Whilst competence deficit can be explained away, may be forgiven, it is their probity deficit which is totally damning and quite hard to discount. All around their portfolios, great questions are being raised, questions reeking with pointers to corrupt conduct or interference with above-board performance.

It does not matter what levels we are talking about, starting with local government, right up to ministries. Tenders are flouted, monies are thieved, appointments are rigged to accommodate cronies on posts and boards. Within the greater economy, decisions have been taken or where about to be taken which showed naked ulterior motives enough to get the fair-minded steal a glimpse into the "new Zimbabwe" they tout.

The Renaissance saga has been most instructive, as has also been the handling of NASSA funds and SDRs. Even cheap products, such as office sex, lead to suspected excesses. Today acres and acres of advertorials are being flighted to prove the intactness of hymen by a sibling who suckles! Today even their white devotees are disenchanted and sickened.

The sorry story of energy

The efficiency factor, while forgivable, is hardly inspiring at all. Water is short, far more short than it ever was under a full-sanctioned ZANU(PF) dispensation. Yet donor funding has been flowing in, uninterrupted, to buoy that sector. The story of Energy is worse, far worse than Zimbabwe has ever experienced at the height of sanctions. Today cities and towns hum with generators.

Today city and town homes bear a dark film of soot as we all drift effortlessly towards an antediluvian age of open flames and faggots. Much worse, fuel is touch-and-go, the responsible Ministry limping from hand to mouth, in the process creating crises that in turn are used to legitimize doubtful transactions. The Financial sector is in turmoil, with the illusion of balanced books coming from restraining demand or cheating it through imports which the responsible Ministry has now just realized the economy can no longer sustain. All round there is de-industrialisation.

Forgotten Finance

The banking sector teeters. The capital budget dwindles, getting repeatedly raided to meet recurrent expenses. The economy continues to shrink, putting a loud lie to claims of returning stability. Much worse, the US dollar which has given us an illusion of stability, now rattles ahead of the real costs of a downgraded and an over-borrowed America. We are set to be a sickly extended patient, suffering from a sympathy malady. Friends with money Tsvangirai boisterously told us would bring manna to Zimbabwe, are nowhere in sight. Even Biti who used to pin hopes on western financial institutions, now looks inwardly, looks up to Marange for rescue.

How now to reconcile their Look West policy against Zero western support, coupled by a full plate of sanctions against the very economy which is supposed to deliver for them an electoral victory, that is the quandary. How to reconcile high expectations on Marange against their continued call for more sanctions against the so-called bloody diamonds of Marange, that, too, is the quandary. Today every right-thinking Zimbabwean equates MDC with his or her diminished welfare.

Out of desperation the Prime Minister tours frozen development projects, offering hot sympathies, promising hotter air. Nothing more. He does so to villagers of Mtshabezi who badly need water. He does so to thirsty Bulawayo, as if imhondoro inonayisa mvura. How does a man who does not control the national purse ever promise anything? It is a gesture of the powerless wishing to appear powerful. Much worse, he has now deserted the health sector, itself previously heavily favored by donors, but beginning to be a horror story. Children in incubators are dying for want of electricity.

Small incubators that need a little more than a car battery to run! MDC cannot fundraise for it! The schools are running smoothly, not because of MDC. The civil servants are delivering services, again not because of MDC? Both are functional because ZANU(PF) has had to intervene on wages, thereby stabilizing labour in the public sector. Today those grand headlines which MDC's short, extravagant publicists used to dish out so gratuitously, have come back to haunt it.

The old wife who can be trusted

In the meantime mining ticks. It is under ZANU(PF). In the meantime Agriculture is doing reasonably well, all under serious underfunding from Biti. ZANU(PF) runs it. National security is assured. Zanu(PF) minds it. Foreign affairs would have been doing remarkably well, save for two missions, both under the Prime Minister and his MDC's woman and man. Nakedness. Scandal, all to give us naked scandal! Rural councils are functioning remarkably well, sharply contradicted by urban councils which the MDC dominates and controls.

These have given ratepayers lots of food for thought, hardly any for the stomach! Pile all this into one big dirty stack, and ask the Prime Minister's party why it is stalked by all-round failure. After all the party denies that there are sanctions, which means it cannot borrow that from ZANU(PF) as an alibi. It has to explain why I has not made a difference, with rich friends abroad, with no sanctions encumbering it at home, with its claims to being a party of excellence!

Exit donors, pursued by bears

A penultimate point. For the MDC, the horn of plenty is drying up. The regime-change seeking West, all along MDC's cornucopia, is gasping, battling against an economic centre which can no longer hold. The real index is the dogfight in MDC-affiliated NGOs, all of them mauling one another for diminishing donor attention. The fight is more vicious when regional NGOs seek to displace local ones, both battling tomplease the West on Zimbabwe. It happened recently in South Africa; it happened a few days ago in Angola. Ask Dewa Mavhinga how hot in now is in the donor kitchen.

Donor dollars are woefully short, something compensated for by attention-grabbing, exaggerated activism and shrillness. We have to live with that until these last twitches make way for rigor mortis! With London burning, much less will trickle their way. With America downgraded, its palm, all along open, will slowly but surely close into a fist, making it an ally of ZANU(PF) through necessity and inadvertence. With ZANU(PF) once beaten through divisions, now twice wise, the stage is set for a major return. Much worse, with the region now much wiser, less ready to swallow MDC propaganda routinely founded on lies and exaggerations, the MDC is ripe for major reversals internationally, to which Luanda was but a modest beginning.

Something rotten in the state of Denmark

The fuse is ignited, slowly burning towards the keg. Hark, who is talking about a missing US$1,5million? Or the US$150million from SDRs? Its not ZANU(PF). Who is asking questions to which unsolicited answers are being proffered? Not ZANU(PF), I can assure you. How do you claim to win a war when you are sponsoring headlines against your own, in the vain hope of preemption? How do you win the race when you begin to panic, testifying against your own leadership well before papers for summons have been asked for, let alone found? Something is surely rotten in the kingdom of Denmark. Icho!

* Nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw

Labels: MDC, NATHANIEL MANHERU

posted by MrK @ 5:57 AM