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(SOUTHERN TIMES AFRICA) Perverting the worker's struggle

Perverting the worker's struggle
By Tichaona Zindoga 23-05-2011

Harare - Since its formation in 1999, the MDC party led by Morgan Tsvangirai has been feted in some quarters as the embodiment of democracy in Zimbabwe. Over these years, President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF has consistently said the party is undemocratic and has a virulent culture of violence and dictatorship, claims that have been dismissed by Tsvangirai's supporters as cheap propaganda. However, a new book by a disgruntled founding member of the party, David Muzhuzha, has put Tsvangirai to the sword.

The writer details how Tsvangirai rapidly declined from being a workers' representative to a front for foreign and elitist local interests.

After Zimbabwe's government ill-advisedly adopted the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme at the behest of the Bretton Woods Institutions in 1990, resultant socio-economic problems provided fertile ground for an agitated working class.

This is one group that bore the brunt of retrenchments, cuts in social service spending and felt, largely justifiably so, that the revolutionary Zanu-PF party which made the Government had abandoned them for a dalliance with former colonisers who make the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

And so, apart from the pent-up emotions that registered themselves as strikes and boycotts, there were other seemingly bona fide 'Beyond ESAP' discussions that focused on reclaiming the workers lost glory and humanity.

In all this, the person of Morgan Tsvangirai, a former office orderly at a mine who had risen to the helm of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, rose.

But just as the workers were expecting the improvement of their material being, using the vehicle of labour on the negotiating table with the government and the employers, Tsvangirai had other ideas.

Journalist David Muzhuzha, who was editor of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions newspaper The Worker and was a founding member of the Movement for Democratic Change in 1999, illustrates how Tsvangirai pilfered the cause of the worker for his own greedy political good in a new tell-all book titled 'Travesty of Democracy...The Untold Story'.

He relates how the Working People's Conventions in early 1999, tasked with discussing the 'Beyond Esap' programmes, were turned by Tsvangirai and his 'tribal loyalists' and a few non-governmental organizations into a vehicle for the creation of the MDC.

The decisive moment came on May 8, 1999 when ZCTU convened some 100 delegates at the Women's Bureau Centre in Harare two months after a similar meeting where the labour leadership was ostensibly asked by NGOs to form a political party.

Muzhuzha notes: 'As it eventually turned out, the labour movement's thinly-veiled pre-convention's desire to form a political party to rival Zanu-PF was endorsed by all participants.

'But the final position was carefully crafted to appear as if the ZCTU had been requested by civil society to facilitate the party formation - and not the other way round!'

Muzhuzha insinuates he even suggested the name 'Movement for Democratic Change' which was eventually officially adopted (pp16).

The writer is currently in the process of suing the party for not paying him anything for his contribution to the founding and for using the name 'MDC' without acknowledging him in any way.The result was the entry of Tsvangirai onto the grand stage with Muzhuzha remarking: 'It was clear from his new-found stride that that the convention had tightened his grip on the promising political outcome.'

Thus begun in earnest Tsvangirai's political journey with the formation of the MDC, its launch, growth and what Tsvangirai is today - the Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe.

But gone also were the pretensions at representing workers, who have watched as Tsvangirai has broken promise after promise to represent them in government.

Tsvangirai's secretary-general Tendai Biti, who is the Finance Minister, has been quite unequivocal in stating that workers should not expect improvements in their working conditions, citing 'growth remedies' prescribed by the same IMF and World Bank that spawned the policies in the 1990s that led to labour agitation.

Tsvangirai had the support of European and American trade union bodies that clandestinely funded his political run through ZCTU.

The same also facilitated funding for the MDC by sponsoring dubious lectures and seminars from which guest presenters got funds, as much as US$25 000, a major part of which was channelled to MDC.

The intentions of the Western forces are nowhere clearer than in the conversation Muzhuzha reportedly had with the German Fredrick Ebert Stiftung foundation's Dr Traub Merz.

Muzhuzha asked Traub-Merz 'to explain why the international donor community appeared oblivious of Tsvangirai's executive shortcomings . . .'

Replied Traub-Merz: 'We're aware of Morgan's administrative capacity limitations. But, we don't really care much about it because we need him for the politics. Tsvangirai, so far is our best bargaining chip against Mugabe.'

Thus the workers' cause that had been stolen by Tsvangirai was in turn pilfered by the West who saw an opportunity to make a go at President Mugabe who, not satisfied with defeating colonialism, sought to challenge the white status quo by redistributing land.

That was one of the main subjects of the constitutional deliberations that were going on at the time.
So when MDC and its allies in civil society ensured a 'NO' vote in a constitutional referendum in February 2000, it was the ultimate step for Tsvangirai and his gang to be accepted and used by the West.

The result was an upturn in MDC's fortunes and it becoming the rallying point for retrogressive forces of colonial extraction. Muzhuzha graphically captures it thus: 'I had witnessed the MDC sputter from May 1999 to end (of) January 2000, so, the immediate aftermath of the referendum meant that Tsvangirai and company had delivered their end of the bargain to foreign and local white masters, for a lot of money began to come their way to commence an elaborate campaign against the aspirations of millions of citizens, disguised as a movement for democratic change in Zimbabwe.

'That positive change in the MDC's coffers meant that foreign money, as well as that of local white farmers and industrialists, had started to flow in towards a single agenda that had not been revealed at the May 1999 conventions that led to the birth of the MDC.

'Desperate to sustain his political agenda, Tsvangirai had rallied his clique and sold out to the same sinister interests behind the ruinous (Economic Structural Adjustment Programme), the oppressive colonial rule, the continued unfair local white privileges and the devastating economic sanctions.

'Indeed all anti-Zimbabwe interests rolled into one gigantic onslaught against the democratic will of millions of Zimbabweans...'

MDC started showing its true colours, 'that it was a local white and Western-driven political party headed by a black man without the required national executive capacity to move forward Zimbabwe's desire for democratic change'.

The British government, through then British Minister for Africa David Triesman, weighed in saying the UK would not sit back and watch anti-Mugabe forces move on their own. 'Unthinkable,' he averred, 'Of course not.' And that was years before WikiLeaks told the world how embedded Western interests are in Tsvangirai's party.

'A travesty of Democracy...The Untold Story.' By David Muzhuzha. Jovid Press (2010).


Tsvangirai and his MDC thus became a Trojan horse in challenging the revolutionary ZANU-PF and President Mugabe.

Muzhuzha says the abandonment of the workers is best seen in the fact that only two 'labour ' people sit in the cabinet of Zimbabwe's coalition government and yet trade unions were ostensibly behind MDC's formation.

One of the major highlights of 'A Travesty of Democracy' is its portrayal of Tsvangirai as a 'tribalist' who from his days at the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions surrounded himself with loyalists from his Karanga tribe.

As secretary-general and involved in the daily administration, he faced no threat from the likes of Gibson Sibanda, his president who was domiciled in Bulawayo and came but occasionally to Harare.

Even then, the powerful Bulawayo branch was significantly peopled with Karangas.

In fact, his being a 'dictator' and 'tribalist' is said to have caused the split in the party on October 12, 2005.

Some of the familiar names that Tsvangirai had in the ugly tribal embrace at the ZCTU and later at the inaugural congress in January 2000 include Tapiwa Mashakada, Isaac Matongo, Nelson Chamisa, Lucia Matibenga, Tendai Biti, Sekai Holland, Learnmore Jongwe, and Job Sikhala.

He even diluted another Ndebele tribal force that centered around the likes of Gibson Sibanda, Fletcher Dulini-Ncube and Welshman Ncube, among others.

Muzhuzha says of Tsvangirai; 'So not only is he whole-heartedly fascinated with men and women of his tribe, but he also sometimes… manipulates his party's processes to favour persons not of similar origins, as long as such persons serve the main selfish interest: to hold the reigns (sic) of power tightly and undisputedly, where ever he goes.'

The configuration of Harare's Parliamentary seats speaks volumes about Tsvangirai's ways.

Muzhuzha reports that when the MDC made its debut Parliamentary fight, of the 20 seats for a cosmopolitan Harare where there were many tribes and colours, no Asian, Coloured, Ndebele, Manyika or Mutoko person made it.

Of the 20, Muzhuzha recalls, one went to ZANU-PF and two went to white MDC candidates while the other 17 went to Tsvangirai's Karanga buddies.

When the inclusive Government line up on Tsvangirai's side was set up, it was tribally coloured.

Tendai Biti, Elton Mangoma, Tapiwa Mashakada, Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, Paurina Gwanyanya-Mpariwa, Henry Madzorera, Nelson Chamisa, Fidelis Mhashu, Heneri Dzinotyiwei, Jameson Timba, Sekai Holland, Obert Gutu, Sesel Zvidzai, Tichaona Mudzingwa and Tongai Matutu all made it in, Muzhuzha claims, because of their tribal background. Muzhuzha adds that in late August 2010 a mini-reshuffle produced the promotion of Mashakada, Gutu and Matutu.

Is this the ranting of a bitter man who feels he has not been well-rewarded for his role in the MDC? Perhaps.

But the book certainly makes for interesting reading into the inner workings of Tsvanfgirai's politics.

'A travesty of Democracy...The Untold Story.' By David Muzhuzha. Jovid Press (2010).

Labels: MDC, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, NEOCOLONIALISM, SAP

posted by MrK @ 5:36 PM