Zimbabwe’s new political era leaves the opposition with a tough choice: either work with Zanu-PF as part of a possible government of national unity to rebuild the economy and reform electoral governance, or remain independent and build its structures before elections next year.
It is not clear whether President Emmerson Mnangagwa will attempt to forge a GNU. But there is a sizeable contingent of Zanu-PF’s central committee, who at its meeting where Mugabe was recalled, were opposed to jumping into bed with the opposition.
When Zimbabwe’s former finance minister Tendai Biti said in Sandton last week that about 90% of Zimbabweans were unemployed and 80% lived below the poverty line, the prospect of a unity government to revive the economy is tempting.
But joining forces with Zanu-PF again will come at a significant political cost to the opposition. History is instructive, and the opposition needs to consider Zanu-PF’s political strategy since independence: to decimate and terrorise the opposition, and then subsume it.
As Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) president Welshman Ncube told me this week, Zanu-PF has never behaved as a democratic political party, but more as a paramilitary organisation, which are masters at the retention of political power.
Ncube contends that Mnangagwa is presiding over what has always been a vicious political party, and General Constantino Chiwenga (who ensured former president Robert Mugabe’s demise) has been the enforcer of Zanu-PF’s viciousness since independence.
When the opposition weighs its choices, it should be mindful of the fact that this is the same Zanu that decimated and then subsumed the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, the original liberation movement. In the mid-1980s Zanu set about destroying Zapu as a political opposition, detaining and torturing all Zapu officials, and starving and massacring the Ndebele population in Matabeleland which supported Zapu.
Just as Mnangagwa had been head of the infamous Central Intelligence Organisation in the 1980s that, alongside the Fifth Brigade, presided over the torture of the Ndebeles, Chiwenga had commanded the First Brigade that allegedly gave logistical and ground support to the Fifth Brigade. So atrocious were the massacres that Zapu leader Joshua Nkomo capitulated to signing a unity accord with Zanu.
The opposition should note the results. Zapu was subsumed by Zanu and neutered as a political force. Worse, while in the unity government Nkomo and his proposals were ignored. He died a defeated man.
A similar tactic was used to neutralise the MDC as a political force in the 2000s. In 2002 three prominent MDC leaders were charged with treason - Welshman Ncube, Morgan Tsvangirai and Renson Gasela. The trial and restrictions weakened the MDC, and by 2004 Zanu-PF had decimated most of the MDCs structures. The MDC went into the 2005 elections weak and unable to campaign in many areas. Its members in rural areas were too terrified to go to rallies.
Despite all the obstacles, the MDC beat Zanu-PF in the 2008 elections, although it failed to get 50 plus one percent of the vote. The military and Zanu-PF structures then unleashed violence against the MDC, virtually going on a killing spree not so dissimilar to the violence unleashed against Zapu in the 1980s.
It was the same Chiwenga who staged a coup against Mugabe and who had worked alongside police chief Augustine Chihuri in the repression of the opposition after 2000. Just before the 2008 elections, Chiwenga said if Tsvangirai won the election he wouldn’t be commander-in-chief as he had never fought in the Chimurenga (revolutionary struggle). After the 2008 election Chiwenga supposedly told Mugabe: “We can’t lose elections. We can’t hand power to the MDC. We are going to obliterate them.”
That position is unlikely to
have changed.
While there are advantages to the opposition forming a GNU with Zanu-PF in order to craft a roadmap for economic recovery, the dangers of becoming a lame duck in the shadow of its political rivals is all too real.
Many in the MDC are against a GNU, as they believe the new voters roll would be more accurate than the gerrymandered ones of the past. The perception is that if free and fair elections were held, they would win. The main concern is that the constitution must be followed and elections held before the end of August next year.
For the opposition it is time to choose whether to submit or fight.
* Ebrahim is Independent Media's foreign editor.