By Reason Wafawarova (02/10/07)

If there is one word that summarises the Zimbabwe opposition coalition in all its factions, shapes, formations, fractions and alliances in the last eight years that word is confusion.

This writer will raise issues right from the formation of the National Constitutional Assembly, the formation of the opposition MDC, the post-1999 ZCTU, the split of the MDC in 2005, the post-1999 civic society era and the role of the Church in governance issues in the last eight years.

In the sixties, political organisations succeeded in mobilisation based on the dissemination of information and the communication of goals and objectives by the leadership of the organisations in question right down to their grassroots structures.

That communication was, by the technological design of the day, structured in such a way that information was supplied in less efficient but accountable and reliable ways. The leadership and the followers could always digest and give feedback that strengthened the leadership qualities of the leaders as well as the structures of the organisation.

It did not matter much that the information content could sometimes have its own deficiencies, since it often provided the much needed cementing synergy between the leadership and the followers.

The opposition in Zimbabwe came just three months before the dawn of the 21st century, an era where information is supplied faster than it can be digested.

The forms of transmission include newspapers, television, Internet and mobile phones. One would think that with such forms of information media the public should be more informed.

However, the public has never looked any lesser informed in the last 50 years. Just like lack of information leads to ignorance an abundance of deliberate disinformation, omissions and misinformation leads to greater ignorance and often to tragedy.

We live in a society that has become so affluent in terms of information dissemination that we have become the exact opposite (not improvement) of the Dark Ages when, for example, disability and sickness were blamed on sin. Now we blame sin on sickness or any psychiatric or psychological pretext the modern mind can come up with.

Oh, yes the former Archbishop of the Bulawayo diocese must have been traumatised by constant surveillance by state security agents, as well as the vicious persecution from an evil regime, to the extent that he forgot to keep his attention to his vows of celibacy. His mind developed externally induced weaknesses that could not withstand the earthy and fleshly urges to touch a woman.

Of course, this is why the good archbishop is going to go to the courts without the Holy of Holies gown, choosing rather the more abusable lesser gown of a simple sinning bishop. After all, the new titled Bishop Pius Ncube does not have to worry about the absence of the glory coming with the archbishop title since some archbishops can carry it all the way to court for him, all in support of the made-to-sin holy man of God.

Is it surprising then that where our erst clergymen would have sunk in humiliation at the exposure of such sin as is contained in the allegations levelled against Bishop Ncube, he actually thinks he is going to stand in court as a great man of social integrity?

Talk of delusions of grandeur and you know how information technology has created very confused minds, not least the mind of the entrapped bishop too.

No doubt, the bishop is buoyed by Internet praises, most of them coming a hundred times from one source assuming a hundred different names and he is naïve enough to convince himself that he is still a great man enjoying massive support in his quasi-political endeavours.

Well, he is not alone in this delirium. Dr Lovemore Madhuku, Tendai Biti and the BBC all concur that the fallen bishop is not a sinner at all, only a victim of an evil regime fighting back.

According to them the sinful party is the "dreaded CIO" on whom the three conspirators have no qualms placing the blame even for the October 2005 split of the MDC.

Lovemore Madhuku is quoted as saying CIO agents would have divided themselves into two groups, with one grouping telling Morgan Tsvangirai that he was the man in charge and should take decisions on matters such as participating in elections while the other group would have told Welshman Ncube that the MDC was a democratic party and they should resist the idea of one man making dictatorial decisions in place of everyone else.

If this assertion is true, then the MDC must seriously investigate the links between the CIO and people like Nelson Chamisa, William Bango and Elphas Mukonoweshuro on the Tsvangirai side of things and Job Sikhala, Paul Themba-Nyathi, David Coltart and Trudy Stevenson on the Welshman side of things.

Anyway, this just goes to show how confusion has reached dizzying heights in the opposition MDC; not any less in the church itself, that Body of our Lord Jesus Christ where our "anointed" leaders are now advocates in defence of sin, grappling at every possible excuse their not-so-holy minds can muster.

This writer promised earlier on to take an analysis on a number of issues. Firstly, there are people in the opposition who attribute the formation of the MDC to the National Constitutional Assembly and they credit themselves with the 2000 MDC momentum while dissociating themselves from the demise that followed in the 2002 and 2005 elections. These are the likes of Madhuku himself and many in the NCA structures.

In 1997, the idea of a new constitution was mooted as more and more people began to question the workability and relevance of the Lancaster House constitution.

When the Government acceded to the proposals for a new constitution and subsequently called for a Constitutional Commission to spearhead the drafting of a new constitution, the NCA was invited through the incorporation of a number of its members, including Morgan Tsvangirai.

In a typical sign of confusion, they rejected the move, saying they wanted powers to appoint the commissioners themselves and they said they were opposed to presidential appointments, that despite the fact that the Zimbabwe Constitution is quiet clear on how commissions of inquiry are appointed.

The NCA went on to campaign against the resultant draft constitution, implicitly supporting the Lancaster constitution in their classical show of political confusion and immaturity.

Their campaign succeeded and the "NO" vote carried the day, triggering the farm occupations and the beginning of the end of the MDC.

Now the NCA stands furiously against the Lancaster House constitution, which they only saved from extinction in their hour of confusion. One would have thought that an organisation that could successfully campaign for a "NO" vote could have had the powers to push their interests in the draft constitution if they had chosen to participate in the process.

If indeed the NCA is the mother of the MDC as some of its members would want to claim then they must equally take the blame for the demise of the MDC which cannot be separated from the "NO" vote and the subsequent land occupations which only became a big plus for the ruling Zanu-PF.

In came the unpalatable MDC concoction in 1999. If anyone did not foresee the tragedy of a party formed through an alliance of workers, employers, the middle class, students, the remnants of the Rhodesian Front, socialists, intellectuals and part of the clergy — all under the leadership of a semi-illiterate trade unionist turned politician — then they are indeed quiet naïve. It was confusion from the word go, tragedy of tragedies written all over the MDC script.

While the workers, students and part of the middle class looked clearly content with providing the brawn needed for chaotic street protests, the Rhodies went straight for policy, telling the MDC to direct their street energies towards fighting the land reform programme.

They backed their bidding with moneybags taken from years of savings from proceeds of our dear motherland and when this was not enough they courted financial reinforcements from the Westminster Foundation, thereby completing the Western stake in the then newly formed opposition party.

The intellectuals and the socialist did not exactly feel comfortable with their exclusion in the policy formulation framework and the likes of Munyaradzi Gwisai started to grumble and fidget before they went on to protest openly, of course earning himself the boot out of the coalition of opposites.

Now, the MDC stands on a policy framework designed and prescribed by Rhodies and their allies in the West and one cannot claim any worse confusion.

The MDC stands on a policy where they believe the only option to put pressure on the ruling party is by way of making the country ungovernable and to this end they campaign for the suffering of the very people they intend to lead, or is it the remnant that may be there after the MDC has finished its sanctions demolition campaign on the country.

They celebrate every ill that befalls country, even droughts, just because anything that makes life difficult for the people is good enough "pressure" against the Zanu-PF government.

Well, some of the intellectuals have already left the MDC for its unAfrican policies and have either retreated to their private lives or are actively opposing their former semi-illiterate leader in the other faction fronted by a rocket scientist.

The MDC says the only valid results for all the elections in Zimbabwe since 2000 are those in which the MDC candidates won.

They always confuse the electorate by habitually saying they won’t participate in elections then make a sudden U-turn.

They have always told the world they don’t recognise the Government of Zimbabwe but are more than happy to mingle with and to outshine the ruling party MPs in parliamentary debates that make the very laws the Government uses to govern.

They are more than happy to receive the Government benefits that come with being an MP even pushing motions for more benefits. If this is not confusion then the sky is the ocean.

Now the MDC stands discredited in the eyes of Africa and they want to show more confusion by alluding that it is Africa with a problem.

They even have the pugnacious temerity to accuse the African leadership of being a "club of dictators" when they are not claiming that the African leadership are a bunch of timid boys awed by the liberation credentials of President Robert Mugabe.

The confusion in the MDC stinks to high heavens and yet some are still convinced that the party knows how to win an election.

The urban youths and the students have since worn out and duly halted their street battles while the Rhodies and their Western allies have pinned their hopes on "screaming" the economy as Plan A and clinching a deal with MDC-minded people within Zanu-PF as Plan B.

The post-1999 ZCTU has been nothing more than an extension of the MDC, so strategically positioned to ensure the abuse of the worker for the ends of the MDC and not the workers themselves.

There is no time in the history of the ZCTU that relations have been so rosy between the employer and the labour body — in fact, the two are so attached that they are having breakfast in bed, not because they are sleeping in the kitchen fighting it out for the welfare of the worker but because the MDC is playing waitress with the crumbs from Western money bags — all the way to the ZCTU — employers’ bedroom.

The ZCTU is now more than comfortable organising worker lockouts with employers so as to disguise such lockouts as "mass stayaways"; that is when the ZCTU executive is not staying away itself on behalf of the workers.

The ZCTU claims that they want more jobs in the country but they are quite clear that they are not comfortable with indigenous people providing those jobs.

A black man is not the kind of employer the ZCTU is prepared to engage on behalf of the workers. That’s why the provision of new farming equipment to the new black farmers has nothing to do with the creation of employment but all to do with unsound policies and corruption.

This is the kind of ZCTU the MDC created after the one Morgan Tsvangirai himself used to lead.

Then comes the MDC split. It was inevitable. What with all those diverse and opposing power centres brought together to form the animal whose head was Morgan Tsvangirai and the neck was Welshman Ncube. That head always found its neck turning the other way every time it wanted to move while the neck kept wondering why the head was so much bent on making the wrong moves. Now the BBC, Dr Madhuku and Mr. Biti would have us believe that it was all the work of the "dreaded CIO". And what business did good Morgan have entertaining dreaded creatures telling him to overrule election results? Or why did the learned professor allow dreaded creatures to make him talk democracy at a time he was supposed to bless the dictatorial tendencies of his semi-illiterate leader?

Lastly, we have the all-vociferous so-called civic society, a class to which many with ambitions to land political positions in the MDC belong. These could be parliamentary positions on the MDC ticket or prospective posts in an envisaged MDC government, a prospect that continues to be more and more elusive each day.

The so-called civic society is armed with so much democracy that even the United States; that self-proclaimed number one champion of democracy, can only grin with envy at the democracy model preached by the civic activists of Zimbabwe.

They are armed with so much international law and human rights that even the biggest proponents of the ICJ and the ICC are left wondering if the so-called Hague should not relocate to the Southern African country and become The Harare; after all its the H letter starting in both.

We have a situation where democracy and human rights are not researched, investigated, studied evaluated and presented as they are in Zimbabwe but are often misrepresented, exaggerated or manipulated to the extent as the prospect of securing donor funding may allow. This is what has killed the credibility of civic society in the country.

They are supposed to be the cool-headed stabilisers between competing politicians but they are now largely part of the confusion circus that makes the Zimbabwe opposition, all in the misguided advice for securing donor funding.

Sometimes one may wonder if it is the donor funds that have become dirty or the donor mongers who have gone berserk.

Now we read that the war veterans’ chairperson is saying there is a clique within the ruling party itself that has fallen to the confusion party of what he calls "reactionaries" to the revolution. If this is true then Zimbabwe has real homework wanted done by tomorrow.

It is never about power in politics. It is about how to get to power. Why don’t people learn from Mr Tsvangirai?

People love to own their leader and hate to be owned by a leader and this is where confused politicians miss the point.

One needs to find out what it is the people want and avail one-self for that cause in honesty and away from power politics and that way people will fight for you. If one squeaks like a mouse for power the people are usually not so generous with the cheese.

We Zimbabweans are dying to see competing minds for policies that will empower our own people and for ideas centered on the emancipation of our own people.

We will overcome.