Mkwananzi, democracy comes with responsibilities

By Lovemore Chinoputsa

The recent ranting by Promise Mkwananzi, the Secretary General of the MDC Youth Assembly (The MDC cannot continue on an undemocratic path: Promise Mkwananzi) cannot go unchallenged.

While I have serious reservations in that he is the one who penned that post, I will still credit the rantings to him.

That the Secretary General has never penned more than 1000 words ever since he was elected in Bulawayo, 2011 is public knowledge and surely the suspension of the Deputy Treasurer should have really riled him to the extent of penning 3200 words.

While it is never part of my business to get personal with people, I ought to get out of my comfort zones today and point out to you that you have gone off the mark and you cannot be allowed to continuously lie to the people of Zimbabwe and propagate hate language all in the name of exposing people with so called Presidential ambitions.

I want to state that if there is anyone who has had their issues bordered on indiscipline, lack of democracy and total disregard of the party system and the constitution, it is the wrongly labeled “renewal team”.

They are hiding under the renewal tag when we all know that all they seek is the removal of Morgan Tsvangirai and nothing else, and for me I have never seen a renewal process that only targets the leader and leaves others.

If leadership is a collective effort why has the focus been on Tsvangirai alone and not on Mangoma who failed to provide the necessary resources, or Tendai Biti as the Secretary General who was supposed to superintend over the development of key policies and election messaging.

Moreso while you seem to be against the idea that provincial leaders cannot be “unceremoniously dismissed” you seem to quickly be putting a waiver on Morgan Tsvangirai whom you want us to believe he is the only architect of our loss and therefore has to go immediately. What Hypocrisy!

You go on to accuse the President of the party for leading a faction, but for all I know , Moran Tsvangirai has never led a factional but is simply at the apex of the party due to the mandate he received in 2011 at the Bulawayo Congress which will end in 2016.

So where and how do you expect him to rise above factional interests, unless it is only a figment of your imagination.

You better explain to us the factions. Your obsession of wanting Morgan Tsvangirai to dialogue with Mangoma is over exaggerated as Mangoma himself has shown that he is in on overdrive to discredit The President and nothing else.

For reasons better known to you seem to be criminalising Chamisa’s ambitions to one day lead the party, yet you are quick to come to the defence of Mangoma who has publicly and immaturely declared his interests to lead the party.

So my question is, in your view if Mangoma can be allowed to be ambitious , why should Chamisa, Morgen Komichi, myself and even you not wish to lead the party at one point in life.

It’s no crime to harbor ambitions at all but what becomes wrong is to destabilize the party, and in the case of others whom you seem to be fighting from their corner, presiding over the chaos that led to the failure of MDC to gain power so that it would become easy for them to remove Morgan Tsvangirai.

For you to openly attack someone with such hate language over an ambition which is only cooked in your own head surely shows “immaturity and jealousy” on your part as some commentator has said.

I hold no brief for Nelson Chamisa, but one can easily tell that the anger and personal hatred of the man is clearly evident in your post.

While I expected you to cover the back of one of your own (remember you both former Secretary Generals of Zinasu just like me also), you deliberately took it upon yourself to vent your unsubstantiated and false allegations on social media.

For starters (while not absolving the organizing dept of any wrong doing, in ensuring that structures were up to date , remember the Treasurer had always been underfunding this department for a long time), you go on to deliberately misinform that primary elections were the sole responsibility of the organizing department, yet anyone who bothers to check how things are done in the MDC will tell you that it is the Elections Directorate under the leadership of the National Chairperson that does that.

As someone who participated in the primary elections, albeit in a losing cause, you ought to have known these basics, unless of course you want us to believe that maybe Chamisa had a hand to do with your drubbing in those Magwegwe primary elections where you came a distant third.

That you only could get a mere 77 votes surely cannot make you want the whole party to intervene in your bilateral problems with Chamisa.

You attempt to point to Chamisa as the only one who advised the President that he would win the elections is wrong as it is untrue, because you did the same in the many rallies that you attended and addressed and even to the extent that you claimed that you would use any force and means necessary to defend the vote if Mugabe dared to steal it, only for you to be chided by President Tsvangirai himself for you not to fan inflammatory messages.

How Time Flies!

That You, Promise erred in taking the confidential ongoings of a National Council (remember this is the highest decision making body outside congress) is as obvious as it is that the only reason you had to write that post is that you were merely singing for your supper (By the way there is nothing wrong in doing that anyway).

Going public about the goings on of an important meeting such as the National Council surely is mischief of the highest order.

If Truth be told , this was a desperate attempt by you Mkwananzi to bring yourself back in the limelight. That you have failed on your mandate of leading young people in the party is there for everyone to see.

Promise Mkwananzi, you know very well that you are a spent force in this people’s movement and you are therefore bent on trying a few tricks to get sympathy and attention.

In any case whether the party is going to split or not, whether Mangoma had written his letters or not, your time was up in the youth assembly. You know for sure that you have been living on borrowed time in the MDC Youth Assembly and you now see an opportunity of turning yourself into a victim.

Closely looking at this, one will see that he realizes that the only way you can somewhat remain relevant is by being pushed out of the Assembly through a suspension and therefore be in the same “league” with the Mangoma’s of this world, since your only fame to standing for so called democracy is the unfortunate beatings you suffered at the MDC headquarters together with Mangoma.

Your attempt to push the Youth assembly to institute disciplinary measures against You and possibly suspend you over such irresponsible utterances should be ignored.

I dare challenge Promise Mkwananzi if you think that the views you carry are the views of the majority of young people you purport to represent, to call a legitimate National Executive or The National Council of the Youth assembly to discuss your rantings and see if any resolution of such a meeting will be close to your views.

It’s high time that you learnt that democracy itself comes with responsibilities. As a representative of the young people you ought to remember that your personal views driven by malice, hatred and possibly the love of money will always be out done and superceded by the majority views of the constituency you lead.

That you can go to give your personal views in a meeting which you ought to represent the Youth of the party is not only sad but an indictment on your leadership.

You do not represent yourself in that National Council and Executive, you couldn’t have found yourself in that position in the comfort of your house, but you had to use money and bribes to get that position at Bulawayo amphitheatre, so you need to have some respect for the people you hoodwinked into voting for you.

That a national leader can have the temerity to call his fellow colleagues and the youth he leads, ‘rogue, sycophants “among other derogatory words simply because they do not subscribe to your views is a bit way off the mark.

If this is your definition of democracy and exercise of leadership then you surely cannot claim to be standing on principles of constitutionalism and democracy.

There are some Youth leaders who believe in Mangoma and what the stands for, but we have never heard them lash out at the constituency they lead, the way you have done it.

So I repeat again that your personal views influenced by personal material gains should not make you lose the voice of reason expected of a leader serving in such a capacity.

Your propensity to misrepresent the views of the young people you purport to represent is legendary just as your love for finer things is well documented.

Is it not you Promise who recently despite having presided over the development of Youth National Executive resolutions which among other things endorsed the suspension of Mangoma, that you unashamedly changed these solutions, and communicated falsehoods to the media and the people of Zimbabwe which suited your warped opinion on the matter.

Is this the kind of leadership we want to see where you can willy nilly flout the constitution and the views of the majority for expediency. History shall judge you harshly for this kind of leadership you are portraying.

Ask yourself what shall be the legacy of your leadership, before you start questioning others.

However one is quick to forgive you Promise Mkwananzi for your failures. It is public knowledge that the Youth assembly was at its lowest ebb during the incarceration of Solomon Madzore.

History records that Promise was given an opportunity and blank cheque to provide leadership in the unfortunate absence of Solomon Madzore and for 405 days he could not deliver.

That in those 405 days he could no longer address youth meetings is public knowledge and that it only took the magnanimity of Madzore (despite the accusations and counter accusations of what had led to his incarceration together with others, May Rebecca’s soul rest in Peace), that he went around with Promise and urged young people to reconsider their views on Mkwananzi since he was about to be kicked out of the Assembly.

That he could fail to provide leadership at this juncture, also given that he had previously wanted to contest for the Chairman’s post and would have been expected to be the leading light and voice is an indictment on his leadership and if there is anyone who should have called it a day after the MDC lost the elections it could surely have been him.

Your only controversy was when you bulldozed your way into the JOMIC secretariat when a decision had been made that another member of the management of the youth, who happened to be staying in the region where the vacancy was, had been assigned to that post.

That you could dupe the JOMIC to release a car to you when you had no licence is also well documented and that you only had to lose that vehicle at Midlands Hotel after spirited efforts to have the vehicle returned is in the public domain.

Mkwananzi you are part of the leadership and worse the leadership of the youth which is supposed to be the vanguard of the party, and for you to blatantly show your loss of respect to the President of the party and unashamedly apportion all the blame on him is not only laughable but sad in that as a youth leader you were supposed to have been at the forefront of the campaign to have Morgan Tsvangirai elected President of the Republic.

What youth programmes did you initiate, how were the few resources allocated to the youth used, why didn’t you push you’re your fellow cdes to release funds to the young people of the party.

By the way the party youth still await to hear from you how you handled the voter registration exercise and subsequent resources allocated to the said programme.

Aluta

Lovemore Chinoputsa, MDC Youth National Executive Member