By Tanonoka Joseph Whande
There has been a lot read into the announcement that several political parties had banded together to stand up against Robert Mugabe’s insistence on holding elections in July. Already, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is dreaming about a united front at the polls.
The move, if there is any such serious move, is not going anywhere and Zimbabweans know that to be an unavoidable fact. Zimbabweans started daydreaming about a possible “grand coalition” of all political parties “to dislodge President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF from power”.
It is a wish, a good wish and one that Zimbabweans have always hoped would materialise.
I have a problem with the parties concerned.
Usually when people or organisations pool their resources, they would be complementing each other by bringing something to add to what the other fellow or group has. It is understandable.
But when a party, like ZAPU, is bringing nothing into a group, the result might be the destabilisation of the parties gunning for a combined effort. While such parties add almost nothing, their ability to foul things up is really great as Ncube’s MDC and Makoni’s poor party have already demonstrated.
While it sounds very good to unite and fight the battle together, I still wonder what, really, these Mickey Mouse political parties will bring in a coalition. Do we honestly believe that ZANU Ndonga would deliver anything to a coalition of political parties?
The danger here is that these minute political parties want to exist inside well established and well-supported political parties. They want to exist within but keep their separate identities and that is a recipe for disaster.
The other problem posed by this scenario is that the leaders of these parties all aspire to be presidents and I see none of them willing to be subservient to anyone within that coalition.
ZANU-PF and PF-ZAPU came together and fought together in a combined effort to dislodge the colonial government. There is no question that their combined effort made a big difference and resulted in the liberation of the country.
When time for elections came, they contested the elections as individual political parties and that decision was made so as to gauge the strength of each – even if they were to form a unity government later.
The two political parties were important to Zimbabwe because they offered counterweight to each other, just like any normal democracy would require. But years later, I was appalled when PF-ZAPU was fooled into uniting with ZANU-PF to effectively become one party. This was not necessary at all and I believe even PF-ZAPU leaders knew this was a bad idea.
Unity does not mean giving up one’s hopes and agenda for the nation to adopt the other party’s hopes and agenda for the nation. We must have several ideas to toy around with so that people can choose a preference, refine it and apply it on the nation. We want varied ideas; we want to listen to different leaders, compare their agendas and prescriptions for the nation then decide which one we feel serves us better.
But when we all become one and listen to one man, such as we did with Mugabe, we would be hurting our own cause, as can be evidenced by the downward spiral that took place after the political parties became one.
I do, however, concede that PF-ZAPU might have reached that decision for other reasons other than believing in ZANU-PF’s political thinking. Be that as it may, here we are with our Mickey Mouse parties making noise about uniting to defeat Mugabe’s intentions to hold elections in July.
Tsvangirai, who knows that he has more followers than any one of these so-called party leaders, is obviously all for it.
“Circumstances dictate behaviour and I’m sure that in our situation all progressives must unite to achieve the change that the people expect,” Tsvangirai said.
“Let us set aside our personal interests and problems, let us all unite. It is in everyone’s interest to have this change and my party is committed to that.”
Almost word for word like Mugabe said when he was preparing to gobble down PF-ZAPU.
Unlike these silly little political parties we have around today, PF-ZAPU had a lot of support and that is why I was disappointed when they were swallowed by ZANU-PF.
The heart of the matter is that the leaders of ZANU Ndonga, Mavambo/Kusile/Dawn and Ncube’s MDC should not be talking about uniting with anyone but should consider disbanding their tiny groups and joining the main MDC and work hard as members of that organisation because their absence or presence is negligible.
If they are allowed to exist as individual members within “a coalition”, it won’t be long before the main MDC has tears on its face.
Each party wants to grow and they will be close enough to spread their word from within that coalition’s platform. These little groupings will, after the elections, also get in the way by demanding more than they are worth and we honestly do not need a government of national unity again.
The winner of the forthcoming elections must have a free hand to run the country and to choose who he or she wants to work with, not to be burdened by sharing cabinet posts with useless appendages just because someone brought his wife and child as members of a party that joined the coalition pact to dislodge ZANU-PF.
If unity is necessary why can’t they disband their little gatherings and land their support to one party? It’s not like they have numbers of followers to worry about, like PF-ZAPU had.
We want things done openly and we must make sure that the sweet talk of uniting will not mean laying eggs that will hatch more problems after the beast is slaughtered at the polls.
Those little political parties should disband, not clamour for a coalition because they have had years to boast their electorate and failed to convince us that they have any better of an agenda.
Of course, it is their democratic right to exist but existence alone is not enough. We do not want to be made to believe that there really are different ideologies that exist between ZAPU, Ndonga and Mavambo Kusile Dawn.
They must exist with substance, with support. They must be there as representatives of an accepted idea not to exist in the hope of being given a few thousand dollars by some donors somewhere.
Unity is a serious thing and I urge all those who are talking about it, including Mr Tsvangirai, to understand that unity comes with a lot of compromises which will need to be honoured tomorrow.
Unity is good but tread with care.
I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today. SW Radio Africa
