The army has always been in charge

By Hopewell Chin’ono

The idea that Zimbabwe is suddenly being run by a military government is a misplaced notion which betrays how much people care to know and understand about how government has been run pre Mugabe’s demise. Robert Mugabe lost the election of March 29, 2008.

Events from that election defeat conspired to lead us where we are today. Mugabe was resigned to handing over the keys to 1 Chancellor Road to Morgan Tsvangirai.

The late Professor John Makumbe asserts in my film, A Violent Response, that three times Mugabe wanted to concede defeat and three times his handlers told him not to panic.

Mugabe had been advised not to run but as usual he didn’t listen. He lost dismally and by his own account, Mugabe inadvertently said that Tsvangirai won by 74%.

It must be understood that it was Mugabe who lost not ZANUPF. Across rural Zimbabwe, voters were voting for ZANU PF MPs and not Mugabe, what became known as Bhora Musango.
ZANU PF won the national vote but lost the presidency.

To the War Veterans and their colleagues in the military, this was a betrayal of the liberation struggle as they knew it.
They had warned us in 2002 that they wouldn’t salute anyone without liberation credentials.

The opposition knew that their candidate had won, they announced victory at the Meikles Hotel through Tendai Biti. What they didn’t know was how to get keys to the state.

We all know what happened. We ended up with a GNU. Before that, we must understand that Emmerson Mnangagwa’s hopes of becoming a President hinged on Mugabe retaining his position.

The generals knew that they would be fired thanks to reckless rants by the MDCT which continue to this day. Some in the MDC-T were even talking about taking the Mugabe government to The Hague for their human rights commissions.

This to me showed lack of tact, you can’t warn me of my death if I lose and then expect me to lose knowing of my impending fate, death.

What the MDC-T and indeed a lot of citizens fail to understand is that there is idealism and there is realpolitik. Realpolitik is rooted in tact and planning. 

Idealism is what you get from the university SRC, shouting about democracy and rule of law without figuring out how you will get these ideals into real life.

That to me is where the MDC-T fails and should adjust instead of being defensive. ZANU PF focuses on realpolitik, where they can even sit with the MDC-T in a unity government and plan how to serve divorce papers in 2013 as they did.

I pull my hair when I hear MDC-T supporters mourning about how ZANUPF is not adhering to the constitution. Jonathan Moyo aptly reminded them that ZANU PF cannot reform itself out of power.
That’s realpolitik talk which requires the opposition to change strategy.

I equally get enraged when ZANU PF complain about how the West supports the opposition, where else can they get the support from when they are not in power? However, the devil is in the detail, ZANU PF uses the Puppet narrative with devastating effect when campaigning to their rural base.

The MDC-T fails or does not know how to put together a strong campaign message on ZANU PF’s omissions, they post incoherent ramblings on social media, it works on social media but in rural areas how do you talk about constitutional intransigencies to someone wanting food and inputs?

So back to the GNU, Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC-T party were categorically told by SADC partners not to participate in the 2013 election because they would lose without electoral reforms.

I met Morgan Tsvangirai at the World Justice Forum in Barcelona, Spain in 2012, he was the guest of honor at the annual meeting of the legal fraternity.

The Zimbabwean team invited me to join them for dinner. 

I asked them about what they had achieved since the inception of the GNU. The responses were cynical and dismissive. A trade mark of the MDC-T.

A part of me knows the sacrifices and pain that Morgan Tsvangirai has gone through in trying to make things better, another part feels frustrated with so many missed opportunities and school boy errors made in trying to remove Mugabe.

What is more frustrating is the refusal by the MDC-T and it’s ardent supporters to listen and their public posture that they are always right. No man is an island!

During the dinner in Barcelona, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was buoyant that he would be President in 2013.

Lindiwe Zulu, the South African minister tasked by Jacob Zuma to lead the SA delegation which sought to find a Zimbabwean solution was equally frustrated with the MDC-T and Morgan Tsvangirai.

Lindiwe Zulu told me in 2013 that the MDCT was led by a team of clueless characters who won’t take advice. She told me that it’s difficult to legitimately push ZANUPF and Mugabe towards reform when the MDCT won’t follow through with tact and strategy.

She was called a “street woman” by President Mugabe because she was being tough and fair on both sides.

The MDC-T lost another opportunity when they refused to take the advice not to participate in an election triggered by Jealousy Mawarire’s court action which was backed by Jonathan Moyo.

When they were licking their 2013 defeat wounds, an opportunity for renewal presented itself, Morgan Tsvangirai had run the course and his lieutenants felt he needed to pass the baton.

His supporters started using the example of Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal who was in opposition for 26 years and finally became President.

In politics, context is King, uprooting the Senegalese example without looking at the optics around it shows again first rate naivety. Needless to say, Morgan’s supporters reached out to Mugabe’s handbook and used violence to dispense of Tendai Biti and Elton Mangoma.

This to me shows the uniformity in our politics of using violence whether in power or not. Before that, it had been Trudy Stevenson.

But what actually happened beyond the brute force?

When the calls for Morgan Tsvangirai to go became louder from his party, an emissary advised him to have a succession plan in place to calm the noise.

He was advised to have two Vice Presidents in place to understudy him. His own brother was urging him to resist but he was advised by outsiders to save his party and his legacy by doing the right thing.

Tsvangirai agreed and when a draft agreement was put in place, Elton Mangoma and Biti put out a disparaging statement about Morgan Tsvangirai before the deal could be signed. They acted in bad faith.

Tsvangirai felt betrayed and he walked away from the plan.

I am not sure if this betrayal is what led to the decision to go after Biti and Mangoma violently.
The bottom line is that it didn’t look good and it shows the ugly side of our politics.

On the other side of town, Mugabe had not forgiven General Mujuru for orchestrating Bhora Musango. Mugabe never forgives. The factional politics was already rife before Mugabe had even appointed a new cabinet post the 2013 election.

Jonathan Moyo felt that he lost Tsholotsho because Lacoste had rigged against him. He vowed that if he was not appointed into cabinet, he would take on the ZANUPF establishment. He was the last one to receive a call to come to state house where prospective ministers were assembled.

The beginning of the end for Amai Mujuru had began in earnest. Jonathan Moyo hates Amai Mujuru with pathological passion, one time I had to verbally intervene and separate Jonathan from Ibbo Mandaza after a SAPES dialogue when Jonathan and Ibbo lost their cool at each other.

Ibbo had said that Joice Mujuru was already through the succession door, “…I will never be ruled by that villager,” Jonathan shouted back. Such was the intensity of emotion around Mugabe’s succession.

We all know what happened. Joice was kicked out and Emmerson Mnangagwa emerged as the new VP. It was not accidental, Mugabe had used security apparatus to get rid of Joice Mujuru.

This is where those who say Mnangagwa is the face of the military get it wrong. Zimbabwe has been a securocratic State for years. Mnangagwa was part of that securocracy since the day he was made head of ZANU security at the Chimoio ZANU congress in 1977.

He was working in Mugabe’s office and his brother in law, Josiah Tongogara, was the commander of the ZANLA Forces, the military wing of ZANU.

So the military has been part of our politics for a very long time with General Mujuru, the first black commander, being involved in politics and making recommendations whilst still in office.

Mugabe tried to depart from that and that is what led to his downfall.

War veterans like Sandra Zodwa Denenga who now lives in the US told me that in Mozambique, Tongogara was the law and that Mugabe was nothing but just a spokesperson with a good command of the English language.

The culture of rigging has been an integral part of Mugabe’s DNA. In 1984 at the ZANUPF congress at the Borrowdale race course, his deputy, Simon Muzenda lost to Maurice Nyagumbo. Mugabe intervened.

In 2004 Emmerson Mnangagwa had more provinces than Joice Mujuru and again Mugabe intervened.
This time they made the VP position a female affair which pushed out ED out of the race.

General Mujuru and his team had wanted to recommend Sydney Sekeramayi, however a quick thinking Ibbo Mandaza advised them that it wouldn’t look good having Number 1 and 2 being Zezuru.

That is how the gender ticket was born and Joice was sold as a Korekore which she is and not a Zezuru. That alliance fell apart when General Mujuru pushed for Mugabe’s ouster at the Goromonzi conference in 2007.

Mugabe was eventually saved by Mnangagwa and the military in 2008. So Operation Restore Legacy was informed by these historical anecdotes. 

The Zimbabwean military was born out of ZANU and ZAPU, so it is foolhardy and a failure to understand the relatedness of things to try and separate the two.

Imagining so is naive when General Chiwenga made it clear that the operation was made possible by the factional fights in the ruling party and a captured president.

All ZANU leaders have been removed by the military. Ndabaningi Sithole was removed in 1974 through the Mgagao declaration.

Herbert Chitepo was assassinated in 1975 when he fell out with the military.

Robert Mugabe was removed in November of 2017 again through a military intervention.
There has never been a clean handover of power in ZANU.

As citizens, we must be political in our thinking and not just say things without looking at the background of why things are what they are. The opposition will die a natural death if it refuses to be critiqued and to look at what is being said and then reflecting.

It is the same issue with the Nkosana Moyo supporters, when you ask them why they think that he can win, all they say is that he will win because he is Smart and successful. But Manyika of Build Zimbabwe is also Smart and successful and even younger.

So again, the voters intelligence should be respected. The voters want to hear why they should vote for the opposition not why they shouldn’t vote for the ruling party.

The voters know about the conflation of the state and the ruling party, they have lived with it from April 18, 1980.

Tell them how you will transform their lives.

Constantly harping on about the Junta this and the military that won’t help the opposition win substantial votes.

Let’s engage…