Mbare-bred Killer T’s popular lyrical verse, Kana Ndanyura, is a love song by a love-smitten dude sunk deep in endearment who is exhorting the world not to intrude and spoil his amorous tryst.
Though used in the ballad in its smitten sense by an awe-struck lover-boy, this piece will literally use the aphorism Kana Ndanyura to depict the sinking fortunes of former liberation movements in SADC that met in Johannesburg over the weekend to devise means and methods of getting themselves out of the deep waters.
Though etched on the music market as a romantic ballad, this piece will use Kana Ndanyura as a mournful lamentation by the tumbling and sinking political tribe of the region’s former liberation movements that met in Johannesburg, South Africa over the weekend.
The former political behemoths that strode the region’s politics like a Colossus met amid a dwindling support base by dint of performance illegitimacy.
They met in a strange and embarrassing context as some of them, like UNIP of Zambia, have disappeared from the political map, some such as the ANC are now governing through coalitions while others such as Zanu PF are barely clinging on because of brazen violence and rigging.
These liberation movements have been at the epicentre of the failure of the post-colonial African State and their political fortunes have been literally sinking in successive elections as voters have serially rejected them at the polls.
Kunyura is a Shona word which means sinking or falling.
Indeed, Kana Ndanyura may yet assume a political meaning given the sorry plight of the sinking support for the liberation comrades which, like the dinosaur, have failed to adapt to the demands of the brave, digital 21st century and the rising new generations that are now demanding jobs and functional economies, not dry liberation war rhetoric.
To borrow a line from Killer T, these liberation movements go into elections with a sense of entitlement and an arrogant attitude rooted in history: Munozviziva ndiri makuruwani (you know we are your liberators).
In the last elections, the voters in Botswana and South Africa had other ideas and harshly judged the BDP and the ANC respectively for their lack of probity and failure to deliver optimum services.
No one gave Duma Boko and his Umbrella for Democratic Change a chance. But they wrote a fantastic story in history when they ended a 58 year political dominance by a liberation entity called the Botswana Democratic Party.
The ANC garnered a paltry 40 percent of the vote and found itself governing through a coalition for the first time since 1994.
Recent electoral upsets have sent shockwaves across Southern Africa, Apart from Botswana and South Africa; significant opposition victories in Seychelles, Lesotho, Mauritius, and the near-upset in Mozambique have heightened concerns about the relevance of liberation war politics in the lives of the people today.
Indeed, liberation war rhetoric is just no longer cutting it with the voters.
Perhaps former Mozambique president Joaquim Chissano summed it up well when he told delegates over the weekend that the liberation movements have deviated from what they stood for, that they are not open to criticism and that they have abandoned the people.
As this sinking political tribe met over the weekend, shamefully seeking to understand just where the rains began to beat them, they could well have been singing back—–Killer T style––to place the shameful context of their desperate convention: Munenge muchida tiite seiko kana tanyura .
The ANC, the party of the iconic Nelson Mandela, the oldest liberation movement in Africa formed in 1912, suffered a dismal electoral loss last year, a loss that eroded its outright majority for the first time since Uhuru in 1994.
This former liberation tribe has failed to recognise that it now represents a tired and failed nationalism that has dismally failed to improve the lives of the people and to create jobs for a young generation that finds liberation war rhetoric meaningless if it does not address the key questions of the day.
Zanu PF of Zimbabwe, the Kenya African National Union (KANU) in East Africa, the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), Mozambique’s FRELIMO, Namibia’s SWAPO and Angola’s MPLA have had their footholds, nay their strangleholds, massively shaken in their respective countries.
In recent years, except for only a few, most of these liberation movements have been experiencing huge electoral shocks.
Except SWAPO in Namibia, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) of Tanzania and FRELIMO of Mozambique that have shown some pragmatism as evidenced by smooth leadership transitions at their respective party levels, most of these former liberation movements have dismally failed to manage their own internal succession politics.
Whatever their weaknesses, SWAPO, CCM and FRELIMO appear to have clear succession plans and can tolerate change internally, unlike others such as Zanu PF and of course the MPLA in Angola where Eduardo Dos Santos clung to power for decades while he fleeced national wealth with his family and children.
Unlike other liberation movements with dwindling political support by dint of their violence and a dismal failure to deliver, the CCM of Tanzania garnered 84 percent of the Presidential vote in the 2020 peaceful election.
But others have fared badly.
The UNIP of Zambia died after being crucified by voters on the performance cross in the election of 1991.
The memorial service may not have been held but UNIP effectively died in 1991and is now singing Kana Ndanyura from six feet deep in Zambia’s political graveyard.
So in Zambia, UNIP is no more, swept away by the torrents of citizen power.
Having come to power at independence in 1964, UNIP died electorally in 1991 and has now been reduced to just but a quiet political fart during elections.
From garnering a paltry 24 percent in the shock loss of the 1991 elections, UNIP’s figures in the Presidential polls went down to 16,1 percent in 2001, slightly rose to 25,3 percent in 2006, dwindled to 0,36 percent in 2011, 0,38 percent in 2015 and an embarrassingly all-time low support base of 0,06 percent in 2021.
For UNIP, the whimpering lyrics of Kana Ndanyura can barely be heard from the flotsam and jetsam far below sea level in the rut of utter rejection by Zambian citizens.
The ANC lost last year’s election on the basis of cancerous inadequacies that have become common to all liberation movements post independence. These common factors have to do with endemic corruption within the ruling elite, high unemployment, incessant power cuts, violent crime, leadership cluelessness and collapsing public services and decaying public infrastructure.
In Zimbabwe, Zanu PF is also singing Kana Ndanyura but being propped up only by electoral shenanigans, captured State institutions and a weak and meek regional body that cannot enforce its own electoral standards.
As a liberation movement, they have since lost their support in a huge way. Even after the last rigged poll in 2023, they have only managed to claw back to a two-thirds Parliamentary majority by literally purchasing cheap political souls to their side.
One could posit that Zanu PF is now governing through its own unique coalition with purchased political hearts, led by the celebrated political harlot, one Sengezo Tshabangu, the Moise Tshombe of our time.
In Malawi, the Malawi Congress Party, lost its monopoly on power in 1994 and was roundly defeated in subsequent polls. The MCP only clawed back to power under difficult circumstances in the court-ordered rerun of June 2020 where they went into a coalition under the Tonse Alliance and garnered 60 percent of the vote.
Just like the ANC, the MCP is currently governing through a coalition.
The MCP, the liberation movement of Hastings Kamuzu Banda, has also fallen to the ignominy of having to govern through a coalition.
Like other liberation movements in similar predicament, it has also sunk into a political rut and Kana Ndanyura is also their befitting lyrical lamentation.
Moving to Kenya in East Africa, their liberation party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU) is now officially dead. It died in the 2002 election when their then candidate Uhuru Kenyatta garnered a paltry 29 percent of the vote while the party itself won just 64 out of 212 parliamentary seats.
KANU morphed into two offshoots, the Orange Democratic Movement and ODM Kenya, effectively signalling the official death of the party.
Otherwise as a liberation movement, KANU is officially dead and is equally belching out the Kana Ndanyura lyrics from Kenya’s political graveyard in the capital Nairobi.
The big lesson for these former liberation movements whose support base is plummeting at an alarming rate is that they must never take the citizens for granted.
The big lesson for them is: Reform and Perform or Perish!
Perhaps it was only befitting that these dying former liberation movements that met in Johannesburg over the weekend would discuss the corpse of former Zambian president Edgar Lungu who passed away in South Africa recently and is yet to be buried.
For this dying political tribe, it was indeed befitting that death as an item would would also be on the summit agenda!
Lastly, dear reader, kindly take note that Killer T’s epic hit Kana Ndanyura cannot only be a romantic ballad that created a wave in the country but the epic lyrical verse, can also be extrapolated to the breezing political moment upon us as exemplified by the sorry plight of former liberation movements that sorrowfully met in Johannesburg over the weekend to see how they can politically claw out of the sea-bottom!
One hopes that they did not collectively conspire to bludgeon the citizens for deserting them in their respective countries.
Indeed, they may conspire to kill us.
Otherwise on Kana Ndanyura, Killer T simply killed it!
Luke Tamborinyoka is a citizen from Domboshava. He is a journalist and a political scientist. You can interact with him on his Facebook page or in the X-handle @luke_tambo
