Peter Kagwanja
19 March 2008
opinion
Zimbabwe's independent presidential candidate Simba Makoni poses the first real challenge President Robert Mugabe has ever encountered from within the ruling nationalist front, write Daily Monitor Correspondents Peter Kagwanja and Patrick Mutahi
Zimbabweans go to the polls on March 29, to elect 120 members of parliament and a national president with the incumbent, Robert Mugabe, 84, tipped to clinch his eighth presidential term in 28 years.
But the octogenarian is facing a formidable internal rebellion that threatens to tear apart his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF).
The man wielding the heavy sword is Mugabe's former youthful protégé and Zanu-PF Secretary of Economic Affairs, Herbert Stanley Simbarashe Makoni, known simply as Simba Makoni.
On February 5, Makoni declared that he would seek to dethrone Mugabe as president and party chief. As was expected, he was kicked out of the party. Makoni's subsequent decision to run as an independent candidate comes through as a double-edged blade slicing through the electoral turfs of both the ruling party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Third option
Styling himself as a centrist leader, Makoni is promising to lead Zimbabwe to a "third way" out of its economic and political mire. Inflation stands at 7,800 percent and is projected to reach 100,000 percent by the end of the year while unemployment is 80 percent with 4 million people reportedly facing starvation in a crisis that has churned out over 3 million refugees.
Zimbabwe's independent presidential candidate Simba Makoni and President Robert Mugabe address their supporters. Mugabe has reason to worry because Makoni has been endorsed publicly by some party veterans. Reuters photos
"The Third Way," argues a Makoni sympathiser and publisher, Trevor Ncube, "is a way of thinking that rejects the mediocrity offered by the (opposition) MDC. Under Zanu-PF, our society has collapsed.
We need a new beginning that rejects Zanu-PF corruption, oppression, arrogance and mismanagement and offers Zimbabweans an opportunity to dream again." Makoni poses the first real challenge Mugabe has ever encountered from within Zimbabwe's nationalist front since his party signed a power-sharing deal with Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African Peoples Party (Zapu) in 1987.
But true to form, Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, has scoffed at Makoni's challenge. "He is like a frog trying to inflate itself up to the size of an ox. It will burst," says Mugabe.
Makoni's exit signifies lack of internal democracy in the ruling Zanu-PF, which has used a mix of Mugabe's charisma, propaganda, patronage and political violence to intimidate rivals and win previous elections.
Use of violence during the infamous 1982 Gukurahundi operation (meaning the "wind that blows away the chaff before the rains") to overcome the challenge posed by Joshua Nkomo's Zapu killed an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 suspected Zapu sympathisers in Matabeleland and the Midlands regions. Later, the signing of a unity accord with Nkomo's party on December 22, 1987 effectively annihilated dissent and opposition in Zimbabwe, creating a de facto one-party state.
The expulsion of Makoni from the party signifies the ruling elite's honed response to dissent by expel critics and opponents from the party.
Edgar Tekere, the outspoken Secretary General of Zanu-PF, was shut out of the party in 1987 when he became increasingly vocal against turning Zimbabwe into a one-party state. He eventually formed the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (Zum) to take on Mugabe in the 1990 general elections but secured only two parliamentary seats.
Margaret Dongo, a Zanu-PF member in the 1990-1995 Parliament was expelled, but won her Harare seat. Another expellee, Lawrence Mudehwe, also clinched the mayoral seat of the important eastern border city of Mutare.
And more recently, the expelled academic and former Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, won the Tsholosho seat as an independent in Matebeleland in the March 2005 elections. Factional wrangles within the Zanu-PF elite favour Makoni, widely viewed as a "project" of the party's movers and shakers irked by Mugabe's failure to honour his promise in April 2004 not to seek re-election in 2008.
Since the onset of the Zimbabwe's crisis eight years ago, Makoni has been secretly fronted by some Zanu-PF members and regional leaders as a worthy heir to Mugabe's mantle. Among Makoni's backers is retired army Gen Solomon Mujuru, whose wife, Joyce Mujuru, is one of the country's two vice-presidents and Zimbabwe's most powerful woman.
Makoni has also been endorsed publicly by party veterans like Gen Vitalis Zvinavashe; the former Interior Minister Dumiso Dabengwa and former Speaker of Parliament Cyril Ndebele. This has given him an edge in the Matebele heartlands. Gen Mujuru and Dabengwa are already leading the offensive against Mugabe within Zanu-PF structures.
Internal divisions
The ruling party is experiencing rebellions in its rank and file. Some members have openly defied party structures, opting to run against candidates endorsed by the party elite. Also, key players, such as the other vice-president Joseph Msika, politburo member Dabengwa and Zanu-PF National chairman, John Nkomo, have strategically kept out of the race.
Coming from the relatively smaller Manyika sub-tribe of the Mashona, Makoni is unburdened by the intra-Mashona power wrangles between the Mugabe's Zezuru and the rival Karanga sub-tribe which has dominated party politics. Many tout Makoni as a better force than the opposition chief, Morgan Tsvangirai.
Makoni is a credible nationalist, a pragmatist and a Leeds-trained economic moderate who was fired as Finance Minister in August 2002 for endorsing the devaluation of the Zimbabwean dollar, a policy Mugabe vehemently opposed.
The economist has the backing of the rival MDC splinter party led by Arthur Mutambara, who has backed down from his own presidential ambition.
MDC itself is widely seen as a spent force, having lost four elections in a row (2000, 2002, March 2005 and November 2005). It split in 2005.
The Mutambara faction has endorsed Makoni's candidacy praising him as having put national interests ahead of personal ambition, unlike some "pretenders" in the political arena. "That is why some of us are prepared to put on hold our presidential ambitions to support the national cause."
But, as things stand now, the Makoni candidacy threatens to split the opposition vote between him and Tsvangirai. Worse still, relations between Makoni and Tsvangirai are frosty. The latter has described Makoni as "nothing more than old wine in a new bottle," accusing him of being partly to blame for Mugabe's and Zanu-PF's failures.
Tsvangirai's pundits are even insisting that Makoni is a Zanu-PF decoy brought in to give elections some credibility after the opposition had threatened to boycott them. But Makoni has insisted that he is his own man. To his credit, Makoni is untainted by corruption or political excesses, which have stained such Zanu-PF rebels like Jonathan Moyo.
But he comes into the race as an underdog with no strong constituency apart from being predominantly popular with the urban middle class and the young voters. As such, he will have to wrest the rural votes from Mugabe. Time is not on his side. Zimbabwe's praetorian guards are Mugabe's best bastion.
Zimbabwe has been in the grip of a "creeping coup" since the notorious urban blitz code-named Operation Murambatsvina (clean filth) in May 2005 during which thousands of slum dwellers were removed from the capital Harare. Since then, politics has become increasingly militarised and the military heavily politicised.
But with Makoni's entry into the fray, Mugabe appears to be skating on thin ice, with the soldierly 's loyalty split between the president's and the Makoni camps.
In the ensuing uncertainty, Army Commander, Gen Constantine Chiwenga has warned that he will overturn the constitutional order if President Mugabe loses. "The army will not support or salute sell-outs and agents of the West before, during and after the presidential elections," Chiwenga told the Zimbabwe Standard.
A smarter Mugabe
Mugabe has not left anything to chance. With reports that some of his most senior lieutenants, disillusioned with his decision to run for another term are secretly backing Makoni, in February, Mugabe reportedly put his senior officials to a loyalty test, approaching each one of them to sign his nomination papers.
As an incumbent and an astute politician, Mugabe will rely on Zanu-PF, the state machinery and resources to influence the electoral outcomes.
However, a more formidable electoral bastion is the War Veterans. On the heel of Makoni's declaration of his candidature, Joseph Chinotimba, the deputy leader of the war veterans, dismissed him as a political turncoat who would suffer a humiliating defeat in the March polls. Chinotimba said the over 3,000 war veteran supporters - who have anchored Mugabe's election campaigns since 2000, would not allow Makoni and his supporters to enter the party's offices.
But the war veterans are also reportedly split. A group of former fighters said they were breaking away in protest over the way the Zimbabwe Liberation War Veterans Association (ZLWVA) was being run.
Further, the president's alliance with war veterans' leader, Jabulani Sibanda, has annoyed Zanu-PF stalwarts from Matabeleland.
Unlike Tsvangirai, Makoni has a regional clout, having served as Secretary General of the 14-member South African Development Corporation (SADC). However, Zanu-PF has oiled its propaganda machine, branding Makoni as a traitor and an imperialist out to overthrow a legitimate government. (The internationalisation of the Zimbabwe crisis is a tactic that Mugabe has effectively used to tarnish the image of the opposition.)
The West, which conceives democracy as a peaceful instrument of regime change in Zimbabwe, is calling for free and fair elections, possibly leading to Mugabe's defeat. During his first presidential tour of Africa in February, American president George Bush called for free and fair elections in Zimbabwe.
"There is no doubt the people of Zimbabwe deserve a government that serves their interest and recognises their basic human rights and holds free and fair elections," said President Bush.
The European Union has also called on Mugabe to ensure that the polls conform to international standards. "We want to see elections that are properly free and fair in Zimbabwe," adds the British Foreign Secretary, David Milliband. But democracy is a crude and undependable instrument of regime change and achieving desired results.
However, the current SADC chair and Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa has warned the West against interfering in Zimbabwe's elections. Mwanawasa has also asked the West to disabuse itself of the notion that the elections can only be free and fair if President Robert Mugabe is defeated.
But the SADC opinion on the way forward for Zimbabwe also appears divided. South Africa has pursued a policy of quiet diplomacy towards Zimbabwe calibrated to ensure that Africa's largest economy does not have a failed state on its doorsteps.
Since March 2007, President Thabo Mbeki has been mandated by SADC to broker a political deal between Zanu-PF and MDC but the efforts have largely failed.
Frustrated by the slow progress of the mediation, Pretoria is said to have thrown its force behind the Makoni campaign as part of its long-term strategy of transforming Zanu-PF and stemming a "Chiluba factor" - the decimation of nationalist parties by labour-based opposition parties.
With Pretoria's intelligence indicating that Makoni's entry into the race is undercutting Mugabe's power base and simultaneously eating into Tsvangirai's vote, President Mbeki is reportedly trying to unite Tsvangirai and Makoni.
The idea is to persuade them to form a government of national unity, preferably led by Makoni, a plan also said to be backed by some western countries as a way of breaking Zimbabwe's political deadlock. But on the whole, African leaders have adopted a soft public stance on Mugabe, widely hailed as an icon of anti-colonial struggle.
Speaking during the Euro-Africa Summit in December 2007, the then AU Chairman, Ghana's President John Kufor warned that: "It is not for anybody to just move in there [Zimbabwe] and impose a solution." He added, "we want to encourage a home-grown solution so that there will be a restoration of normalcy and good governance for the people of Zimbabwe."
The Makoni challenge looks real and practical. Unlike previous opposition forays, March 2008 could well be Mugabe's waterloo. Whatever the outcome, though, the disintegration of the nationalist party that led Zimbabwe to independence seems to have started. And with it, the potential collapse of the nationalist consensus as the ideological bedrock of Mugabe's power.
But the West is likely to respond to a Mugabe victory by tightening the noose on the country's neck, encouraging regime entrenchment and militarisation of the Zimbabwean society. Like the proverbial grass, in this contest of elephants, the loser will be the ordinary Zimbabwean who will have to bear the brunt of an economy on a free-fall.
Peter Kagwanja is the acting Executive Director of Democracy and Governance and Head of the Africa Division at the Human Science Research Council, Pretoria and President of the Africa Policy Institute (Pretoria & Nairobi). Patrick Mutahi is the Director of Eastern and Horn of Africa Programme at Africa Policy Institute (Nairobi).
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