KOWTOWING is rearing its ugly head in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) as senior party officials fall over each other to ingratiate with party leader, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai who party insiders claim is all out to crush dissent within the rank and file of the party.

After Tsvangirai's shock reshuffle a fortnight ago, which saw four top MDC-T officials axed and several others redeployed, senior party officials are reportedly stampeding into the safety of the party leader's patronage network as the premier asserts his authority in the party, ravaged by factionalism, as an elective congress beckons.

Put simply, a lot of senior officials, fearing for their positions, are trying to gain favour from Tsvangirai and those close to him, by cringing and flattering, typical of African politics.

Tsvangirai dismissed Elias Mudzuri as the Minister of Energy and Power Development and Fidelis Mhashu who had been a housing minister, along with two deputy ministers Thamsanqa Mahlangu and Evelyn Masaiti.

Mudzuri, who has been redeployed to the party's head quarters by virtue of being the MDC-T's national organising secretary, is said to have shown political ambitions to challenge Tsvangirai at the next elective congress.

While Tsvangirai has maintained that he had redeployed Mudzuri, Mhashu, Mahlangu and Masaiti to Harvest House to rejuvenate the party, there have been dissenting voices within the party who claiming the reshuffle was meant to settle political scores.

The pros and cons of his surprise reshuffle and redeployment, which to all intents and purposes has not been received well by the affected senior MDC-T officials is debatable, moreso with the latest alleged blundering by his preferred co-Minister of Home Affairs, Theresa Makone.

Makone, who replaced Giles Mutsekwa at the Home Affairs portfolio, which the MDC-T shares with ZANU-PF, stands accused of attempting to spring out of prison a relative who happens to be the son of Didymus Mutasa, the Minister of State in the President's Office and ZANU-PF's secretary for administration, barely three weeks in office.

While Makone's actions are said to have caused raucous within the top leadership of the party, kowtowing continues nonetheless as MDC-T officials scurry for cover from Tsvangirai.

Upon hearing of his demotion, one of the former MDC-T ministers allegedly trudged to Tsvangirai's suburban house in Strathaven, with his wife in tow, in desperate attempts to coax the former trade unionist to rescind his decision.

Those in the know say the premier refused to come out of his house to meet the tearful former minister who reluctantly left the premises after camping for several hours in wintry June conditions as the "shefu" stuck to his guns.

Insiders claim bootlicking and sycophancy have reached alarming proportions especially among senior party leaders unsure of "Save's" next move.

Tsvangirai is affectionately referred to as Save, his totem, by those close to him, a typical ZANU-PF favourite past time of referring to President Robert Mugabe by his totem, Gushungo.

"The behaviour taking root in the MDC-T is typical of the patronage system in African politics," said Ernest Mudzengi, a Harare-based political analyst. "It is one of those medieval practices from which Africa must be redeemed."

Mudzengi noted that when the MDC was formed in September 1999 it had among its objectives the doing away with the "destructive" politics of patronage, politics of tribal balancing and other practices deemed to generate "primitive instincts."

"It's regrettable if the MDC-T is to continue being caught in such practices. If kowtowing is, indeed, what is going on in the MDC-T, then the officials of that party are busy trying to turn the clock backwards. They cannot continue to claim to fight ZANU-PF from within the same old and retrogressive ZANU-PF cultural framework if at all they are to be a new generational political party that they should be," Mudzengi added.

Mudzengi warned that if the kowtowing continued, the MDC-T may put its agenda of attaining democratic and progressive change off track.

"It can only take us to where (former Zambian President Fredrick) Chiluba took Zambia the other time," he said in reference to alleged politics of cronyism, nepotism and patronage during Chiluba's reign in Zambia in the early 1990s.

The disgraced former Zambian leader, who is facing charges of corruption, had no qualms in rewarding loyalty and sycophancy.

Trevor Maisiri, the executive director of Africa Reform Institute and programme director of the African Leadership and Management Academy, said the mood in the MDC-T was of great concern especially where people wanted to intentionally influence their leaders to perceive them positively.

"Any leadership discharge should be based on the merit of performance and relevance to the party's agenda, strategy and intention. There is no reason why people should jostle for front-line favours merely based on their pseudo impression to their leader.

"Political leaders must be aware of the phenomena where followers can create cult-heroes out of them. Some followers will nearly always create notions of super-human status upon their leaders. Some leaders immediately get carried away and this brings about a dimension of pride and over-rated self-belief. They then amass so much power that they eventually proceed into dictatorial tendencies. There are many political leaders who have started off very well but have failed to manage the expectation and pressures of their followers and this has led them to become dictatorial," said Maisiri.

Maisiri warned that the MDC-T should not transform itself into the ZANU-PF matrix where people with any diverse voices are treated as enemies of the party.

He specifically pointed out that ZANU-PF made the mistake in the late 1980s and 1990s when people like the late Sydney Malunga, Lazarus Nzarayebani and Gibson Munyoro were treated as anti-revolutionaries when they started questioning the direction of their own party.

"In the zeal of trying to create a political lineage, ZANU-PF discouraged and suppressed such voices. To-date the party has never managed to either allow or develop any voices that are in sync with those of the side-lined challengers of the 1980's. What we have is a uniformisation of political rhetoric and discharge -- this ultimately has no sustainable value to the party.

"The MDC-T must be aware of that and ensure they do not go the same way, otherwise history will record them as a party that started well but became side-swept by the temptation of uniform rhetoric."