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Mugabe is always five or so steps ahead of his rivals

by Staff reporter
01 Apr 2013 at 18:41hrs | Views
ZIMBABWE will go to the polls this year with the presidential election likely to be a fierce two-horse race between President Robert Mugabe and MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Other presidential hopefuls will be MDC leader Welshman Ncube, Mavambo/Kusile/Dawn interim president Simba Makoni and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara.

NewsDay editor Constantine Chimakure recently spoke to three political analysts on the weaknesses and strengths of the presidential hopefuls.

Below are edited versions of the interviews with Habakkuk Trust chief executive officer Dumisani Nkomo, former University of Zimbabwe (UZ) political science lecturer Brian Ngwenya and UZ political science department head Charity Manyeruke.

Dumisani Nkomo
President Robert Mugabe - He is a charismatic politician, mettle for ruthlessness and resolve. For better or worse, he is a decisive leader.

At the moment his two major weaknesses are the past and the future. He has personified the Zimbabwean economic and political crisis and has become the face of Zimbabwe's ruin. He does not have age on his side and it is difficult to imagine Zimbabweans voting for an 89-year-old.

He is, however, still surprisingly strong and has over the years perfected his political shrewdness within Zanu-PF and over foes such as Joshua Nkomo (in the 1980s) and Tsvangirai, his company of late.

Mugabe can read events and is always five or so steps ahead of his rivals, thriving on melodrama, political theatre and the unexpected.

He is incredibly charming, thus mesmerising those who have regular encounters with him who can't reconcile the Mugabe they read about with the Mugabe they meet.

He is immensely charismatic, knows what people want him as an obedient pupil of NiccolÃ’ Machiavelli who knows when to use force and when to use deception or political side steeping.

Well acquainted with international politics and uses pan-Africanism to blind many. He is a capable statesman and intellectual. He should never be under-estimated as he is capable of extremes of any nature.

Mugabe knows how to identify and use talent and energy be it Gideon Gono, Jonathan Moyo, the late Border Gezi, the late Chenjeri Hunzvi or Jabulani Sibanda. He is consistent even when he is wrong.

At the moment he is Zanu-PF's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. He is the reason why the MDCs are strong because he is associated with Zimbabwe's failures.

One gets the impression that he may be getting soft to save his legacy, but all things are possible with him.

The biggest mistake his opponents have made, right from Joshua Nkomo to Tsvangirai, is under estimating him. He is a political craftsman of the first degree who will do anything to achieve his objectives, conquest and retention of power.

Morgan Tsvangirai - His major strength is his currency and brand as the only person who has been able to challenge and defeat Mugabe in an election. He is quite charismatic, especially with grassroots communities and is able to identify with the day to day issues that affect people. He is the kind of person that people can associate with as being part of them. He has managed to recruit a team of credible advisors.

His major drawback is his perennial inconsistency and apparent inability to make up his mind on key issues as evidenced by his oscillation on issues pertaining to the draft constitution, devolution and homosexuality, among other things.

Tsvangirai also appears prone to tactical blunders as evidenced by his decision to seemingly back Arthur Mutambara and Mugabe ahead of Welshman Ncube when it is apparent that he will need Ncube more than Mugabe or Mutambara, especially around the crucial issue of him possibly seeking backing as the prime candidate to challenge Mugabe in the elections.

He appears undecided on issues of internal violence which was unearthed within the party. This is accentuated by perceptions that he is not his own man, but is run by the so-called kitchen cabinet.
I seriously doubt that his personal indiscretions around the issue of women will seriously affect his election bid or credibility as many men, including many that have drawn daggers against him, are guilty of the same.

Like a tragic hero in a Shakespearean tragedy, Tsvangirai has heroic characteristics such as courage and pliability, but at the same time he possesses characteristics which may be detrimental to him, his party and the country.

Welshman Ncube - Ncube is a brilliant administrator, negotiator and possesses tremendous legal acumen. He has managed to transform himself from a cold, detached and sometimes arrogant law professor to a people's man.

But he too has his fair share of weaknesses. While he clearly lacks the charisma of Mugabe, Tsvangirai, Joshua Nkomo, Martin Luther King and Barack Obama, he compensates with content and substance.

He possesses astounding intellectual weight and negotiation skills and was credited with major victories in the 2008 negotiations which culminated in the Global Political Agreement. He has also been credited with impressive displays at Sadc platforms.

His strengths are at times eclipsed by character flaws such as a propensity to be overly legalistic and technical which may have made him unpopular in the united MDC when he was secretary-general.
Ncube needs to work on social and emotional intelligence since academic intelligence may not be enough in politics.

His personal differences with Tsvangirai at times cloud his judgment.
He has the unfortunate burden of being templated and unfairly perceived as a sell-out. This tag seems to have stuck for years after the split with little evidence to the opposite.

Ncube should work on his diplomatic skills so that he is able to win back some of his colleagues. He appears to have been too harsh and impervious to some, resulting in quite a number of his supporters defecting to the MDC-T, especially MPs.

He has done well in the government and transformed his party after it was decimated by Mutambara. His lack of charisma will cost him in the last leg of political campaigns.

Simba Makoni – He is a brilliant leader who unfortunately has lost out completely on his chances of becoming President due to some serious political miscalculations.

He emerged as a dark horse in the last elections, but his failure to read the political mood when he failed to clearly politically attack Mugabe cost him dearly as he was perceived as a Zanu-PF project.

Many will not forgive him for wasting their time in the Mavambo project and possibly the splitting of votes in the presidential elections, although some claim that Makoni divided the Zanu-PF vote.

Be that as it may, most people still wonder whether he will ever resurface seeing that his quietness has clearly damaged his political reputation and character as a consistent leader may thus be questionable.

Makoni suffers from arrogance, but definitely has immense experience having worked for Sadc, in the corporate sector and elsewhere. In a normal context, he would be presidential material. He is out of contention in the next elections.

Charity Manyeruke
Tsvangirai – He is weak on policy and not innovative. He anchors on protest politics, unfortunately.

Mugabe - He is principled, consistent, well cultured and rooted in the revolution.

Makoni - He is not visible at the grassroots. His party is organisationally weak. He is an eloquent speaker.

Mutambara – He does not have a constituency. His advantage is that he has been exposed to higher leadership levels at a young age.

Brian Ngwenya
Mugabe - Having been at the helm for more than three decades, Mugabe has unrivalled knowledge of governmental systems through deliberately blurring the differences between party, the government and the State.

Significant sections of the State and government institutions help his cause. He has maintained support of many revolutionaries, conservatives and reactionaries.

Empowerment policies and new talk of peaceful politics may win him more hearts.

At 89 years old, many, including some in his own party, are not confident of giving him another term in office. His party and previous governments have also been blamed for Zimbabwe's hardships.
His party received little sympathy for stalling as well as thwarting democratic transition processes.

Tsvangirai - He is a paragon of Zimbabwe's democratic struggle. He is widely regarded as Mugabe's most resilient challenger since independence whose struggle has seen him receive a near-cultic following across Zimbabwe's ethnic divisions.

He rides upon the promises to offer alternative policies, political culture and non-democratic tendencies and leadership debaucheries exhibited by the previous Zanu-PF governments.

In spite of efforts to purge his party through fighting corruption, party factions and personality clashes in different sections of the party riles centrists, perfectionists while presenting smudge-tactic politicians and opportunists with damaging ammunition.

His presence in the government has also been both short and reined in denying him full advantages enjoyed by incumbents. He also has to work through the tide of the negative publicity on his social life at the hands of the media.

Many believe his efforts for a better Zimbabwe can only be fully rewarded by giving him a chance to rule the country.
Makoni - An astute academic who has an impressive dossier after working in world and regional financial institutions and Zimbabwe's Finance ministry.

He has featured less prominently in the mud-sling politics of Zimbabwe since 2000.

He has had a stubborn tag which continues to associate him with Zanu-PF, which continues to haunt him.

His exclusion from the Government of National Unity has not helped his cause, throwing him and his party into near-oblivion during the last four years.

Ncube - A formidable politician respected by many for his academic background and by people in the Western parts of the country for clamouring for the interests of the people from that region. He has scored points for swinging pro-democracy decisions in the Legislature and Cabinet, as well as the democratic tendencies in his own party, as seen by the leadership changes in his party.

Despite efforts to prove the contrary, his politics is seen to be elitist, while having an ethnic rather than national outlook.


Source - newsday