MDC-T, The gloves are off!

The MDC-T is characterised by unrelentingly venomous verbal clashes, leadership squabbles and general in-house hurly-burly. As many may have predicted prior to the July 31 harmonised elections, the perennial public brawling has unsurprisingly escalated, knocking the embattled party into madhouse pandemonium. Amid the confusion, the party's propensity for violence has stuck out like a sore thumb.

With its coffers now dry and clashes for the top job escalating, the chaos is reaching astonishing levels. Inside Harvest House's fortified walls, it has become a free-for-all.

As the drama unfolds, observers are watching, in near-bewilderment, as the 14-year-old political outfit totters towards disintegration. Following the crippling and morale-sapping defeat suffered at the hands of a rejuvenated Zanu-PF, the party, today, stands at a crossroads.


At the heart of the public fracas is the contentious subject of leadership renewal and injection of new ideas. This follows the party's dismal performance at the polls, epitomised by the crushing defeat handed to its leader and "face of the movement", Mr Tsvangirai, in a presidential race he was pitted against President Mugabe.

Today, the MDC-T stands divided with two heavyweight factions conspicuous by their public war of attrition. In one corner stands a faction led by party leader Mr Tsvangirai. In the other corner stands a group of senior party national executive members, code-named "renewal team", with suspended party deputy treasurer-general Mr Elton Mangoma as their public face.

Among other prominent members of the "renewal" faction are national treasurer Roy Bennett, former Marondera Central legislator Ian Kay and Warren Park National Assembly representative Engineer Elias Mudzuri. Party secretary-general Mr Tendai Biti, reportedly the brains behind the leadership renewal agitation drive, is also suspected to be a member of the faction. None of them has come out to openly state their intentions.

But it is Mr Mangoma who has led from the front. Hitherto, he has written two damning letters to Mr Tsvangirai explicitly calling for him to step down from the top job which he has held since the party's formation in 1999.

Stoking the flames, in a statement published across local media outlets, Mr Kay labelled Mr Tsvangirai a "rusty bolt" that needs to be replaced.

Furthermore, Eng Mudzuri has publicly expressed interest in taking over the reins, should the party members deem him capable. Against such a formidable team of strategists bent on unseating Mr Tsvangirai, his clearly uneasy supporters have since turned to their traditional weapon of choice: violence.

For his troubles and exertions, Mr Mangoma has been given a taste of the violence usually meted on perceived wayward members. Youths aligned to Mr Tsvangirai recently beat up Mr Mangoma at the party headquarters, reportedly at the instigation of Mr Tsvangirai.

On the day in question, Mr Biti escaped from the mob by a whisker, while youth leader Promise Mkwananzi was not so lucky, as he was clobbered.

Mr Mangoma later said Mr Tsvangirai had set him up. "He led me to the slaughter," he moaned.

"I was beaten straight in his face. He was supposed to take me to the car, but suddenly stopped when we were outside where I was beaten up. I bled and my eye-glasses were broken." Mr Tsvangirai on his part has remained mum, failing to  publicly rebuke the thugs.

But violence has a long history in the Western-sponsored party. Ex-party officials Professor Welshman Ncube, Ambassador Trudy Stevenson, Mr Toendepi Shonhe and Mr Peter Guhu have all in the past fallen victim to thugs reportedly aligned to Mr Tsvangirai.


The public spate, however, came to a head on Friday last week when Mr Tsvangirai reportedly cajoled the MDC-T national council into suspending Mr Mangoma from the party. But just as party spokesperson Mr Douglas Mwonzora was announcing the suspension at Harvest House, Mr Biti was busy organising his own Press briefing where he later rebuffed the suspension, much to the chagrin of Mr Tsvangirai and his coterie of hangers-on.

"The national council says they have suspended Mangoma, but clearly it's a voidable decision," Mr Biti told journalists at a Press conference held at his law offices.

But it has been the reaction of the party's traditional financiers, the West, to the ongoing infighting that has been utterly revealing. Their public condemnation of the party and, indeed, Mr Tsvangirai, was instructive. The statements left very little to the imagination as they tore into Mr Tsvangirai's leadership style and propensity for violence. The statements insinuated that the MDC-T leadership was acting in an uncivilised manner.

In his statement last Monday, Australia's Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mr Matthew Nieuhaus, expressed "deep dismay" at the escalating violence in the MDC-T.

The United States Embassy added: "We condemn such acts of violence which have no place in modern political discourse. We enjoin all parties to respect the rule of law, freedom of assembly and the right to free speech, which should be the hallmarks of a modern, democratic Zimbabwe."

The European Union, through its chief diplomat here, Mr Aldo Dell'Arriccia, said, "there should be healthy democratic processes in each party".

The development laid bare the West's loss of confidence in Mr Tsvangirai as leader of their regime change project.

Without the support of the West, Mr Tsvangirai is a lame duck. To put matters into perspective, one needs to look back at the events preceding last year's election.

Back then, a flurry of Western-funded opinion polls predicted a crushing defeat for the MDC-T. Having foreseen the impending disaster, the West began the process of abandoning their cohort.

In fact, the West began making manoeuvres towards engaging with Zanu-PF. The funding conduit was hastily short-circuited, cutting off Western support.

Clearly, the monumental fallout has been partly fuelled by the empty piggy bank at Harvest House. The stubborn refusal to embrace calls for leadership renewal has degenerated into open war.

Life has become tough for a party whose entire life has been punctuated by unrestrained dipping into the seemingly bottomless pockets of London, Washington and Brussels. But now, in the wake of the public dressing down of Mr Tsvangirai and his supporters by their chief allies, it is clear that the West has now placed its confidence in the "renewal team". The West has grown weary of Mr Tsvangirai's endless bungling and perennial inability to win elections despite being endowed with a multi-million-dollar largesse. For the observant eye, the West is behind the "renewal" agitation.

Whichever way you look at it, Western governments have begun the search for alternatives to Tsvangirai.

They are, no doubt, hoping to push this through senior officials such as Mr Biti and Mr Mangoma who have some gravitas in the internal party machinery.

Despite having a few local faces at the forefront, the "renewal" agenda is not and will never be a local project, just like the party itself. It is all about the West finding a new puppet. With the West having turned its back on Mr Tsvangirai, many were surprised last week when he, for the first time, took the begging bowl to his remaining clique of supporters. Mr Tsvangirai's world has plummeted to a sad case of "dollar-for-two".

"If you are a proud people, underwrite your own struggle. Contribute 50c or a dollar as you do in church," he pleaded with his supporters last week at rally in Harare's Budiriro suburb. With the majority of remaining supporters either unemployed or unemployable, his plea is doomed. It is really a non-starter.

In any case, what guarantee is there that the money will not be directed towards his funding yet another cruise on the Legend of the Seas? Another interesting slant in the ongoing haggling is how the party has sought to shield itself from being blamed for the violence. True to character, the party has stuck to its traditional "blame-it-all-on-Zanu-PF" mantra.

Following the violence that rocked Harvest House last month, the party was quick to apportion the blame on State security agents.

"We have been infiltrated," they moaned. But where does the Central Intelligence Organisation come in in all this? Where does Zanu-PF come in?

Surely, Zanu-PF has more pressing issues to deal with such as implementing its election promises than expend energy on a party that, like a poorly-baked loaf of bread, is crumbling in the hands before even reaching the mouth. Herald columnist Nathaniel Manheru would say, "kupfupfunyuka chaiko, kuita zvidimbu, zvidimbu." Crumbling writ large!

Party officials would be well advised to desist from the blame game. Instead of blaming others at this time, a dose of self-introspection would do them no harm at all.

To further compound Mr Tsvangirai's predicament, Western-funded local and international media outlets, which have previously viciously defended him and his party, all seem to have abandoned ship.

"MDC-T penniless, ditched by donors," read a headline on New Zimbabwe.com last week. "Daggers drawn in the MDC-T," a local newspaper screamed.

Now with Mr Biti, Mr Mangoma, Mr Bennett and Mr Kay all gone, Mr Tsvangirai has lost both the money and brains behind the project. What remains is a group of hero-worshipping sympathisers and bootlickers.

A bit of comic relief was added to the whole saga when in a brazen and ill-fated attempt to shield his boss party, organising secretary Mr Nelson Chamisa sensationally told a sparse crowd gathered for the rally in Budiriro that Mr Tsvangirai was anointed by God to lead the struggle for democracy. "You can't replace a person chosen by God," he quipped, as if bootlicking has become a profession.

But with time, as history has taught us, sympathisers and bootlickers will walk away.

And when they finally leave, Mr Tsvangirai is certain to become a closed chapter in the history of puppetry opposition politics in Zimbabwe. When Prof Lovemore Madhuku foresaw the impending July 31 mauling, he was quick to jump ship and announce that he would form his own party after the elections. Boy oh boy was he right!

Now he has a sizeable pool of opposition supporters to choose from. A case of miracle politics? Probably!

But surely, can it get any worse for Mr Tsvangirai? As the time-bomb continues to tick, one need not be fooled that Elizabeth is done with him. That circus is only on recess.

When The Sunday Mail wrote about Project 2016, some dismissed it as cheap propaganda. Well, well . . . now that the chickens have come home to roost, who has the last laugh?