MDC political school not a Border Gezi school

THE cat is out of the bag -- the MDC launched its political school on Friday, August 27, 2011, and this is a reality.

It is a first of its kind and as usual, it is bound to attract a lot of criticism from both the genuinely inquisitive and those who do not want to accept the actual existence and strength of the MDC.

Unfortunately, the power matrix of the world is transforming swiftly day by day. Yesterday the mighty in both local societies and global politics were those who owned the best of arms. The world today and tomorrow is run by those with the unending capacity to develop ground breaking ideas.

For those who are incapable of designing competitive and ground breaking programmes, the only political tool they have is mythology and the opponents of the MDC have not disappointed in that regard.

One such myth is that the MDC political school is a replica of the National Youth Service training introduced by the late former Youth Minister Border Gezi. This is quite interesting because in our view as MDC, there is no need for a second Border Gezi programme given the fact that there is an existing one that continues to needlessly suck the tax payers of their hard earned money.

The Border Gezi programme was designed to build a reserve if not a more youthful Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association and the current activities of graduates of that programme, if properly contrasted with the behaviour of members of ZNLWVA at its peak, will clearly show the grand plan behind it.

While the MDC Political School is a leadership development programme aimed at strengthening young people's understanding of eleven key leadership concepts namely National Heritage; Party Heritage; Contemporary Politics; Understanding Ideologies; Systems of Government; Policy Studies; Lobbying and Advocacy; Professional Ethics; National Administration; Electoral Systems and Strategies and Youth-Adult Relations, the Border Gezi programme has produced nothing but thousands of sezvazviri kind of politicians.

It is public knowledge that during the new constitution outreach programme, Zanu PF had commandeered all its surrogates who include Border Gezi graduates to throng the meeting points but unfortunately there is nothing they could say in those meetings except their sezvazviri anthem. Clearly, those who have been vouching for budgetary allocation for that programme since its inception must be ashamed of the output of such investments.

The Border Gezi programme has been nothing but Zanu PF's bottomless bank of currency for political tokenism and this is proven by the fact that not even a single graduate of that process has been trusted enough by Zanu PF to make them just a Member of Parliament.

The MDC Political School aims at developing a new brand of leaders who understand political systems and trends and are capable of being trusted with real national responsibility. To a certain extent, it is a response to the inadequacies of the Border Gezi programme and the lack of seriousness in youth leadership development by the concerned ministry. It is for these reasons that we have invited every Zimbabwean to be part of this ground breaking programme.

To conclude about the Border Gezi myth, it is prudent to note that while the Border Gezi programme has been run in a hugely opaque system only paralleled by the secret societies of the Middle East and Europe, the MDC political school has a clear curriculum which was released for public view from the very day of its launch. Thirteen years after its inception, there is no single document available on Google or anywhere outside Zanu PF that can speak to the disciplines taught at the Border Gezi camps. all of us are then left with the behaviour of the products of such a process to imagine what they are taught.

The second myth relates to the outlook of the programme and again some mischievous and tribalistic elements are back into their game. Analysis and comments have been made insinuating that because the programme was launched in Bulawayo, it is therefore not a national programme.

It is naivety of highest order to conclude that if a programme is launched from Bulawayo it is not a national programme and it is high time the media begins to disabuse people by refraining from such analysis.

In terms of both the speeches made at the launch and the press release made soon after, it was clearly spelt out that Bulawayo is going to be the host of the Summer School to be held from September 2011 to February 2012 while the Winter school is going to be held in yet another province which will be determined by the National Structures of both the MDC and the MDC Youth Assembly.

In all these schools or campuses, the presenters shall be party leaders and/or persons selected from within each locality, and it should not therefore surprise anyone that our presenters in the Summer School are all residents of Bulawayo or at least the neighbouring rural areas.

The MDC Youth Assembly is a National Organisation with leaders and structures from all over the country and will have any of its programmes begin in any of the country's provinces. We are a movement that believes in celebrating human diversity and upholding the equality of us all.

It must also be mentioned that unlike in other parties where youths cannot decide the outlook of the programmes that respond to their needs, the Political School is a project initiated and administered by the Youth Assembly. Not even President Welshman Ncube was involved in the design of the programme. The only time we will have members from the main and Women's Assemblies come in is when we need that guidance which will help us in terms of institutionalising such brilliant ideas.

I raise this because some have been arguing that while the programme might look good, the problem with it is that it has been imposed on MDC Youths by someone. We swallow that insult to the wisdom of our department of Training and Political Education.

Let all and sundry find space in their conscience to accommodate the fact that as we continue under the inspiring leadership of Chairman Gideon Mandaza, the MDC Youth Assembly shall continue to break new grounds and tread towards the promised land.

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Discent Bajila is the Secretary General of the Youth Assembly of the MDC party led by Welshman Ncube