Zanu-PF: Clearing the crowded deck

Before I get into matters of the week, my humble acknowledgement to one of my alert readers. Two weeks ago I mistakenly suggested that the late Zanu-Ndonga leader, Ndabaningi Sithole, sought and got through Ian Smith's Ken Flower-led CIO money from the CIA to support his electoral fight against the Patriotic Front in the watershed 1979 elections.

The alert reader corrected me through the Herald that in fact, the CIA money which Sithole got through Morocco's late King Hassan was meant to help him fight the bogus Internal Settlement elections which pitted him against Bishop Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa, and which the bad bishop went on to win, all to give us the shortest, surnamed country that ever lived in human history, Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.

I am truly grateful for the correction, and do repeat it here for the sake of our relatively young readers who, of course, include Luke Tamborinyoka.

The reader also went on to put into perspective the Rhodesian massacre of Sithole's Uganda-trained forces. Incidentally I had a hilarious exchange with a senior

MDC-T official whose identity I may not disclose since he did not give me an express say-so do so.

Giggling between loud puffs of dreary-grey smoke, he noted, barely audibly: "Manheru, you miss the point.

"It's not about who Ndaba was, or might be in history. It is about getting the Ndonga vote, whatever its colour, whatever its smell or stench.

"And you won't believe it, the Ndonga people now say: 'Tinobeke paMDC-Ndongapo!'"

Quite a loaded brag which Zanu-PF might well take note of! But that is by the by.

The flick of a juvenile finger
Do those little boys think a whole 88-year-old works the night away, works the morning in, to have the results of such exertions flicked away with the small finger of a juvenile just like that?

And the old man did not have just one wakeful night, one wakeful morning. He endured several, likely to be topped by a whole Saturday - this Saturday - so hard in coming, a Saturday better spent tending to his wheat crop, than on another Politburo caucus. Admittedly unlike us he no longer chases girls, no longer frequents centres of fun and pleasure - those sybaritic founts which Tendai Biti, himself one of the finger-flicking juveniles, ruefully misses.

But he has weighty matters to contemplate, an eventful life to digest, encompass and record, indeed too prickly, too powerful a set of foreign enemies to be detracted by wild carnal cravings. All these, all that he sets aside to look through a document Zimbabwe aspires to turn into a constitution, aspiring against outward fact, even hoping beyond the bounds of scarce possibilities.

Underestimating smouldering fire
And the exercise is painfully surgical, giving us a whole raft of changes which three little boys - Welshman Ncube, Tendai Biti and Douglas Mwonzora - pretending to be mature leaders, parody and dismiss with a frivolous flicker. For goodness' sake, this is the President of Zimbabwe, far more than the president of Zanu-PF. For goodness' sake this is a Hero of a founding war of this nation, never some little tribal upstart from a law school, from some decrepit law firm. Old boys don't stay away from demanding chores for the hack of it.

I wish someone who knows could tell those little boys and their little parties.

The phrase that curdles the blood
I notice the Sadc leadership in Maputo quickly picked the cue. When Robert Mugabe speaks slowly, often pronouncedly in between beguilingly decorous gaps - in reality gasps from choking anger - people of better instinct are quick to pick a subtext of metallic warning. They quickly back off.

Ask Carrington. At Maputo, the line was drawn, and Sadc now knows where the angels stopped, all in advisable fear. And no one should plead ignorance.

There is much that warns in the whole scenario about to play itself up, and eventually out. Far more critical than the parodying summary of Zanu-PF changes we get from the embittered Welshman Ncube is one that recurs, recurs and recurs, its wording curiously connecting to some address given some years ago by the CDF then, the late General Zvinavashe. I repeat the recurring phrase for the benefit of the three juveniles: "upholding the goals and ideals of the liberation struggle."

Re-read the amendments young men, and just weigh both the placement and importance of that not-so-long, not so unobtrusive phrase, in the scheme of the changes proposed.

Much more, quietly ask yourself about the paternity of that phrase: the loins that sired it, the mouth that uttered it, the colour of the garb that it wears.

After it all that, then feel and check your hairy armpits, to see if no beads of sweat course down from that smelly cavernous deep, right through to your un-virtuous hip line. Very cold sweat.

The story of one Falstaff
If there is none, then you are valiant and thus only too ready to embrace a stupid fate, heroically. If your finger slides with ease, because of oozing, percolating cold wetness, then you are instinctively wise, sure to flee a stupid fate, and fast enough to tell the story afterwards. The human impulse is to be heroic, if anything, foolhardy.

We crave for loud cheers for doing the impossible, but simply forgetting better cheers come when you brave the impossible to glorious ends.

Or when you summon commonsense to avoid needless danger, all for a worthwhile sacrifice that might need you in future. Shakespeare's Hotspur and Glendower had the martial honour so worshipfully regarded in the era of chivalry.

But it was his Falstaff - the jester - who had the life in the end, who had the life so wastefully sacrificed to demands of foolish honour.

And I always remember Falstaff's most poignant lines as he prosaically philosophised and queried this pursuit of life-denying honour: "Who hath it (honour)?/ He that died a-Wednesday!/ Doth he feel it?/ No!/ Doth he hear it?/No!/ Doth he eat it?/ No!"

"What good is it then," Falstaff asks himself, well in hiding from a fight at a cruel battlefront.

I will none of it!
Unlike his honour-craving peers, he had carried a bottle of wine hidden in a scabbard, which should have sheathed a sword of war. In between philosophical ejaculations, he took large draughts of ale, undistracted by cries of the heroically dying.

He took one long pull of draught amidst cries of perishing battle heroes. Well slacked and emitting fumes of rich ale, he cryptically concludes: "I will none of it (honor)!" Soon after, he goes back to his bottle, emptying it. Too drunk to march against the enemy, and therefore too drunk to die, he is eventually stumbled upon by his regal friend, Prince Hal, well after the battle, well after danger therefore - dead drunk. But alive all the same, infinitely better than the dead heroes.

Why are these boys arguing like they are the people for whom the draft is meant?

Surely the people know what they want, what they must defend, whether through acceptance or by rejection? And as Welshman works himself into a frenzy, he is beginning to believe himself as the people, in which case what is distasteful to him is unpalatable to the people! And he does so in a very undignified and self-contradictory manner.

He hopes to fight his failed elevation to a principal through boycotts of any discussions and decisions taken by the principals. The constitutional amendments of Zanu-PF are one such matter.

Why is he taking notice? Why is he responding faster, earlier than any principal? And through expletives that are hardly professorial? Correctly one of the readers has challenged him to place the proposed amendments on the table so readers can weigh them.

That is how out of tune he is. And this is one war he has lost before the first battle, a war of no heroic deeds, no glorious ends.

Within the national-popular
I don't mean to intimidate anyone. The affinity between the phrase which Zanu-PF wants to pervade the draft, and the much quoted but least comprehended Zvinavashe address, does not suggest the boys in uniform gave the amendments to Zanu-PF.

They never did; they never do. From the days of the liberation struggle, the philosophy has always been clear: politics lead the gun. It is a maxim that has become a second instinct in the military, so let no one make easy conclusions, false incriminations.

But the full import of this should never be lost.
Simply, it means Zanu-PF has taken a position, and those who know and understand it, will tell you to look elsewhere for concessions. It will not budge.

And budge it won't, with the two MDCs taking all the blame for it. Its proposed changes have marked appeal to constituencies which matter, outflank those which don't but which might be a menace numerically.  They give it high moral ground, while placing it firmly within the national-popular.

They also re-centre the liberation discourse for electoral purposes. If the MDCs strategy was to de-escalate the liberation theme, this does it, helped by their foolish wish to resurrect Sithole's sorcery.

Keeping within the enchanted perimeter
What the constitution-making process has done is to show Zanu-PF that the ethos it brought about through so much sacrifice by way of the liberation struggle, can very easily be snuffed out in the name of constitutionalism.

What the constitution-making process has done is to show Zanu-PF that the brains it liberated and made, brick by brick, through its much hailed education miracle, have been bought over, have now become a veritable threat to the very legacy of the liberation struggle. It is a rude awakening by a party which mistakenly believed that the more than three years in the Inclusive Government was long enough to break the cords that fasten these parties to the coattails of the West and its interests.

The whole process clearly showed that long after the tether is broken; the opposition horse still keeps within the enchanted perimeter of imperial interests, dazed.

And does so not just needlessly, but absurdly too.

Same circumstances, contrasting responses
Why, for instance, would any thinking person or party use the UNDP to usher a South African Indian constitutional drafter into our process, all in the name of experience garnered in drafting the current South African constitution? All in the name of best practices? Why?

The South Africans are hardly at ease with that piece of bad paper, in fact daily complain of inhibitions to social change caused by it, hourly point out its inadequacies in handling the sorely needed post-apartheid  transformation and, as the tragedy of Marikana amply shows, utterly fails - induced and seduced by the sacrosanct interests of capital - to protect life it so loudly proclaims to be sacred.

That document never stopped bullets flying the way common sense and pro-poor use of the law prevented Zanu-PF from deploying against the war veterans in 2000 in comparable circumstances, and against comparable calls from the colonial white bourgeoisie.

Admiring a man in chains
Is the South African constitution an exemplum, or a mere example? Certainly not an exemplum, going by the building revilement of it by South Africa's hard-pressed poor.

Definitely an example of how constitutionalism can and often is a potent tool in the hands of a dying colonialism as it seeks frantically for openings for rearguard, self-redeeming action.

We ourselves saw it at Lancaster, and will only be foolish to aspire for a hamstringing South African constitutional look-alike, a good 32 years after Lancaster!

And what we had at Lancaster was hardly a fraction as handicapping as what South Africa "negotiated" and got.

Yet we felt those few entrenched clauses eat deep into the flesh of our just social aspirations. Much more, we have no reason to admire the other man's handicap, however neighbourly he may be as a victim, however handsome he might appear to be in those chains to those looking at him from afar.

Size, cloth, scissors, good hand
Quite the contrary, we seek to help free him, by force of example, at the very least. Quite the contrary, we ourselves earned the space for a better negotiated outcome at Lancaster, earned it through hard battle, hard victory, which is why our lot is better, outside the efforts of these juveniles seeking to re-chain us.

Lancaster was a truce, a British way of breaking the final, decisive siege to British kith and kin, all to avert a from-bush-to-office, winner-takes-all triumphalist scenario that loomed large and inevitable. By 1979, Rhodesia was encircled. By contrast, in 1994, apartheid was still strong militarily, although badly mauled diplomatically.

Codesa was an accommodative compromise, one that pitted apartheid against an ANC whose quick in the struggle was also the chink in its very armour, namely a worldwide, all-embracing, all-causes, all-races, all-classes, struggle which by 1994 morphed into a compendium of many colours of a rainbow: beautiful to the eye, distinct and separately demanding on the negotiating table.

Much worse, the colour of the downtrodden - black - was not, could not be, on the rainbow. The ANC needed an all-sizes cloth; we wanted cloth, we wanted a pair of scissors, we needed good hands.

Empowerment or power?
Much worse, Zanu-PF watched with consternation as formations so quick to make a case for the empowerment of tribes and regions, were so stridently agitating against the empowerment of a people within which those same tribes and regions fall or belong to.

To those who support the MDC formations, a good number of them often incited and paid to rubbish this column, could they assist me by simply answering this one.

Just how does a Welshman Ncube who agitates for the empowerment of "Ndebeles" and "people" of "this region", referring to the Southern region, a Welshman seeking their empowerment through devolution, fail on same grounds of reasoning and sensibility, to defend and demand empowerment of the indigenous people of Zimbabwe, of which the Ndebeles are a mosaic part?

Or to reconcile his narrow interpretation of empowerment with his studiously furious defence of an Essar seeking to carve mining interests in his home province/region of Midlands, at the ownership expense of Midlanders?

Straining his heart, so stretching his veins to thrombosis-inducing limits? Is the issue one of empowerment or the search for personal power?

Muddying waters
Similarly, how does a Tendai Biti so militantly indisposed to the Chinese Anjin on grounds that it is filching national wealth, remain the secretary general of a party that opposes the across-the-board restructuring of ownership of mines to empower locals?

Or to reconcile this seemingly nationalistic sentiment with his party's treacherous jobs-for-natives un-sweet policy sarcastically called "JUICE"?

If the native deserves a job, who deserves ownership? Anjin? DeBeers? Bennett?

How does such seemingly higher national consciousness succumb to the feudal and genocide language of a "de-Zezurunising" campaign?

Is the purpose constitution-making or muddying local waters for imperialism?

"Present, Sir", says CAZ
In the case of Welshman Ncube he must by now know that his call for parochial politics has drawn a good response from curious quarters.

If he cares to surf the Internet he shall come across an eloquent piece from one Gerald Smith?

Remember him? Maybe not. Well, Gerald Smith was the last leader of the now moribund Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe, CAZ for short.

And those who remember their history will know that CAZ was the other name for Ian Smith's Rhodesia Front, RF for short, in post-independence circumstances.

Gerald Smith's aim is a very simple one, namely to make a case for cessation of Matabeleland.

His thesis is equally simple but fundamentally simplistic: the Ndebeles were an independent state before their break-up by the BSA Company in 1893 and later, in 1896.

Their demand to secede is thus rooted in history and must be acceded to as legitimate, he concludes. Mere coincidence? A case of causality? Of complicity? Which "c"?

Or has Ncube caused (another "c"!) the resurgence of a dying Rhodesia?

Raising mhepo, as we say in Shona?

Link this up with the dying Bennett's bitter rhetoric; link it up with whole crowd of Rhodesians who have been quietly trooping back, link all that with the constitutional clause on devolution and citizenship, and then a whole sinister snout comes into view to betray a Rhodesian man-eater lurking beneath.

Devolution and Rhodesian aspirations

Let us clinch the points.
The constitution-making process has revealed a sinister come-back on the part of the West, docking on the Rhodesian front, Rhodesian waterfront. On the land, the Trojan horse is made up of the two MDCs, which Zanu-PF mistakenly thought it had excised from those vested interests.

And there is a new, dangerous twist to these interests' quest to oust Zanu-PF, the interests' quest to regain control of the affairs of our country.

With the MDCs proving an unviable vehicle for supplanting Zanu-PF, whether singly, in alliance with each other, or in alliance with a putschists within Zanu-PF itself, the West's take on Zimbabwe has now taken a dangerous turn of seeking to break it up as a unitary state. The crude precursor to this at Independence was the

Betrand affair where some white lone ranger sought to create and lead a breakaway of the southern regions!

This is how the two MDCs' fascination with the devolution clause should be read. The constitution-making process thus presents clear dangers to the Republic, dangers which have actuated Zanu-PF to draw the line in this definitive way.

Playful with national destiny
Zanu-PF which has been so recklessly playfully with the destiny of the nation, has now woken up to its responsibilities.

It did not have to wait for 32 years to implot the liberation ethos in the body-politic for permanence. It did not have to behave as if its durance in government was timeless. What needs to be timeless is the pervasive endurance of its ethos well embedded in the State.

And the Constitution falls within that permanent realm of the State, that realm of accretive continuity on which every successor generation, once it makes a worthwhile breakthrough, writes it. Zanu-PF has been desultory about it, even creating a vacuum which the Rhodesians, using the two MDCs, were about to fill.

From that angle, the two MDCs have stung Zanu-PF from its deep slumber. One wants to see the pervasive references to land and the liberation ethos from that angle.

Using a hung rule for white interests
Secondly, the two MDCs, through their leading legal minds in fact are correct to say that Zanu-PF has chewed the whole draft. But not in the parodying sense that Ncube itemises, that Biti pooh poohs those amendments, or in the sense that Mwonzora least comprehends beyond the unthinking mantra of "no re-negotiations".

Three quarters of the things Ncube itemises don't matter at all, least of all to his handlers who are also the handlers of the other MDC.

Their value is that of mere nuisance multipliers.
At the core of the whole matter are the following core issues: the land clause which is at the core of Rhodesian interests; the citizenship clause which Rhodesians need put right so they can ride on citizenship status in order to demand the land back with a good measure of legitimacy; the empowerment and ownership clauses which western capital want removed to retain and expand own interests; the secession a.k.a. devolution clause which both white interests may eventually need, of they are to weaken the nationalistic State should all else fail.

And you notice that this last clause works closely with clauses that disperse executive powers to give us the curse of hung rule.

And you notice that when it comes to these core interests of the white world, the superficial differences of the two formations are shunted aside.

Now that minimum conditions already exist
My last point seeks to explain what may appear a baffling paradox in the whole matter, but one which, if well grasped, fortifies the above argument.

It comes by way of a very simple question: if the MDC factions, whether jointly or singly, are set to win elections, why would they worry about issues of executive powers, issues of devolution? Simply you endure the short life of these clauses the way Zanu-PF endured the entrenched clauses at Lancaster House if you are sure the next elections are yours.

Then you use both time and control to expurgate them from the constitution! The critical issue is to ensure that minimum conditions for your electoral victory exist, again as did Zanu-PF in 1979. And judging by Ncube's declaration that let the chips fall where they will, it would appear that indeed conditions guaranteed by the present constitution are sufficient for that purpose.

Let us not forget that both Ncube and Biti confirmed through wide-ranging interviews with The Sunday Mail that amendments 17, 18 and 19 were largely meant to level the electoral playing field, and that they were done by the three parties.

In which case the draft constitution is in fact dispensable! I also notice that MDC-T people are slowly coming to the same conclusion: that this whole matter on constitutionalism has been a gigantic distraction for a people grappling with matters of poverty, food, soaring prices and unemployment.

I thought that has always been the argument of this column, namely to locate the constitutional debate within quiver of our petit bourgeoisie? Welcome home guys!

No cheer from an enemy
Why would the about-to-rule MDC pick a fight over excessive constitutional powers which the foolish, about-to-lose (Zanu-PF, without good foresight of its looming status as the new opposition, is piling up for the successor MDC, is piling up for it to be effectively governed while in opposition?

A-haaa, therein lies the real matter.
The MDCs know they wield no chance in hell for ever winning the next elections. That is why they have negotiated for this whole constitution like subjects beseeching for some constitutionally mandated polite rule they know is set to follow.

They have been seeking for oppositional space, for a place in the opposition sun. And when they seek more, ask for more, it hasn't been for themselves; it has been for their handlers, which is why, just like the 2000 draft, it shall be just one draft clause on land and subsoil interests which shall drown the whole effort.

And as with 2000 again, Zanu-PF shall, after winning, do more patchwork on Lancaster, to ensure those radical clauses it wants salvaged from the 2012 draft, are incorporated.

You understand this despairing fact of an MDC electoral loss, and then you understand their seemingly paradoxical stance on the constitution.

And maybe Freedom House's latest opinion poll which Zanu-PF must take no notice of, has laid matters bare for the MDC formations. I repeat: opinion poll results which Zanu-PF must take no notice of. Zanu-PF does not need to be cheered by the enemy.

It must continue clearing the deck which has so much rabble, which is so crowded. After all its goal in the next poll is not merely to teach the two MDCs a lesson; it is to tame the West forever.  And only a controversy-free, emphatic win does that.

Icho!

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