Opposition Politics in Zimbabwe, 1999 - 2024: An Obituary

Advocate Nelson Chamisa's capitulation last week at the behest of the fifth column led by Sengezo Tshabangu was the final nail in opposition politics in Zimbabwe. Armed with state institutions and exploiting loopholes and ambiguities in CCC, Sengezo Tshabangu has been the undertaker leading the opposition to its political graveyard. After last year's electoral defeat, the opposition was on the edge of a precipice. Tshabangu and his co-conspirators gave the knockout punch. ZANU-PF is on its way to usurping a two-thirds majority in parliament. Even before then, under the current political configuration, Zimbabwe is officially a one-party state.

The demise of the opposition has long been in the offing. Given a tumultuous two-decade existence, its epitaph is long and complex. For the scope of this piece, I will first present a case that opposition politics in Zimbabwe has reached a dead end, then I will give a forensic autopsy of the opposition cadaver and conclude with a prognosis of what lies ahead.

Recurring problems
Born in 1999, the Movement for Democratic Change then led by the late Morgan Tsvangirai was the first organized and vibrant political opposition to seriously threaten the ruling Zanu-pf. The MDC stood as a democratic alternative when the late Robert Mugabe began to entrench authoritarianism. The opposition also wanted to alleviate the socioeconomic degeneration in Zimbabwe. However, since its foundation, with a few notable successes such as mobilizing the masses to vote "No" on the 2000 controversial constitutional referendum, and its electoral success in the 2008 election culminating in the Government of National Unity and the 2013 Constitution, the opposition has largely been trapped in an impasse.

Over the years, the opposition became monotonous and banal - too feeble, disorganized, fragmented, and predictable. Time and again after internal disagreements the opposition failed to resolve disputes amicably. After a dispute, those unhappy resorted to breaking away.

Recently, starting with Douglas Mwonzora and now Sengezo Tshabangu, those aggrieved have resorted to a devastating scorched earth strategy, destroying everything e.g. the party name, and finances, and recalling hard-won seats. The consequences have been catastrophic, leaving the opposition paralyzed and vulnerable to opportunistic vultures.

The opposition also failed to penetrate the rural areas. Every election, the rural areas remained Zanu-pf fortresses impervious to the opposition. The opposition needed to make a diverse electoral coalition that merges the urban and rural, the old and young, and the rich and the poor. It remained an urban-centric party for the working class and the youth.

Vote rigging also went unabated. If by vote rigging, we mean the manipulation of figures, this was only possible because the opposition failed to field polling agents and therefore did not possess all V11 forms. In twenty years, the Zimbabwean opposition could not learn how to collect a piece of paper with a vote tally from polling stations - that is mortifying incompetence.

Reasons for the opposition's demise
There are internal and external reasons for the opposition's downfall. Advocate Nelson Chamisa outlined a comprehensive list of the external factors in his 13-page document released last week, so I shall not repeat them here. But those external factors can be summarized as follows: power was never going to be served on a silver platter. A more useful analytical approach is looking at the opposition itself and what it could have done given the environment in which it existed.

The first reason for the opposition's demise was the lack of internal mechanisms to deter and if necessary, punish saboteurs from within. At every point since inception, the opposition was infested with malcontents looking for every opportunity to defect, divide, sabotage, and ultimately destroy the whole project with impunity. External forces could only infiltrate and wreak havoc through the aid of these saboteurs.

One might ask what is the source of elite cohesion, discipline, and durability in a political party? Turns out material things are not the only requisite. Hence, the lack of resources in the opposition is not an excuse for rampant defections, factions, and lack of discipline. According to Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way (2012), what ensures elite cohesion during times of crisis are non-material sources - "the identities, norms, and organizational structures forged during periods of sustained, violent and ideologically driven conflict." Such a conflict helps to "raise the cost of defection and provide leaders with additional (non-material) resources that can be critical to maintain unity and discipline." Origins in a violent struggle "force parties to create militarized structures and establish military-style internal discipline" - this ethos discourage defection. For Zanu- pf elites, the liberation struggle remains the source of cohesion even when they face targeted sanctions and economic crises. In Zanu-pf, the idea that one would even contemplate recalling hard-won seats is inconceivable. This is not to say that the opposition had to create a violent conflict to develop the necessary principles and values that would discourage defection and disunity. Unfortunately, the opposition was founded under conditions that did not allow these principles to materialize. Perhaps, they could have turned their collective persecution as the source of unity to endure during times of crisis instead of defaulting to trivial personal issues.

The second source of the opposition's downfall was its personalistic nature - the deification of a leader. The personalization of the opposition had harmful effects that cannot be ignored. When everything in a party from the name, the color, slogans, and campaign revolves around one person, this makes the individual's omissions and commissions affect the whole organization. This individual becomes the organization's soft underbelly. You attack this person and the whole organization crumbles. Then, there is the axiom: even well-intended individuals are not immune to fallibility.

It is one thing to be popular and another thing to be effective. Given the personalistic nature of opposition politics, to be successful the leader had to be a real deity. The leader had to be omnipotent - all-powerful to stop defections, infiltration, splits, and vote-rigging; be omniscient - all-knowing to make the right decisions every time and anticipate future dangers and challenges such as FAZ; and be omnipresent - to be everywhere including campaigning in every ward and being present in every polling station to protect the vote. Only when the leader is such a deity is it worth it to pursue personalistic politics.  Otherwise, given the failure to win power, the glorification of the opposition leader accomplishes one thing: stirring up adoring crowds into ephemeral jovial moods during the election campaign season and then after defeat going into hibernation and lying dormant until another campaign. Unfortunately, this was the cycle of opposition for the past two decades.

The opposite of a weak and personalized party is an institutionalized party. According to Samuel Huntington (1968), "institutionalization is the process by which organizations and procedures acquire value and stability." Following this definition, Matthias Basedau and Alexander Stroh (2008) define party institutionalization as "a process in which political parties that participate in elections experience an increase in organizational stability and value." Matthias Basedau and Alexander Stroh (2008) measure party institutionalization along four dimensions: roots in society, autonomy, level of organization, and coherence. The Zimbabwean opposition's scores in these measures are very poor. For example, concerning "coherence", the opposition was beset with splits.  Concerning autonomy, the party was heavily infiltrated by external forces. With relation to roots in society, the opposition was absent in most of the rural periphery.

Another alternative to personalization is an ideologically driven or programmatic party. According to Nicolas Van de Walle (2007), the "low ideological salience" of parties in Africa means that they adopt "a vague populism" during elections. Professor Brian Raftopoulos (2001) argues that while the Zimbabwean opposition claimed to be "labor-based", it failed to both take policy positions that distinguish it from Zanu-pf.

Third, the opposition never became a political party. From inception, it remained an amorphous entity - claiming to be a party to participate in electoral processes while simultaneously possessing all attributes of a mere social movement. Its founding name, Movement for Democratic Change concealed a fatal flaw. Conceptually and practically, there is a distinction between a movement and a party. A movement is a loose, decentralized, and informal organization with limited scope in its objectives - the antithesis of a political party. The MDC might have reached its apotheosis as a party in 2008, but even then, it could not translate electoral victory into power. What is unambiguous is that the successor to MDC the CCC embodied all features of a movement. The CCC lacked a hierarchical and identifiable leadership, it was structureless, it did not hold an elective congress, and it was decentralized and informal. It is not surprising that movements that do not metamorphose into structured and institutionalized parties are inherently weak to be competitive in national elections.

Fourth, the opposition also needed an effective strategy to navigate the intricate labyrinth of Zimbabwean politics. With hindsight, its last gamble, the doctrine of "strategic ambiguity" was just an excuse to implement clerical fascism within CCC. The doctrine had nothing to do with challenging Zanu-PF but under the cordon of secrecy, it unwittingly sowed the seeds for division and steered the party into an inevitable schism. If strategic ambiguity was of any utility, its first task should have been to unify CCC, and after that embark on the arduous task of confronting the Zanu-PF juggernaut.

Last, Advocate Nelson Chamisa also wrote his political epitaph when he indulged in biblical hermeneutics and exegesis while the party was burning; when he insinuated that he no longer believes in political party politics in several interviews after leaving CCC; and when he scribed the 13-page diatribe justifying his abdication from CCC. Behind the veneer of self-vindication, also lies a personalistic mission. The short-term strategy for abandoning CCC is to separate the wheat from the chaff by arm-twisting everyone to make a choice: either rally behind the individual who abdicated or the other individual with the contaminated party. Once this exercise is done, the group that separates itself from the chaff will rebrand. However, regrouping under a new name again reduces the activity of opposition politics to mere semantics. It does nothing to address the real elephant in the room. Zimbabwe needs a robust and earnest opposition. Opposition politics cannot be a race on who is going to put a carcass on the ballot first for the next election. If opposition politics revolves around individuals and their frivolous idiosyncratic intrigue - it is doomed to fail.

The other unintended consequence of Nelson Chamisa's decision to abandon CCC is that it emboldens his enemies. His rivals now know that if challenged or put in a corner, he will capitulate - abandoning everything he invested and worked for including hard-won seats. Second, the external enemy now knows that conniving with moles in the opposition is an efficient strategy. The third unfortunate consequence is that the decision demotivates anyone hopeful in opposition politics. After reading that 13-page tirade one can only be depressed. This will cause massive voter apathy in the next election.

Misgivings on state-sponsored voter suppression and disenfranchisement, the decline in the electoral support for the opposition, and the 2 million voters mainly youths that abstained from the August 23 vote suggest electoral fatigue and lack of confidence in the opposition. The fights among the opposition elites only help to exacerbate these trends and it is not a given the people will continue to give the current caliber of opposition leaders the benefit of the doubt.

Closing Remarks
Looking ahead, with organized politics dead, opposition in Zimbabwe will only live on as an idea among those disgruntled by the status quo. If the economic and political status is unchanged, this idea will live on for the foreseeable future. Will this idea manifest itself in a different form? Time will tell. But if the socio-economic and political environment improves, this idea will also dissipate. To resuscitate itself before this day, the opposition needs a complete overhaul. The new opposition that succeeds the CCC must be institutionalized and ideological. It must find an ideology that cannot be infiltrated and sabotaged, and even if the leaders have personal disagreements, they will be devoted to this ideology wholeheartedly. People can fake loyalty to an individual, but it is hard to fake loyalty to an idea or cause - for that loyalty will be tested many times.

The ruling party and its sympathizers might celebrate the demise of their archrival, but by also playing a hand in the destruction of the opposition and closing all avenues of peaceful political participation, they are creating a leviathan. What has been giving dissatisfied Zimbabweans a sense of hope and restraint in the last two decades are elections and a pacifist opposition party where they can channel their anger and frustrations - whether dancing at a rally or peacefully demonstrating. It is this sense of hope the nation owes for peace and stability in the last two decades even when facing hyperinflation, international sanctions, and economic challenges. When that source of hope is completely gone, and there is a sea of seething souls, Zimbabwe becomes a volatile tinderbox.