There shall be some alliance before we go to vote

THIRTY-THREE years have gone by since our political independence which we won in 1980. The years have been political time, which is not to deny that the same period saw other "times" in other spheres of national endeavour. It is just that I have chosen to pick on the political sphere, all to concentrate focus on the quality of the march, our political march. Philosophically the practice of counting rests on a linear view of the world, and with it a belief in movement of both humans and their circumstances. Forward movement or progressive evolution where the count is positive. Backward movement or regression where the count is negative. But movement in either case.

External causation
Since yesterday we have been hit by a speculative frenzy on the so-called grand coalition, specifically moves to make it real. I wrote about this last week and will not hesitate to make a second bite. Let it not be forgotten that this column broached this possibility, indicating the eventual coming together of the two MDCs shall be willed by external forces originally behind their founding in the first place, and all to secure external interests. The causation would never be local, I maintained. Of course there were spirited denials from the affected players, Welshman Ncube loudest.

I maintained my position, as indeed I do so again today, emphatically. There shall be some opposition alliance before we go to vote. What is only debatable is how grand that alliance shall be. At the time, Priscilla asked whether there was something I knew about the MDC-N which she herself did not know. I looked back at her, lewdly, shyly, praying to the good Lord that I keep my mouth chaste and shut. I am sure given another chance she would ask the same, and I would offer the same prayer, play the same shy, lewd card.

The personality factor
Apart from the motive of wrong-footing Zanu-PF, there are reasons galore to make the prospects of such a coalition look well nigh impossible to a common eye. I will share a few of them with you. First and least, personalities. You have leadership contestations between Tsvangirai and Ncube, well before you even bring in the vaulting ego of Tendai Biti which is pitted against both. It was this contestation which precipitated the 2005 split. Well before, again, you bring in Dabengwa and his braai stick, Simba Makoni, two new claimants to leadership.

Then you have the professional tensions between Ncube and Biti, often translating into leadership claims. This is before you bring in other lawyers, including the likes of Magaisa, Britain's "eye" both inside the MDC and in national politics. Because of Tsvangirai's susceptibilities, whoever monopolises counsel to him assumes the aura of a virtual leader, something Timba has not been slow to claim, something Ian Makone has lost and seeks to regain by jumping into the political fray.

Our cankered politics
You also have the Ncube-Thokozani Khupe saga, well before you bring in the Gorden Moyos and the MDC-N defectors who remain a big thorn in the political flesh. It is partly factional, partly regional, partly based on NGO power. All these clashes reverberate to the very core of the MDC support base. Add to all that entangled personality skein the forbidding backdrop of regional perceptions and interpretations of leadership configurations, and you realise that the proposition of a grand, enormous alliance futilely seeks to squat between the skin and bone of a finger.

Our politics, in their cankered evolution have encouraged regional and even tribal interpretation of placements in national leadership. Who occupies what post in the grand coalition will make or break votes and careers.

Chips off Anglo Saxony block
Ideologically there is just no foundation upon which to place this so-called grand alliance. Don't get me wrong. Ideologically there is no Chinese wall between the two MDCs. They are true chips off the same Anglo-Saxony block. They don't require a mind of their own. They are recipients of ideas and values. Any pretensions of values or ideology on their part is a falsehood, which is why I don't buy Ncube's claim that his faction espouses different values from those pursued by Tsvangirai.

The truth of the matter is that both MDCs face an ideological crisis, a disintegration of received values after Anglo-Saxony authors of those same values have changed the template. And as the biblical Israelites would tell, in the absence of an envisioning star roving ahead in the upper firmament, and to which all eyes transfix, any movement begins to turn on itself, begins to expend its energies in introverted fratricidal conflicts.

This is what has been at the heart of the crisis of the two MDCs. If there have been any differences, these have been over style. It is instructive that both of them have failed to put together any coherent policies and manifestos, choosing instead to turn the myth of "reforms" into some ideology and glue holding them together. It is also interesting that these formations had no problems fitting into, and serving under the ideas formulated by Zanu-PF on the eve of the Inclusive Government.

They made no imprint at the level of ideas in the five years that they were in Government. Imperialism never allows its subjects to develop alternative visions for themselves and for their societies. Rather, imperialism requires that you subserve the grand vision of the metropole. So the shared ideological bankruptcy of the two MDCs is precisely what militates against their reunion. Reuniting for what, towards what?

Enlightened voters
And because they have no goals, no visions, they have made the removal of Robert Mugabe the only goal and purpose of their political activity. But that is not the actual tragedy. The tragedy for their handlers is to think that the voter in Zimbabwe shall be motivated to vote for the grand alliance merely because it unites or has united the MDC formations. The Zimbabwean voter has become a sharpened, enlightened political and economic player. He views the struggle for the capture of State power by elites as incidental.

He puts stress on the bundle of policies proposed by parties and how these create opportunities for him or her personally. Thanks to sanctions which have informalised the economy, every Zimbabwean is an economic actor, and thus more responsive to proposed policies. Unity is viewed only meaningfully if it is purposeful and coupled to noble, people-centred goals. The MDC formations have not fared that well in that regard. This razzmatazz over the grand alliance is thus mortally mistaken, developing as it does outside clear visions and policy proposals which redound to the ordinary people.

Too late grand alliance
Then there is a practical problem of sharing power and prospects. The MDC formations are baulking history and known human political practices. They have sought to cobble an alliance on the eleventh hour, well after the sitting of the nomination court. The law is very clear. After nomination you can only withdraw. You may not seek new nominations. Or revise old ones unless cancellation is seen as some revision.

The die is cast. One can only undo, cancel or regress. What becomes of all aspiring councillors, MPs, Senators who have already registered as faces of individual parties locked in cut-throat competition? What happens to structures already in place and functioning differentially? Even PF-Zapu and Zanu which has shared vision and similar structures took quite some time and effort to harmonise and eventually merge their structures. It is not easy. The grand alliance entails grand trimming.

Who is to be shaved, who to be spared? I notice Tsvangirai has been promising ministerial, diplomatic and civil service posts he does not have, he is never likely to have. The whole grand alliance rests on the promise of a sumptuous feast from a bird in the air; rests in the hope that the cook will not greedily eat in-between stirs. Or serve disproportionately in favour of darlings. It is a very small pie perched up very high, distant heavens. I see a multitude of small, hugely eager hands! What a grand illusion!

Black Russian, white Rhodesian
I wondered whether or not we have moved since 1980. As proposed, the grand alliance hopes to have Tsvangirai at the helm, expectant. It drops Khupe in favour of Tendai Biti as first vice president, and then Welshman Ncube as second vice-president. It promises security portfolio to Dabengwa, promises cabinet and diplomatic posts to Makoni and his rabble. It should have been simultaneously announced in Harare and Bulawayo yesterday. Something snapped, or appeared to. Dabengwa and Ncube "pre-empted" and "repudiated" this development by announcing a grand coalition of their own, one that excludes Tsvangirai. They say theirs is founded on the "same principles and values". At that meeting, Dabengwa also revealed that he had had offers from all manner of people and parties, including the former Rhodesian soldier, Bennett: "Bennett tried and I think we did not understand each other and then on coalition structures, Bennett already had his which were not in our favour. Tsvangirai coalition approach in the past six days was overtaken by events." Here was a black Russian parleying with a white Rhodesian!

Building a bargaining chip
This unexpected development in Bulawayo created pandemonium at Harvest House, absolute pandemonium and bitter mutual recrimination. A press conference which had been set for 1200hrs at Crown Plaza had to be scrapped off, with a thin promise to hold it on Monday. Meanwhile the launch rally set for Marondera will now be converted to a manifesto launch party, manifesto of a lonely MDC. But let's get things clear and straightened.

Ncube and Dabengwa are playing hard to get so they soften Tsvangirai for a better deal. And the deal, as is clear from Dabengwa's aforequoted statements, is not over values or visions. It is over posts, prospects and personalities. It is also a way of ripening people for the eventual coalition when it comes. The region will confidently rally behind it convinced, so our two grand heroes' reason, it will have emerged from tough bargaining designed to secure greater visibility for the region. And Dabengwa said as much in hushed tones. He also thinks he is brewing a surprise for Zanu-PF, living true to his legend as the intelligence supremo.

New Chikeremas and Sitholes
Two key points to make. I spoke of 1980. If you were old enough then, you would know that the internal settlement was woven around Chikerema and Sithole as residual faces of liberation politics. These two were then made to carry Muzorewa as Ian Smith's obliging fool. That equation survived to be used again in the 1980 elections against the Patriotic Front. It was all about human symbols and that is how the Rhodesians saw it. The Americans were behind it. The British were behind it. The South Africans were behind it, indeed gave resources, personnel and advice to underpin it. All believed Muzorewa would do well and possibly join hands with a part of the divided Patriotic Front alliance.

Even the late General Peter Walls expected such an outcome. All were shocked, both by Muzorewa and Mugabe, and later by Nkomo who elected to work with Mugabe in the new Government. Today we have Dabengwa and Makoni playing a similar role. Today we have America, Britain and Europe forcing similar alliances. One day I shall tell you what some players in our Sadc neighbourhood have been up to, in the process repudiating their role and status in a joint, shared past. And as in 1980, Zanu-PF will be saved by a landslide victory. It was that result which stopped many bad things, a planned Rhodesian coup included. It is a similar result which will end sanctions, end regime-change politics and, God willing extinguish the accursed quisling politics of the MDCs.

Why they will come back
My second point. Both Ncube and Dabengwa left Harare for Bulawayo to announce their coming together there. It is a grand odyssey homewards, but also a grand odyssey backwards into the tribal and regional shell. Both have repudiated national leadership, although seeking to gain concessions from it, first in the context of inter-party interaction, second and prospectively in the context of post-election bargaining.

Tsvangirai has made one fatal blunder. By engaging both Dabengwa and Ncube for a grand coalition, he has admitted that the Ndebele group in his MDC-T party is not representative of that part of the country. It needs supplementation or even replacement, if the fate of Khupe is anything to go by. In the very unlikely event that he wins, he will have to create his own unity accord with Ncube and Dabengwa so he overcomes the sense and perception of national insufficiency which he himself has impliedly admitted to.

The same cannot be said for Zanu-PF whose national representativeness was not affected by Dabengwa's departure. Or Ncube's exclusion from principalship. This is why both men would rather Tsvangirai wins, and thus why they will still seek a grand alliance after yesterday's false show.

Icho!

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Nathaniel Manheru can be contacted at nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw