Opinion / Columnist
Egocentrism: The curse of Zimbabwe
03 Jan 2016 at 14:02hrs | Views
Zimbabwean academic, Professor Masiphula Sithole (now late) once wrote that if you sent two Zimbabweans to the moon and told them to form a political party along the way, they would have formed three by the time they got there.
Comical as this may sound, it fully captures the egocentrism that drives many a Zimbabwean mind even today. Be it politics, the arts or even religion, egocentrism built around a neurotic need for power has generally become Zimbabweans' biggest undoing.
Closer to the biggest problem at home, it is largely because of this hard and brutal fact that almost every Zimbabwean political party has had to suffer at least one split at some stage during its lifetime. Remember that even President Mugabe's ruling Zanu (PF) is itself the product of a 1963 split from the then Joshua Nkomo-led Zapu. Yes, the party was re-united - albeit after several sterile attempts, under the treacherous 1987 Unity Accord but as we all know, it split again in 2009, when former Home Affairs Minister Dumiso Dabengwa took his personal copy of Zapu out of the united Zanu (PF), while Phelekezela Mphoko retained his own.
Practically, there are now three Zapus – one within Zanu (PF), the one being led by Dabengwa and yet another one struggling to bolt out of the latter.
On hindsight, Zapu's 2009 "re-birth" was preceded by the 2008 rift that gave birth to the Dabengwa-Simba Makoni-fronted Mavambo/Kusile/Dawn, Edgar Tekere's Zimbabwe Unity Movement of the 1990s and Margaret Dongo's Zimbabwe Union of Democrats, as some of the many products of Zanu (PF)'s earlier splits. We have just been hit with threats of a People First movement as Zanu (PF)'s latest offshoot - or is it offspring?
In the 15 years of its existence, Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC has mothered at least four off-springs - the MDC-Green, MDC99, People's Democratic Party and Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe. Word out there is that the party is now pregnant with an MDC-Chamisa.
Sadly and paying credence to Sithole's veiled analysis, most of these intra-party divisions and eventual splits are borne more out of pursuit of selfish personal ambitions than the dawning of a different ideological path to be taken.
In a nutshell, nearly every Zimbabwean adult now wants to be a leader of something and most do not care how many people they lead, nor do they have a set vision of where they want to take their followers. Theirs is leadership with no purpose and no vision. That is why many founding leaders end up clinging on to power even when they have failed.
They do not know and do not care about whether or not they have arrived, or if they will arrive, because they themselves do not know where they are going. And they do not care about where they should go. They are like drivers who not only do not know their destination, but would also not listen to any of the passengers on where they should go. Usually, they stop only when they have crashed the vehicle or forced it into some mechanical problem that prevents it going further. And at that time, everyone's journey has to come to a standstill. Zimbabwe is burning now and there is no gainsaying the fact that its multi-facetted crisis - at least 15 years old now, has outgrown any of the country's many of political formations. Yet none of the political parties seems to be content with working with other formations to find the elusive solution.
Zanu (PF) authored and has presided over most of the rot since 1980, still wants to go it alone; Tsvangirai's MDC has failed to take power for 15 years, but still believes it can be the only answer to Mugabeism. In fact, the MDC-T has vowed it will not join the much-vaunted Grand Coalition of opposition parties to face Zanu (PF) in 2018 if Tsvangirai is not made the mooted united front's automatic leader. Rank madness!
Without proper structures and having twice failed to hold its 2015 Congress, Dabengwa's Zapu - which got a mere 0,74 percent share of the 2013 elections and failed to get a single council seat, still believes it will be in POWER come 2018, as do the rest of the other insignificant few-men political formations that have flooded the country of late. Total selfishness!
It should therefore, not come as a surprise that at a time when calls for a national convention should be dominating the political atmosphere, even the so-called progressive forces are still tearing one another apart as they battle for political recognition. People on the ground, who bear the brunt of political violence, unemployment and the tattered social fabric, know what they want. What they want is a united front to tackle the country's problems, yet all they get are more and more confused and confusing political formations and splinter organisations that in turn subject them to political grandstanding.
For a decade and a half, government officials have continued to place priority in securing or upgrading their posts in the ruling party at the expense of running the government and service delivery has gone to the doldrums. But instead of trudging the progressive path of providing solutions, our cadaveric opposition parties have continued to project themselves as clueless reactionaries – going no further than issuing one statement after another in rebuke of Zanu (PF). No remedial action, just statements of rebuke and the world becomes "normal" again. Utter cluelessness!
People are not interested in that. All they want to know is where their next meal will come from and when their relatives who are scattered in the Diaspora will return home for good. All the people care about is the re-opening of industries and the creation of jobs, not having their social atmosphere polluted with political obscenities and authoritative banality.
Change is desired by all and sundry - including some within Zanu (PF), but due to egocentrism, change remains a mirage.
Mxolisi Ncube is an exiled award-winning Zimbabwean journalist who now lives in Johannesburg. He has published stories with many international news publications that include Frontpage Magazine, World Politics Review, South China Morning Post and the Christian Science Monitor. Until last month, he was the Johannesburg Correspondent and Sports Editor of The Zimbabwean, a privately-owned newspaper that was published in Zimbabwe, UK and South Africa. He can be contacted on ncubemxolisi90@gmail.com or on his Facebook Account - Mxolisi Ncube.
Comical as this may sound, it fully captures the egocentrism that drives many a Zimbabwean mind even today. Be it politics, the arts or even religion, egocentrism built around a neurotic need for power has generally become Zimbabweans' biggest undoing.
Closer to the biggest problem at home, it is largely because of this hard and brutal fact that almost every Zimbabwean political party has had to suffer at least one split at some stage during its lifetime. Remember that even President Mugabe's ruling Zanu (PF) is itself the product of a 1963 split from the then Joshua Nkomo-led Zapu. Yes, the party was re-united - albeit after several sterile attempts, under the treacherous 1987 Unity Accord but as we all know, it split again in 2009, when former Home Affairs Minister Dumiso Dabengwa took his personal copy of Zapu out of the united Zanu (PF), while Phelekezela Mphoko retained his own.
Practically, there are now three Zapus – one within Zanu (PF), the one being led by Dabengwa and yet another one struggling to bolt out of the latter.
On hindsight, Zapu's 2009 "re-birth" was preceded by the 2008 rift that gave birth to the Dabengwa-Simba Makoni-fronted Mavambo/Kusile/Dawn, Edgar Tekere's Zimbabwe Unity Movement of the 1990s and Margaret Dongo's Zimbabwe Union of Democrats, as some of the many products of Zanu (PF)'s earlier splits. We have just been hit with threats of a People First movement as Zanu (PF)'s latest offshoot - or is it offspring?
In the 15 years of its existence, Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC has mothered at least four off-springs - the MDC-Green, MDC99, People's Democratic Party and Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe. Word out there is that the party is now pregnant with an MDC-Chamisa.
Sadly and paying credence to Sithole's veiled analysis, most of these intra-party divisions and eventual splits are borne more out of pursuit of selfish personal ambitions than the dawning of a different ideological path to be taken.
In a nutshell, nearly every Zimbabwean adult now wants to be a leader of something and most do not care how many people they lead, nor do they have a set vision of where they want to take their followers. Theirs is leadership with no purpose and no vision. That is why many founding leaders end up clinging on to power even when they have failed.
They do not know and do not care about whether or not they have arrived, or if they will arrive, because they themselves do not know where they are going. And they do not care about where they should go. They are like drivers who not only do not know their destination, but would also not listen to any of the passengers on where they should go. Usually, they stop only when they have crashed the vehicle or forced it into some mechanical problem that prevents it going further. And at that time, everyone's journey has to come to a standstill. Zimbabwe is burning now and there is no gainsaying the fact that its multi-facetted crisis - at least 15 years old now, has outgrown any of the country's many of political formations. Yet none of the political parties seems to be content with working with other formations to find the elusive solution.
Zanu (PF) authored and has presided over most of the rot since 1980, still wants to go it alone; Tsvangirai's MDC has failed to take power for 15 years, but still believes it can be the only answer to Mugabeism. In fact, the MDC-T has vowed it will not join the much-vaunted Grand Coalition of opposition parties to face Zanu (PF) in 2018 if Tsvangirai is not made the mooted united front's automatic leader. Rank madness!
Without proper structures and having twice failed to hold its 2015 Congress, Dabengwa's Zapu - which got a mere 0,74 percent share of the 2013 elections and failed to get a single council seat, still believes it will be in POWER come 2018, as do the rest of the other insignificant few-men political formations that have flooded the country of late. Total selfishness!
It should therefore, not come as a surprise that at a time when calls for a national convention should be dominating the political atmosphere, even the so-called progressive forces are still tearing one another apart as they battle for political recognition. People on the ground, who bear the brunt of political violence, unemployment and the tattered social fabric, know what they want. What they want is a united front to tackle the country's problems, yet all they get are more and more confused and confusing political formations and splinter organisations that in turn subject them to political grandstanding.
For a decade and a half, government officials have continued to place priority in securing or upgrading their posts in the ruling party at the expense of running the government and service delivery has gone to the doldrums. But instead of trudging the progressive path of providing solutions, our cadaveric opposition parties have continued to project themselves as clueless reactionaries – going no further than issuing one statement after another in rebuke of Zanu (PF). No remedial action, just statements of rebuke and the world becomes "normal" again. Utter cluelessness!
People are not interested in that. All they want to know is where their next meal will come from and when their relatives who are scattered in the Diaspora will return home for good. All the people care about is the re-opening of industries and the creation of jobs, not having their social atmosphere polluted with political obscenities and authoritative banality.
Change is desired by all and sundry - including some within Zanu (PF), but due to egocentrism, change remains a mirage.
Mxolisi Ncube is an exiled award-winning Zimbabwean journalist who now lives in Johannesburg. He has published stories with many international news publications that include Frontpage Magazine, World Politics Review, South China Morning Post and the Christian Science Monitor. Until last month, he was the Johannesburg Correspondent and Sports Editor of The Zimbabwean, a privately-owned newspaper that was published in Zimbabwe, UK and South Africa. He can be contacted on ncubemxolisi90@gmail.com or on his Facebook Account - Mxolisi Ncube.
Source - Mxolisi Ncube
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