A bumper season of ‘Unholy Alliances' - An Mthwakazi-Zanu-PF is one too?

Commonly, in these difficult and challenging times Mthwakazi - in this endgame - we are not only faced with what is happening and what should happen, but crucially, with what we should do ourselves to influence what is happening and should happen.

But putting things this way may be to put things the wrong way round. Maybe we should first spell out what uMthwakazi wants - her vision - before trying to find out what we should do and how we should do it. Some think change is a vision, hence their agenda is commonly associated with what is called ‘regime change'. For others, it's succession - and that is the reason they are -called ‘successionists'.

I want to suggest that uMthwakazi would disagree with both of the above. For Mthwakazi - the ideal - is far deeper, much much wider, and far higher than all these. I posit that for uMthwakazi the vision is freedom - the need to reconnect freedom back with independence - a rapture that happened in 1980 - as the only true basis of national recovery and redefinition. What is required is to provide the detail to that vision.

It's the political season for ‘unholy alliances'
Many must be wondering what has so publicly ‘excited' me. Let me quickly put you to ease.

I couldn't believe my eyes yesterday when I read two similar but unrelated stories. The first, run by Zimeye.com reports a Tsvangirai-Mujuru ‘alliance'. The second was run by Newsday.

I couldn't help but ask myself: what is common between MDC-T and ZPF? Is MDC-T moving over to stasis or ZPF over to change - regime change? No formal arrangement has been announced but the makings of one are evident. Of course MDC-T and other political parties are free to join up with whoever they choose to join up with or ally with.

UMthwakazi's with Zanu-PF that is proposed here, many will assert - perhaps quite rightly - is the   unholiest one of them all! True, maybe! Perhaps that is the whole point of this article, that there will be nothing unusual about such a proposed front. But far from needing comfort to execute it, uMthwakazi would need only her self-belief; her self-trust.

The end of an era
Whether by natural expiration, in the case of President Mugabe, or expulsion or other ways for VP Mnangagwa, Zanu-PF is set to be rid of both. The issue for Mthwakazians to see is the character and nature of Zanu-PF that emerges after that. In previous two articles I spoke about unfreezing our minds. Too many Mthwakazians haven't even looked at and interrogated this real probability of a Mugabe- and Mnangagwa-free Zanu-PF. Many Mthwakazians are still parked in the mental box - understandable but still not excusable - of a Zanu-PF that wrought the Gukurahundi genocide and politically persecuted uMthwakazi under Mugabe and Zanu-PF. Yet all things must come to an end, and they have, and are.

The demise of President Mugabe and the inner circle he has worked with in the past 36 years - acknowledged toxic elements - is the end of an era. And the end of an era, by definition, is the beginning of another one. It is not just tragic but wholly inexcusable that uMthwakazi appears to be totally sleeping to that reality and is unprepared to exert positive influence, moving on ...

As a likely party of government for a long time to come (see later below), it makes sense for Mthwakazi to be part of making Zanu-PF the party of freedom and independence rather than waiting for someone else to do so for them, or waste valuable time chasing phony ‘revolutions' and flirting with make-believe opposition political parties pursuing private agendas rather than wider visions.

UMthwakazi must now co-own and co-define, the new era.

But whatever else we don't know, what we know for a fact is that a Zanu-PF relieved of Mugabe and Mnangagwa is a different - if better - Zanu-PF. There is therefore a basis to work with it as uMthwakazi, going forward. The 2018 elections are therefore a critical time of political positioning for Mthwakazi. It is time for Mthwakazi to do unthinkables that other mena dn women of courage have had to do when it was the proper thing for the to do.

A ballot paper that looks different
If I were to choose the name to appear on the Ballot Paper for such a coalition in 2018, I would call it IFF - the Independence and Freedom Front. With that single stroke - of completely appropriating ‘freedom' and ‘independence' - you have virtually drained the political waters off the ships of the opposition. I think it's a win-win pact for Mthwakazi and Zanu-PF!

Note that I am talking about a ‘front', not an ‘alliance'. If an alliance is a pact or treaty between two or more parties order to advance common goals and to secure common interests, and a coalition is a temporary alliance, then I would suggest a ‘front' incorporates both and is much broader than both. A front is broad and wide enough to accommodate all the different strands and spectrums of Mthwakazi and Mthwakaziness. One always hopes Mthwakazians will eventually see the merits of such a political venture and accept it.

In its own different way, such a front would be about returning to the future - a future which stalled in 1980 - but with the advantage that such a future has been rid of the toxic political liability of the so-called ‘Unity Accord' that nobody ever needed. The so-called ‘Unity Accord' is a sad reminder of everything that is wrong and that went wrong at independence and is long overdue for discarding. It must now be discarded unambiguously!

Not Mugabe and Zanu-PF, no way, I hear you say Mthwakazi!
It's often said you don't make peace with your friends but with your enemies. Those enemies can be anything - racial, ideological et cetera. In Mthwakazi's particular case, her enemy is tribal. I think this saying is true for Mthwakazi today than it has been for many confronted with such high moral and ethical dilemmas. Our killed are speaking from their graves, but are we capturing their message correctly? I do not know, but an even greater betrayal would be to ignore the sacrifices they made to make uMthwakazi grow and not die. Politically impoverished minds will surely kill uMthwakazi!

If my characterization of this period as an endgame and as the end of an era, then the correct question to ask is not whether or not uMthwakazi should work with Mugabe and Zanu-PF but instead the question should be: All things now being equal: why can't uMthwakazi now work with Mugabe and Zanu-PF when it is time to work with them?

At this point Mthwakazi - in this endgame - the big question is no longer about the old choice between uMthwakazi (good) and Zanu-PF and Gukurahundi (evil). Today, we are all being thrust back into the future, to recover a revolution that lost its way in 1980. Among other things, the big issue for today is also about including and infusing and inculcating a Mthwakazian worldview of things - a view hitherto banished when the revolution went astray - into what is present-day Zimbabwe, going forward.
And as uMthwakazi we do not need to agree with Zanu-PF now on all the precise details (content) of our values; what is pertinent now is that the core values of independence and freedom, and an Mthwakazi world-view, are accepted as the absolute minimums.

For all its apparent political might and invincibility, Zanu-PF has long seen the folly of trying to govern without and antagonistically to Mthwakazi. It simply does not work. But it is up to Mthwakazi to recognize its political power and deploy it politically for the collective good. 

Mugabe and Zanu-PF are but by-products of regional politics
To understand Mugabe and Zanu-PF today, and their behaviour in the 1980's and their Gukurahundi, you have to adopt wide spatial and temporal view, covering the period 1980 to now.

At the start of their political power in 1980, Mugabe and Zanu-PF concluded - erroneously - that South Africa would never be free in their lifetime. Their reckless behaviour against Zapu and the ANC (both of whom Mugabe and Zanu-PF terrorised) must thus be seen in this mistaken mindset. If anybody anywhere wanted to see raw power and how it could be applied, so concluded Mugabe and Zanu-PF, they needn't have looked beyond Mugabe and Zanu-F. Their unfolding contempt for Zapu extended equally to the ANC. But world events soon overtook their political folly, and they fell from hero to zero in power terms, in no time at all. By 1994, they were buried.

Today, were it not for the ANC and the ANC government in South Africa, Mugabe and Zanu-PF would long have been history. The ANC and ANC-led government in South Africa have tremendous political leverage on Mugabe and Zanu-PF. You then have to ask yourself Mthwakazi, is the ANC - Africa's oldest and most sophisticated liberation movement - stupid? You must then conclude there must be a good reason for the ANC and the ANC government choosing to work with Mugabe and Zanu-PF and not anyone else?

It is simply not in Mthwakazi's interests to work against the ANC and the ANC government here, and the ANC is a friend of Mthwakazi as it is of all the peoples of today's Zimbabwe!

As uMthwakazi we have not politically engaged this point sufficiently, nor have we all the political dynamics we need to take into account, and it was high time we did.

When uMthwakazi's Gods are crying tears of shame
I am pulling my hair off as I write, but not at all at this confusion and frenzied madness from hashtagers and rejected politicians, but at Mthwakazi's blindness and flatness; her almost gospelian wait for a saviour, a messiah who will miraculously drop from Heaven into this political world ruled and determined by politics to rescue them while they do nothing that goes beyond protest politics! I weep, not tears of pity, but stinging tears of political rebuke to a great people who have turned themselves into this sad group of sulking people weighed down by a self-defeating and self-inflicted state of political amnesia. King Mzilikazi and King Lobengula are turning in their graves in disgust! And to imagine that they are not even expecting uMthwakazi to wield the assegai and shield, but only to deploy the modern tools at uMthwakazi's disposal today to recover their State. They know that they too didn't find a ready-made Mthwakazi pre-prepared for them by God in a political Canaan. They juggled war and peace in conditions of uncertainty and anxiety - such as ours - but act they did when it was time to. But look at this present generation that calls itself Mthwakazi and which hankers to a greatness that did not come on the cheap, yet is itself unable to re-invent uMthwakazi as a political force of and for today, even with all its education and sophistication that Kings Mzilikazi and King Lobengula could only dream of!  

Amandlwane and directionlessness that are thrown at uMthwakazi in 2016 as ‘revolution' by all manner of political operators elicit not so much as a whimper of disapproval from a Mthwakazi that has found it celebratory to cry from inside the baby coat of politics, a Mthwakazi happy to feel sorry for itself and proud to be pitied by a whole world. The noble ideal that each succeeding generation of Mthwakazi must fight its own struggles for Mthwakazi has long been lost to the enticing cover of boasts about a heroic past but never a gloat about the spectacular achievements of the present, by a generation that has lost spine and any courage of its convictions. And with nobody brave and bold enough to challenge uMthwakazi's misplaced and vacuous pride - and lethargy - uMthwakazi has fallen needlessly into a shamed generation of learned losers. Business, business ...! it's more cowardly fringe shouts as it abandons the manlier struggle of politics!

The Gods of Mthwakazi spit in disgust, at a generation that has no political cause to live for - because it has none to die for - and is thus happy to carry the dishonourable badge of political abdication with no shame at all. Nobody sees the victory that was scored by the people against Gukurahundi and therefore nobody sees the need to turn that victory into a political capital for Mthwakazi that will deliver many returns for many generations further in future. In the middle of that shamed generation, is me too!

Drip, drip, drip … it's Zanu-PF all the way
They come drip, drip, drip - these stories about the IMF and Zimbabwe, Britain and Zimbabwe, the Americans and Zimbabwe, and the EU and Zimbabwe as they prepare you for the final stroke. Then ‘denials' follow, and obfuscations mount. It's all a ruse! We therefore cannot continue to be blind to these simple, plain and demonstrated facts, Mthwakazi, that the new game in town is no longer the MDC formations or even the emergent ZPF and the other political parties and formations mushrooming all over, but Zanu-PF!

Apart from what you see but are in denial of, here also is what is happening that you don't see or prefer not to see.
All of these political formations - MDC formations, ZPF, ‘civil' groups of #Tajamuka, #ThisFlag - are, from the point of view of the powers of the world - most likely just instruments by which pressure is being applied to Zanu-PF to make political concessions and reform internally. Internally, Zanu-PF is sprucing itself up (reforming) and recalibrating itself as a party of the future, of stability and order, of responsible government, and even democracy, against the mounting chaos and disorder of opposition politics. Look all around you and see the political carcasses of a fractured and decimated political opposition that has shrunk virtually to nothing, while in contrast, and even as the internal fights cannot be denied, the core of Zanu-PF remains intact, acting in a deliberate and measured way to deal with its internal struggles. And that is all the difference between what is preferred and not preferred by this our world, a world presently ordered as a system of stable States, not anything else! I hate all of it too, but this is the brutal reality.

We have been dealt Zanu-PF by a combination of circumstances and we have to deal with it as it is, not as we wish it was, and as best as uMthwakazi can, and seek to co-determine - not just influence.

At least at this stage, and faced with these facts, what's the point of us Mthwakazi seeking to do anything else, one may rhetorically ask? Something might start as a bad idea, but who knows the future? True, a bad idea may well end up that: a bad idea, but at least fail!

National recovery may start with personal recovery
If you thought you are anti-Zanu-PF and pro-Mthwakazi then you haven't met me. But I have come to know and ‘accept' that in politics at least, being anti- and pro-something can be an artificial dialectic or polar position, that anti- and pro- are not necessarily always mutually exclusive propositions. I have also come to know that such a view can be a self-perpetuating proposition fuelled by attitude and position-adoption, rather than by dry reality. The truth is therefore always somewhere in between, always tempered by a mind that is open, and is open to both question itself and be questioned by external stimuli. I have been demonstrably strong in neither in my politics!

It has been a personal journey of learning to unlearn both what I have received and what I taught myself as an adult Mthwakazian; a process of mentally uncluttering myself, if you like, it has been. I therefore speak and write as a person who has needed rebuke myself, and needed to be chinked out of a familiar mournful song of lament and complaint. Does this sounds like you too?

I have been uMthwakazi at the core, and remain uMthwakazi to the marrow. I believe in the superiority of an Mthwakazi world-view that is at par with the best of the world. But an Mthwakazi and Mthwakazians who won't act in a manner appropriate for the present, and the future, and an Mthwakazi who appropriates a past glory as if it were a present reality, is not helpful to anyone. That has been a hard learn for me.

To all Mthwakazians out there - whether you are persuaded or disgusted by the views I have expressed in this and most recent articles - know that the painful process of unlearning tradition is a shared one. The simple truth is that uMthwakazi needs people who will propel her forward politically in our world of today. Yet I remain of the strong view that unlearning many things about ourselves as Mthwakazi or Mthwakazians is far from being about rejecting ourselves and prostituting ourselves to fashionable political ideas and fads out there, but rather, and on the contrary, is about strengthening uMthwakazi even more as we grow ourselves differently as uMthwakazi again.

After all, we wouldn't be here talking about entering into a front with Zanu-PF if uMthwakazi was not uMthwakazi, and if people of Mthwakazi didn't defend uMthwakazi as uMthwakazi at its darkest hour. Then, uMthwakazi triumphed. Today, moving on, uMthwakazi needs to excel as Mthwakazi and without apology or seeking to mask its uMthwakaziness. Because only as Mthwakazi, are we politically unignorable - as we truly are!

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Vuli Moyo <vuli.moyo@gmx.com>