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Leader of the party of the Alliance Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Nelson Chamisa. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Aaron Ufumeli)
Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-A), is imploding as the country’s ruling Zanu-PF conspires with a small splinter group from the MDC, the Movement for Democratic Change Tsvangirai (MDC-T ), to help him seize the much larger party parliamentary seats and other elected offices, venues and finances. Zanu-PF has also arrested several MDC-A leaders in recent weeks and has now accused them of planning an armed struggle.
First published in Daily Maverick 168
The destruction of the MDC-A threatens to create a de facto one-party state in Zimbabwe, which is the intention of Zanu-PF, of course, some MDC-A leaders believe. With the help of “captured” judges, pro Zanu-PF, and a president of the Parliament of Zanu-PF, the MDC-A, led by Nelson Chamisa, has already lost some 30 members of Parliament, senators and many mayors of local governments and councilors of the tiny MDC-T, led by Thokozani Khupe.
The courts have also awarded the Khupe faction the six-story MDC headquarters in Harare and Z $ 7 million (approximately R321,000), to which the party is entitled from the government coffers. Chamisa’s MDC-A proved without question in the 2018 elections that it was the much more popular of the two MDC parties, defeating Khupe’s MDC-T, although it was defeated in turn by Zanu-PF.
So by collaborating with Khupe’s group to hijack the MDC-A, Zanu-PF is effectively neutralizing any real opposition. This is the political reality. The legal reality is more complex.
It all started in February 2018 when Morgan Tsvangirai, MDC founding president in 1999, dying of cancer, anointed Chamisa as his successor, even though the party’s constitution said that Khupe, as vice president, should have succeeded him. Khupe later broke up to form his own MDC-T.
With the elections looming on July 30, Chamisa formed an electoral alliance with the Movement for Democratic Change Ncube (MDC-N) party of the Welshman Ncube, with the unconditional MDC Tendai Biti, the separatist PPD and other smaller parties. .
In the presidential election, Chamisa was narrowly defeated by Emmerson Mnangagwa, winning 44.3% of the vote compared to 50.8%. Khupe came in a distant third place with 3.42%. In the parliamentary elections, Zanu-PF won 179 seats, Chamisa’s MDC-A 88 seats – with at least 2.2 million votes – and Khupe’s MDC-T, just one directly elected seat, with some 45,000 votes.
After the elections, the MDC of Chamisa, the MDC of Ncube and the PDP of Biti resolved to dissolve and merge into a new party. But then, just weeks before the MDC-A congress in May 2019, the high court ruled that Chamisa was not the legitimate leader of the party and ordered an MDC-T congress to elect new leadership. MDC-A appealed the ruling.
Senator and former education minister David Coltart, founding member of the original MDC and now MDC-A general treasurer, explains that according to the Zimbabwe Political Party Financing Act, MDC-A, because he had won more than 5% of the vote , was entitled to government funding commensurate with its seats. In 2019, he made Z $ 5 million. Khupe’s MDC-T got nothing as it hadn’t reached the 5% threshold.
Two days after the Covid-19 shutdown in March, a “captured” Supreme Court judge overturned the MDC-A appeal and reinstated the original high court orders. This had a disastrous cascading effect on MDC-A.
In July, the youth of the MDC-T, assisted by the army, took over the headquarters of the MDC-A, the government refused to pay the MDC-A the first tranche of 2020, of Z $ 7 million, of financing of the political party in March and the MDC-T of Khupe. He was allowed to “remember” former MDC-T deputies now in MDC-A, as well as councilors.
Additionally, Coltart said that around 15 MDC-A MPs had voluntarily crossed the floor to the MDC-T to save their jobs and MDC-T was trying to induce others to jump ship as well. “So now we have no finances, our headquarters has been taken and our MPs are being retired,” says Coltart. “It has had a great impact on us.”
The party had been unable to pay the salaries of its officials until it created an online portal for crowdfunding MDC supporters around the world. “Khupe is working very closely with Zanu-PF on this. She is very close to Emmerson Mnangagwa and visits him on his farm. She said that Zanu-PF had not orchestrated the whole thing, but had “appreciated the failings in the MDC” and thus worked with the Khupe faction to weaken the party. The clash between the leaders of the two MDCs has angered some of their supporters.
On Sunday this week, a group of MDC youth occupied the Morgan Richard Tsvangirai House. Although some reports have suggested that they were MDC-A members recapturing headquarters, Coltart believes they are actually MDC-T members, possibly in collusion with some in MDC-A, who have become disgusted with their own leaders, who They believe they have collaborated with Zanu-PF for personal gain and want them to resolve the dispute with MDC-A. But Coltart believes there is little desire to do that.
Is this a fatal blow to the MDC as a viable opposition?
Coltart recalled that in the 1980s, Zanu-PF under Robert Mugabe did the same with Josh Nkomo’s Zapu to create a de jure one-party status. “They cannot do the same now because it would not go well in SADC. His intention is clearly to tithe us. Not to create a one-party state, but to have an opposition that does its bidding. It will continue to be a de facto one-party state. ”
In addition to this, Zanu-PF is targeting its top leadership with “spurious prosecutions”: MDC-A Vice Presidents Biti and Lynette Kareni-Kore, as well as Vice President Job Sikhala, have been arrested and charged. Three women activists, including deputy Joan Mamombe, were abducted, sexually abused and assaulted. “This is a multifaceted strategy; paralyze us, cut our knees financially, take our headquarters building and then thoroughly test our MPs.
“This astonishing threat was culminated on Tuesday night by the Minister of State Security, Owen Ncube. Now he has accused us of wanting to import weapons and wage an armed struggle. That’s what they did against Zapu in 1981. This is the coup de grace. We hope they discover a weapons cache and say it is ours so they can outlaw us. It’s very sinister. ” DM168
