OPINION: PaMukamba with Alliance for the People's Agenda.
Alois Matongo
28 February 2022
The Lancaster House Agreement of 1979 brought the end of one of the most brutal wars of liberation on the African Continent that pitted the forces of the Patriotic Front of ZAPU and ZANU against those of the illegal Rhodesian rebel regime. Unfortunately, that war and its concluding agreement created a dangerous electoral legacy that has haunted this country to this day.
The agreement set a precedent that has become the template of the electoral processes in the country, a template that allows elections to be held with the ruling regime enjoying exclusive and partisan support of the armed forces; albeit now without the midwife underwriting role played by the British, the UN and the Common Wealth. Those elections conducted in March 1980 produced the obvious results of landslide wins for the armed parties (ZANU PF and PF ZAPU), aided by ZANLA’s deployment of armed campaign teams across all areas they controlled to threaten violence if they lost the election.
In 1987 the ruling ZanuPF party forced a unity accord with former ally, Zapu, after a brief but brutal suppression of alleged PF ZAPU insurgents called dissidents during Gukurahundi, an operation that some analysts have described as a genocide. Since those inaugural elections of 1980 successive ZANU PF governments have used that template of superintending over elections while deploying militants for the fear factor in running subsequent elections and the results have consistently worked in its favour.
ZANU PF, through their First Secretary ED Mnangagwa, has reiterated that Government, the rulling party and the armed forces are one and the same thing, and they have never hidden their determination to maintain that status quo. Before that it was Jonathan Moyo explicitly telling the world ZANU PF was not going to reform itself out of power.
For lack of tact, ZANU PF has blundered at every critical moment gifting Western powers opportunities they need to impose sanctions against us at will. The sanctions, so morally justified by the blunders, have found wide acceptance despite their political unacceptability to Zimbabwe and the rest of Africa.
On the other hand, the opposition MDC and its variants, apparently beholden to their geopolitical masters of the West, have ignored this plain truth that free and democratic elections can never work against an opponent that is exclusively supported by the security apparatus of the state. They have instead focused on making Zanu-PF look bad as if that was beyond understanding.
Behind the Zimbabwean armed forces are hideous geopolitical masters in the form of authoritarian Eastern powers, China and Russia, and their allies. These superpowers provided the arms that were used to wage the war of liberation against the illegal settler regime supported by the powerful Western powers. All Africans are grateful for this support. After the war the superpowers have provided aid and development finance as well as assurance of military backup support should need arise.
In 2017, as an example, when it became clear that the young turks in ZANU PF fronted by Jonathan Moyo and the then First Lady, Grace Mugabe, were poised to take over power from the aged Robert Mugabe, the army stepped in and got rid of Mugabe and the G40 faction and installed Emmerson Mnangagwa and the Lacoste faction in both government and the the party.
On the opposition MDC party, due to apparent lack of strategic thinking , over two decades of its existence have failed to produce a breakthrough in terms of getting into power. They place the blame squarely on Zanu-PF control of State apparatus. The opposition party's main strategy to get into power has been the destruction of the economy in the hope that the ruling regime would fall through popular anger. This, they have done by encouraging workers to strike, Western sanctions on the country and waging a war of words with the various Constitutional arms of the State including the electoral body ZEC, the police, the army and the Judiciary.
Due to persistent failure to deliver on promises to their geopolitical masters from the West, the MDC has broken up into several factions and it is clear that the prospects for success of any one of these factions in wrestling power from ZanuPF in the 2023 harmonized elections are pretty dim.
In all these factional machinations the people of Zimbabwe have suffered the multiple tragedies of foreign interests engineered poverty and its related ills due to a collapsed economy, repression and persecution when they try to demonstrate against government for their suffering. It is clear that continued support for the two main political parties, so unbelieving in their own capabilities that they need validation from foreign powers, and their factions, will not bring an end to the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe.
Time has now come for a new initiative and a new approach to the toxic politics of ZANU PF and the MDC derived parties, their factions and their foreign masters of the Eastern and Western hemispheres. The toxic brand of political maneuvering emanating from the faulty conclusion of the liberation war at Lancaster House has been an albertross for Zimbabwe.
These two political parties and their factions cannot wean themselves from their geopolitical superpower masters whose main goal is to serve the economic interests of their people as they get free access to the numerous strategic minerals of our country.
An inward looking approach to the politics of the land is needed in Zimbabwe so that the interests of our citizenry, The People’s Agenda, are served more than those of the geopolitical superpowers and their respective allies through proxy parties.
Disclaimer: The views in this article are those of the author and do not reflect those of Zimbo24news or its publishers. We share them in the spirit of open dialogue and in a bid to encourage Zimbabweans to discuss contentious and uncomfortable subjects without fear or favor.
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