The much-less-than-million-men march held on Africa Day this week has come and gone and, naturally, it was both downplayed and overplayed depending on which side of the political fence one sits. Whatever, it cannot be dismissed as a non-event.
Conway Tutani
Of course, a substantial number of people in that big crowd were frogmarched to the rally.
These included residents of the teeming, poverty-stricken Mbare township who, by virtue of staying nearest to venues where these events are held in the capital, are ordered to swell numbers through all manner of threats and intimidation.
That is Zanu PF’s stock-in-trade. It’s a tried and tested tactic that the ruling party uses often to enforce its wishes on disinterested and unwilling people. It’s their typical way of behaviour. They are specialists in that.
They do that openly and blatantly and have been getting away with it most of the time, so why discontinue or discard a working formula? But people also have the constitutional rights to disassociate, to disassemble, the rights not to attend and walk out of rallies. But Zanu PF has been denying them those rights through its forcible methods.
No one is denying Zanu PF its constitutional rights of freedom of assembly and freedom of association such as they exercised as a party on Wednesday.
Anyone should be free to associate and assemble peacably for any cause whether deemed cranky or worthy.
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But Zanu PF, despite a recent explosion of PhDs in the ruling party, does not seem to understand that one’s rights end where others’ rights begin and vice versa.
It basically means this: You have the right to do whatever you want – such as having a million-men march – provided it doesn’t infringe upon the rights of other people, and likewise they can do whatever they want – such as snubbing that march – provided it doesn’t infringe upon your rights. Your rights do not supersede the rights of others.
But Zanu PF does not want to accept that, as a corollary, people equally have the right not to participate in such marches and leave such gatherings at any time for whatever reason – whether the call of nature, scorching sun, hunger, or out of pure boredom.
This was clearly evident on Wednesday when Zanu PF enforcers moved to curtail the crowd’s freedom to disassociate and disassemble as they tried – and largely failed – to stop thousands of people from leaving the rally midway. No one should begrudge Zanu PF for pulling off a large gathering, but not if they don’t do it within the confines of the law and fairness.
But Zanu PF being Zanu PF, it won’t desist from force as seen from its track record. Who does not know that since the very first elections under universal suffrage in 1980, that in some – nay, many – constituencies until at least 1995, Zanu PF was going to win without violence, but still used violence anyway.
To them, violence is a kind of ritual. That’s the way it is and this has earned the regime deserved pariah status.
That said, this does not detract from the other side to Wednesday’s large gathering: That a big portion of that crowd came willingly and enthusiastically.
This proved President Robert Mugabe has more than residual support. Some people may write him off as old and outdated – which he is – but others equally regard him as the genuine article, as standing up for them.
He divides opinion for and against, but he is there and – as seen this week at his rally – one cannot say with certainty that he will be going anywhere any time soon.
So, what makes Mugabe tick? Well, Mugabe rambles and boasts, threatening and even seeming to gloat, which traits would ordinarily repel us “cultured, gentlemanly, sophisticated, civilised people”.
But that blunt and forthright way he talks could also be his political mainstay. He could have tapped into something not so obvious and clear – a broad coalition of voters in rural areas and urban areas who are perceived as “the masses”, povo or the underclass, exploited left, right and centre.
These include, according to the Urban Dictionary (a satirical, but often spot-on, crowd-sourced online dictionary), “the dregs of society, the lowest of the low, the detritus at the bottom of humanity, often consigned to slums, shanty towns and ghettos, often hard working, under-compensated, uneducated, overlooked and generally despised or at best pitied by those (read ‘us’) better off.”
Those firms in the private sector that disrespect and underpay workers, conveniently hiding behind Mugabe’s failed policies, are actually recruiting for Mugabe.
The same with those snobbish, hypocritical bosses who pile allowances upon allowances on themselves while telling everyone else in the company to tighten their belts; who delay paying salaries while having a secret separate payroll for themselves. Like Zanu PF, they are busy creaming off the economy.
Yes, we often treat less privileged compatriots paternalistically, with an attitude that we are superior beings. CEOs earning obscene salaries way above
$40 000 per month pay these people pittances of as little as $100 monthly. Is it any wonder then that many of them line up behind Mugabe to get back at their bosses? And that some of these workers have been at the forefront of company invasions? Business, like Zanu PF, has also been unkind to the people. So, they cannot morally distance themselves from Mugabe as better than him.
There has also been analytical shortcomings. We, the (so-called?) educated class, often treat these people as smelly dirt which should be avoided at all costs.
And when experts are asked to explain the steamrolling Mugabe machinery, they almost always zero in on one main factor: ignorance among the people. Only ignorance, they tell us, is capable of powering the Mugabe juggernaut.
But much more than ignorance was on display on Wednesday and, before that, in the massive crowds that Zanu PF assembled just before the 2013 elections possibly portending the outcome of the poll. The media has also come glaringly short in all this.
These “ignorant” people who make up the majority of Mugabe’s supporters turn up in huge, huge numbers for him, filling stadiums and gathering at the airport, but their views, for the most part, do not appear in mainstream or “prestige” newspapers.
On opinion pages, these newspapers include most categories of people, but this “uncultured” group is one they continually ignore. The views of these people are so foreign to their “educated” worldview.
Yes, it was never going to be logistically possible to assemble one million people especially in that confined space on Wednesday despite the much-hyped and unrealistic propaganda, but the turnout showed that Mugabe – despite the political thuggery – still commands strong though dwindling support.
That’s the political conundrum that Mugabe is.
lConway Nkumbuzo Tutani is a Harare-based columnist. Email: [email protected]
