If the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) keeps on with its current trajectory, it may well be on its way to doing away with personality politics.
Maggie Mzumara
The resounding success of the party’s Bulawayo and Mutare marches in the absence of leader, Morgan Tsvangirai has shown that the movement can survive and possibly thrive outside of him.
For long the “big man”, personality politics had plagued the MDC-T in just as much as in other parties including and in particular the ruling Zanu-PF.
Since the inception of the democratic movement, it had appeared as if outside of Tsvangirai the party had no life. And with his undeniable ability to move the masses, those that left Tsvangirai’s big tent have withered and formed party formations that continue to struggle to register themselves as forces to reckon with. As if proof that without Tsvangirai the going is not so easy for them.
By standing and succeeding in the absence of party leader, the MDC-T has effectively “moved the centre” of power from one person and vested it in the party’s executive, which collectively led the marches. To her credit, deputy president of the party Thokozani Khupe, ably addressed the multitudes.
While, Tsvangirai may still enjoy popularity, it is very key for him and observers to note that he is not the be all and end all of his party. In essence, the standing up and running of the show without him, gives a glimpse of the succession trajectory beyond Tsvangirai if he were for whatever reason to exit the stage. It has become imaginable that the ship may and could be steered by others, which is more than what can be said for the ruling party.
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Of course, beyond Tsvangirai, the onus would then be on those left to maintain the momentum and not drop the ball.
That the centre is not fixated on any one “big man” is healthy for the MDC-T because really a political party should not exist as a private property of any one man. It should never be in the pocket of one man and his family. For any revolution to be sustainably healthy in the long term, it should belong to the membership. Led by some chosen leader, but belonging to the card-carrying masses.
This gives broad-based ownership of that revolution.
Another crucial advantage for what the MDC-T has demonstrated is that what glues them together or what focuses them as a party is not a person, a being, but the issues, the ideology and the policies of that movement as they evolve and as understood and interpreted by the membership.
For long, talk has been that the MDC-T is not very different from its nemesis, Zanu PF, but doing away with personality politics, if it successfully and continuously demonstrates this, could very well mark a distinct departure from the “politics as usual” we continue elsewhere on the political landscape.
While this development could be great for the party as an entity, for Tsvangirai as a person it may very well show him that he is expendable and that the days where he was the life and blood of that democratic revolution are behind him.
How he lives with the realisation that whether he is there or not, the party can thrive, is a litmus test whose results remain to be seen.
In the past, in the MDC-T, as in Zanu PF, promise and ambition in others other than the “big man” himself have been punishable, we wait to see if there won’t be any backlash for anyone.
Whichever way one slices it, MDC-T is breaking new ground for itself and Tsvangirai could soon be put on notice by these developments, if poor health has not already and naturally done so.
Has it taken ill-health to usher in a glimpse of succession politics? Could this also be seen elsewhere anytime soon? Time will tell.
But whatever happens, the centre should not be eternally rigid, but be movable and let the ideas, issues, ideologies, policies and indeed the struggle be that which holds a party together, not a mere mortal. Heaven forbid, mortality should be the deciding factor. We will all, including the likes of Zanu PF deputy youth secretary Kudzanai Chipanga, who may or may not believe otherwise, do well to remember that people are, but mere mortals, let us not deify them. Reality has, but a way of checking in.
Maggie Mzumara is a media, communication and leadership specialist. She writes this as a socio-political analyst.
