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| Bashed...Elton Mangoma |
He looked every inch the picture of a man coming out of a drunken brawl. His shirt was torn, his face swollen, nose bloodied and the skin sagging under his eyes. He could be mistaken for the typical villager coming from a drinking binge. Only this was Elton Mangoma, the deputy treasurer-general of the MDC-T.
No, the torn clothes were not out of want or even some traditional penitential rite that requires one to humble themselves; nor was he coming out of a village drink where he had been involved in a brawl.
Mangoma was coming from Number 44 Nelson Mandela Avenue in Harare, known as Harvest House, the headquarters of MDC-T.
He was waylaid by 20 youths that beat him black and blue for being the face of internal opposition to Morgan Tsvangirai, who has fruitlessly led the party for the past 14 years within which he has lost three successive presidential elections.
In 2000, Tsvangirai was rejected by his own in Buhera where he lost a parliamentary election.
The natural calls for change of leadership, which Mangoma captured in a letter to Tsvangirai a couple of weeks ago, have brought the worst in the MDC-T and Tsvangirai.
Mangoma, who was the unluckier on Saturday as secretary-general Tendai Biti, youth leaders Solo Madzore and Promise Mkwananzi escaped barely scathed, could have met his Saturday much earlier.
It was long coming.
On January 27, MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai “came to the rescue” of Mangoma as youths wanted to assault him over his letter.
It is reported that Tsvangirai briefly addressed the youths who were saying they wanted “to teach Mangoma a lesson” — which could be a lesson in anything but democracy.
The youths even mocked Mangoma for his physical handicap.
A newspaper column aptly pointed out that Tsvangirai’s “saves” had become one too many.
Over the weekend, at least five more people were assaulted for their perceived connections with Mangoma; four at Harvest House on Saturday and one in Glen Norah at a rally that Tsvangirai addressed on Sunday.
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Mangoma’s ordeal falls into a lengthening list of orchestrated violence against Tsvangirai’s opponents which has been directed at former secretary Welshman Ncube; legislators Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga and Trudy Stevenson; and party officials Toendepi Shonhe, Fortune Gwaze and Peter Guhu.
Outside the party HQ, activists have been involved in acts of violence and thuggery and urban terrorism that saw the torching of buses and the petrol bombing of police stations.
Last year, a journalist, Herbert Moyo, was assaulted by MDC-T thugs at Harvest House.
What the latest turn of events is pointing to is essentially a party in crisis and the deployment of fear and violence as an instrument of control.
That instrument is firmly in the hands of Morgan Tsvangirai.
The control is both physical and psychological.
It is a throwback to the year 2005 and the month of October.
MDC was then a united party.
The issue of whether to participate in the senatE elections after the bicameral system had been reintroduced divided opinion, with the majority wanting the MDC to take part in the elections while Tsvangirai wanted to boycott.
Tsvangirai made the minority of the top leadership of the party.
After a narrow national council vote that favoured participation, Tsvangirai used a non-existent veto to shoot down the democratic feeling of his party.
The party split right through the middle.
The times were dangerous.
Fear and violence became instruments of control.
Those that believe politics should be cleaner, like Welshman Ncube, became targets of violence.
Ncube has remained disgusted by the use of violence in the MDC-T and its deployment by Tsvangirai and it is one of the reasons that he has refused to join hands with Tsvangirai even for their mutual benefit ahead of elections.
In the run up to last year’s elections when calls were made for a combined MDC front, Ncube told a newspaper that his differences with Tsvangirai stemmed from the latter’s disregard for certain values and principles.
“And those values and principles included that it is an affront on anyone to be subjected to violence in order to secure the support of that person,” said the former University of Zimbabwe lecturer.
“There is no greater affront on the dignity of a human being than to subject a person to violence whether it’s within the family to say you must comply as my wife with my dictates, if you don’t I beat you. In the political arena it’s the same thing.
“If you don’t agree with me I then subject you to violence. It is an affront. It is a basic violation of the dignity of every person. And we agreed that we will never do that as a political party”.
Tsvangirai thrives on intra-party violence, never mind that he tries to play dove outside.
Professor Ncube let us in on the intricate organic violence in the MDC.
He said Tsvangirai’s MDC had “a rhetorical commitment to anti-violence. (But) day in, day out, beginning with the time of the split, they employ violence.”
“In the MDC, by 2005 we were running a militia in the party to abuse, to abduct, to beat up people.
“There were senior party members who were being abducted and taken to the sixth floor boardroom of Harvest House and stripped naked in front of girls and beaten,” he was quoted in Daily News on April 25, 2013.
He related: “(Tichaona) Mudzingwa (late former deputy minister of Transport), for instance, was stripped naked at the party head office and made to stand on a table to address young people who included girls as young as 20 years, and was beaten.
“Frank Chamunorwa, who is our vice chairperson today, was beaten right at the gate of my house and had his arm broken.
“When the national council said we expel these people, the president of the party (Tsvangirai) said I reinstate them on my own, unilaterally. It simply says we do not have a commitment to the principle of non-violence.
“It’s a matter of public record that within the party, they use violence as an instrument of getting their way even among themselves,” Ncube told the paper.
The ghost of 2005 haunts the party.
The worst is coming and the coming days are likely to be messier.
Intra-MDC-T violence will be commonplace and it will be for the benefit of Tsvangirai who uses violence and mobs to stifle debate partly because he is not naturally endowed with a capacity for sustained, cogent and compelling reasoning.
Mob rule, mock leadership
There is scant doubt that Tsvangirai, buoyed by perceived popularity in the grassroots, believes he is the fittest leader and that emboldens him to use violence, after all the party bears his surname.
In his mind, all the party youths on the streets and townships belong to him, making it unsafe for anyone that is opposed to him.
This gives him a sense of security.
However inside, he is empty and that is why he has been trying to maintain his increasingly tenuous hold on the party by calling on grassroots leadership and even the rally on Sunday.
He seeks a rest for his ego.
However, all discerning watchers should be alive to certain fundamentals in Tsvangirai and the MDC.
First, his reliance on youth mobs and violence and coercion speak volumes about his leadership style which, in the unlikely event that he becomes leader of Zimbabwe, means that the country will be an unsafe dictatorship run by a militia of loyalists.
Tsvangirai will be the typical “African dictator”.
Second, Tsvangirai has shown us he is unable to take criticism and engage in dialogue without resorting to violence or coercion.
It does not matter, though it should have been surprising, that today Tsvangirai is surrounded by some rather smooth fellows like Nelson Chamisa, Obert Gutu and Douglas Mwonzora.
This is the politics of survival and even the now religious Chamisa stands to benefit from the blood-letting Tsvangirai to save his bacon.
He has been accused of failure to commissar his party to victory and there is growing currency for the likes of Solomon Madzore.
It is conceivable that the clique around Tsvangirai, including electoral losers like Gutu and Mwonzora, could be eyeing another October 12, 2005, after which they will become Tsvangirai’s right hand men.
It is all intriguing.
Yet the bottom line, and this by now may have become apparent to MDC-T supporters in and out of the country, is that Tsvangirai is a desperate man who is now relying on the instrument of coercion and a comforting mirage of grassroots popularity.
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