Zimbabwe and the leadership paradox
- From: "Zvakanaka" <lalapansi@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 03:59:36 +0200
Zimbabwe and the leadership paradox
Zim Independent
By Mutumwa Mawere
THE word paradox is often used wrongly and interchangeably with
contradiction but whereas a contradiction asserts its own opposite, many
paradoxes do allow for a resolution of some kind.
The recognition of ambiguities, equivocations and unstated assumptions
underlying known Zimbabwean leadership paradoxes has led to significant and
material confusion among the contenders for power to the extent that the
real focus on the change agenda has become obfuscated.
Twenty-seven is a significant number in southern Africa. One of Africa's
most illustrious sons, former South African president Nelson Mandela, spent
27 years in prison in as much as President Robert Mugabe and former
president Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia have spent the same amount of time in
power.
When Mandela was released from prison, it was obvious to the
custodians of apartheid as it was to its victims that change had to come and
the new order could not accommodate the old order. There was no discussion
of any third way but a new direction informed by new values and political
morality.
When Zambians, speaking eloquently through the ballot forced President
Kaunda out of office, it was obvious the country needed a new beginning
without him. However, Kaunda like many African leaders has not accepted that
he was responsible for lowering the standards of political leadership in his
country and for giving birth to Fredrick Chiluba.
When Chiluba took over, the country was a basket case and at the time
people used to refer euphemistically to KK (being the president's initials)
as Kwacha Killer. Indeed, the Kwacha was battered by KK's policies and after
27 years of misguided humanistic policies, Zambians were poorer than at
Independence.
Zambia's brain trust was largely externalised and those that remained
were too afraid to be the change they wanted and left the job to the trade
union movement to promote the change agenda.
Today, it is not surprising that Kaunda is one of the public admirers
of President Mugabe. He feels strongly that Zambians made a mistake by
electing Chiluba as president and in a sense he also feels that Zimbabweans
will make the same mistake if they were to elect anyone from the trade union
movement.
Unfortunately, Kaunda had no choice in deciding his successor and
never woke up to the fact that through his policies and programmes he had
denied his fellow countrymen the right to decide their political destiny.
The risks associated with challenging the hegemony of ruling parties
in Africa are well known and are no different from the ones that prevailed
under colonial states. As a result, the successors to tyrannical regimes
need not fit into an intellectually defined strait jacket.
Mandela became a leader because he symbolised the suffering of the
majority. If he had not spent 27 years in prison, he may never have acquired
the iconic status he has today or become the founding father of South
Africa. Equally if Chiluba had not been a victim of Kaunda's policies,
Zambians may never have voted him into office. In the case of Zimbabwe, can
it be the case that people who have not endured suffering the effects of bad
policies by Mugabe will be the beneficiaries?
Arguments have been advanced that the problem in Zimbabwe is that the
opposition has no credible leadership and, therefore, the prospect of
unseating President Mugabe is remote. What is undisputed however is the fact
that Morgan Tsvangirai has given more headaches to Mugabe than anyone has in
the last 27 years.
Zimbabwe has known of no other leader than President Mugabe. As Mugabe
approaches 28 years in office and an election whose outcome may already be
pre-determined - not because of the will of the people but due to the power
of incumbency - it is important that Zimbabweans ask themselves some basic
questions whose answers will inform what kind of Zimbabwe they should have.
Having watched Arthur Mutambara's Hard Talk interview on BBC and his
paradoxical message, it occurred to me that it is important that the
question of succession and leadership be interrogated critically now more
than ever.
While it is undeniable that Mugabe is an eloquent and educated leader,
it is also undeniable that his tenure in office has not produced the kind of
results that should be associated with such an intellectual giant. It is
also common cause that with the exception of a few, including the late Vice
President Simon Muzenda, Mugabe's cabinet since Independence has been
dominated by intellectuals.
What is clear is that such leadership has failed to give hope to
Zimbabweans and has dismally failed to fight poverty and entrench the rule
of law.
While Mugabe would like the world to believe that he is the champion
of the poor, the last 27 years has demonstrated that he has no faith in the
poor's minds and if anything he would rather have Jonathan Moyo, Joseph
Made, Patrick Chinamasa and others than have a Tsvangirai or Wellington
Chibhebhe in his cabinet, notwithstanding the fact that the latter may be
more popular and in touch with the poor.
The difference between what Mutambara may want to see in Zimbabwe and
what Mugabe believes in may be the same. What is evident is that Mugabe's
elite approach to development has failed in as much as Kaunda's same
approach failed as well and produced a Chiluba with the unavoidable
consequences.
At the heart of the Mutambara and Tsvangirai feud is the failure by
many people to recognise that the real agenda for change has to focus on
Mugabe and not on the victims. Mugabe has been in charge of for 27 years. He
is after all the president of MDC, Zanu PF, and all other Zimbabweans. When
he took the oath of office he did not do so as the president of a club
called Zanu PF but as a president of Zimbabwe. The sovereignty of Zimbabwe
is not owned by Mugabe or Zanu PF but by the people. A leader should
therefore emerge from the people irrespective of whether he is an
intellectual giant or not as long as the people are given a fair chance to
express their will.
The question is whether President Mugabe's reign has produced an
environment in which the citizens of Zimbabwe are free to express their
will. In addition, President Mugabe as is the case for any sitting president
has the natural advantage of incumbency.
He has access to state resources without which it is plausible that
Zanu PF would have disintegrated into worse factions than are evident in the
opposition. Has the president used his powers to promote oneness among
Zimbabweans? Or has he used the presidency to divide people? How much of the
state resources are being used to promote partisan interests? Is the state
machinery neutral in the contestation for power or is it an instrument for
entrenching the status quo?
To what extent is the opposition able to access state resources to
function?
Mugabe has won all the elections since Independence. Is it the case
that if he did not have state power, he would still have won all these
elections? One has to explain why it is the case that Zimbabwe is well
endowed with great minds and yet on the radar screen of the opposition such
great intellectual minds are missing in action. If they are missing in
action, why should people like Tsvangirai be excluded? Does a president have
to be an intellectual for the country to have the change it deserves? Who
should the change speak to? Today even Mugabe accepts that Tsvangirai has
the confidence of the educated and working people while Zanu PF has the
support of the rural masses.
If superior education matters, then Tsvangirai should be more
qualified to lead the rural masses on the back of the allegation that he is
not an intellectual and Mugabe should be the leader of the educated urban
minority. Has Mugabe's policies really helped the poor? How can Mugabe be
compared with Tsvangirai when the latter belongs to a different order and
has not been given a chance to rule?
Ultimately the citizens should own the change agenda and yet in the
case of Zimbabwe many intellectuals think that they should own this agenda
irrespective of their contribution to such change. While many would like
change to take place in Zimbabwe, it is evident that they would rather
invest as little as possible in such an agenda.
However, if there is no investment in any process, the outcome may not
be what people want. Mugabe has invested in making Zimbabwe a country in
which liberation credentials and not service is the key to power. Under this
construction, if you were never part of the struggle then you are less
Zimbabwean and yet no one bothered to change the constitution to reflect
such thinking.
If it is accepted that to be a president of Zimbabwe you must have
participated in the struggle then surely how can people like Tsvangirai who
have struggled for a better and new Zimbabwe be excluded from leading the
post Mugabe era. Should the focus be on Tsvangirai or the people of
Zimbabwe?
We now know that the MDC was divided - for whatever reasons in October
2005 - and two formations emerged. Barely two years later, the formation
that broke away from the Vatican and chose its own Pope, now wants to be
under the same Pope it vilifies. If the new Pope who accepted to lead the
formation strongly feels that he does not have what it takes to deliver
change, then surely, he must resign or join the winners.
In as much as the Mutambara faction would not support Mugabe because
of values it should also be the case that they should not support Tsvangirai
for the same reasons. However, if they have come to the inescapable
conclusion that Tsvangirai like Mandela represents the majority, then it is
not too late to rally behind him and produce the baby that Zimbabweans want.
Yes it is easy to talk of the third way but without a leader such kind
of language does not help the country move forward. Equally the talk of one
candidate like the Kenyans discovered does not help advance the cause of
democracy.
It should not be up to Tsvangirai to decide who should govern and he
rightly refused to endorse a scheme in which leaders will be packaged in
elite circles without the participation of the citizens. If the Mutambara
faction is confident that it has the people then what Tsvangirai is
proposing makes sense. Why would Mutambara want Tsvangirai to enter into
contracts on behalf of sovereign people?
The accusation that President Mugabe has ceased to be the president of
Zimbabwe and is now behaving as if the country belongs to Zanu PF needs to
be dealt with squarely as Zimbabweans approach the 2008 elections. The abuse
of power has to be part of the conversation. The absence of the voice of all
social partners (including business whose interests are threatened by bad
policies) in the discourse on change has to be a worrying phenomenon even
for President Mugabe.
I am not sure that the kind of Zimbabwe people want to see is a
country in which increasing the price of goods becomes a treasonable
offence. In such an environment can one expect people to freely express
themselves?
Politics is an expensive game and to the extent that the opposition
cannot access resources freely from any Zimbabwean while Zanu PF has
unfettered access to private and public resources, it is important that the
financing of political parties be openly discussed.
President Mugabe has made the allegation that he is victim of
imperialist conspiracy and the opposition is nothing but a surrogate of such
forces. A construction has been made that the opposition is a beneficiary of
unlimited funds from the West. How true is this? If this was true, I have no
doubt that the opposition MPs would have resigned from parliament where many
of them still remain members fully knowing that they have no impact but are
acutely aware that they would lose all the benefits that come with the
territory.
Does Tsvangirai exhibit signs that he has access to the funds that
Mugabe alleges? Could it be the case that the opposition is challenged
financially and in the final analysis would not be in a position to marshal
the kind of resources required to bring the change required? If this is the
case, how are Zimbabweans in the diaspora discussing the financial
implications of change and what kind of investment they need to put in place
for the change to occur?
Succession is the act or process of following in order or sequence.
The investment by Mugabe through deliberate policies has made political
succession a tricky subject. How can change be expected when citizens are
not free to openly discuss the track record of a long serving incumbent who
wants more time in office?
Even in 1978, it was obvious to Ian Smith that the future of Rhodesia
was doomed and he had no power to decide who should lead the post-colonial
state. I am convinced that Ian Smith would have liked someone other than
Mugabe to take the lead. He may have had his doubts about Mugabe's maturity
to provide the kind of leadership to move Rhodesia to new heights but
ultimately he had no input into the succession issue. In the case of South
Africa, the case may not be any different from the Zambia or Malawian.
If Ian Smith or Kaunda had no role to play in the succession issue,
why is it the case that people assume that Mugabe will have a role in
deciding who should lead Zimbabwea after him?
The future of Zimbabwe is as uncertain today as anything but what is
instructive is that the people who are the torchbearers of change
irrespective of their intellectual aptitude will become the inheritors of
the mess created over the last 27 years and before.
The law of succession has no aptitude test and anyone can be president
of Zimbabwe as long as there is any individual who has the ability to
influence, motivate and enable others to contribute towards the cause.
Leadership is the ability of an individual to set an example for others and
lead from the front. It is an attitude that influences the environment
around us.
Having accepted that the future of Zimbabwe may be led by someone less
intellectual than Mugabe it is important that citizens invest in ensuring
that there are checks and balances that will allow for the development of
society where pluralism can thrive.
Such investment should start now and it should not be the
responsibility of the leader to invest in such an institutional framework of
tolerance and justice but it should be incumbent upon all to start changing
the conversations of hate into conversations of interest driven change.
Ideological discussions need to start now with a view to locating the
post-Mugabe era in an ideological matrix that is informed by global trends
and developments.
.
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