"The forthcoming Zimbabwean elections will certainly be interesting to follow. While it is difficult to predict who will win at this stage (there are many undecided voters in Zimbabwe), only a finite number of cards can be played. In this post, I have attempted to exposition these cards (barring the violence and opponent suppression and intimidation cards).
Regardless of who wins or loses, my wish is for the Zimbabwean elections to be conducted in a manner that is peaceful and yields an incontestable outcome. Because, this is what the Zimbabwean economy really needs to bounce back."
According to pronouncements that were made by key observer contingents, unlike the 2008 elections, the 2013 harmonized elections were generally free of violence (i.e. my wish, for the Zimbabwean election to be conducted in a manner that is peaceful, was granted) [1]. Thus, the 2013 Zimbabwean elections can generally be regarded as free.
However, the 2013 elections featured a host of irregularities that will continue to polarize future debates on the extent to which they were fair.
Truth be told, I expected the outcome of the 2013 harmonized elections to be dreadfully close. However, as Illustration 1 unequivocally demonstrates, the outcome of the 2013 elections was anything but close:
 |
| Illustration 1 (click on illustration to zoom in) Adapted From: Sokwanele |
Illustration 1 demonstrates that the MDC-T was trounced in the 2013 elections; the party experienced a monumental reversal of fortunes. Interestingly, the gulf between the victors and the losers left everyone in a state of bewilderment; generally, everyone expected a marginal gap.
A number of narratives have been posited to explain the 2013 election outcome. They can be summed as follows:
- Zanu-PF was the better political party: Proponents of this narrative believe that the MDC-T: 1) lost touch with the evolving needs of the electorate; 2) fashioned a negative campaign that lacked resonance; 3) lost its appeal to voters owing to an admixture of the MDC-T's corruption and incompetence (which became evident during the lifespan of the GNU), and; 4) was derailed by its president's sex scandals. Proponents of this narrative also believe that the party's ground-game fell short; they believe that MDC-T did not go on an aggressive-enough drive to register its supporters and turn them out on Election Day. Evidently, this narrative unequivocally speaks to a failure of leadership.
- The Zimbabwean elections were rigged: Some quarters allege that (the aforementioned) irregularities skewed the electoral outcome in favor of Zanu-PF. Succinctly put, they allege that the election was rigged. To be fair: In 2009, a Government of National Unity (GNU) was formed to: 1) Stabilize the Zimbabwean Economy, and; 2) Repair the country's institutions (in a bid to deliver fresh free and fair elections). When the 2013 harmonized elections were held, the inclusive government had not yet concluded the implementation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA). Simply put, the MDC-T was complicit in the failure to revitalize the (very same) institutions that yielded the outcome that it's challenging [13]. Like the previous narrative, this narrative also points to a failure of MDC-T's leadership.
Over the last week, I did my own (informal) research to identify the dynamics (within the MDC) that could have spawned the scenarios that are encapsulated in Narratives 1. and 2. My research largely entailed reading a broad cross section of informed opinion pieces on the MDC, and, talking to people who knew of: 1) the power centers in the MDC; 2) the party's internal political dynamics, and; 3) the characters of its leaders (and how they influenced the party's decision-making dynamics).
In this post, I will present a meta-narrative that integrates the disaggregated information pieces that I gathered. A caveat: This narrative should be regarded as a subjective proposition on the root causes of the failure of the MDC (in the 2013 elections).
The narrative will argue that the MDC has, since inception, been unconsciously alienating key power and support bases. Owing to this, the party has been progressively weakening. This weakness culminated in the party's poor performance in the 2013 harmonized elections.
***
...The Big Tent Party: How the MDC came to be
The MDC was founded in 1999, and its founding constituents are shown in Illustration 2 as follows:
 |
| Illustration 2 (click on illustration to zoom in) |
As Illustration 2 demonstrates the founding constituents of the MDC were:
- Unionists: By 1995, Zimbabwe's GINI coefficient had risen to 0.5 [3]; i.e. it had exceeded the threshold for social unrest (0.4). In an environment with diminishing purchasing power (inflation) and anemic GDP growth [2], it was only inevitable for this unrest to find its embodiment in Marx's classical battle between Capital and Labor [17]. During the 1990s, anti-establishment unions increasingly sprawled-up to enhance workers' job security and lobby for more earnings per unit of man hours. To increase their bargaining power, unions united under a federated organizational structure that is known as the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). The ZCTU was, until 1999, headed by Mr. Morgan Tsvangirayi. Together with leftist student unions, the ZCTU organized a host of popular uprisings. The uprisings / protests harnessed the discontent of the urban masses and brought the economy to a grinding halt (albeit for periods of time not exceeding a week) [4]. Generally, the unionists argued that the Lancaster House Constitution was an instrument for the suppression of vulnerable pockets of Zimbabwean society. The key asset that the ZCTU possessed was grassroots support from urban masses and students from tertiary institutions.
- Deposed Farmers: When Zimbabwe attained her independence (in 1980), 46.5% of the nation's arable land was owned by around 6,000 commercial farmers (most of whom were of European descent) [5]. In contrast to this, 5.103 million people (~ 70% of Zimbabwe's population in 1980) lived in what were known as Tribal Trust Lands. Generally, these were stretches of marginal territory that had been over-exploited. To reverse this legacy of colonization, in the late 70's the Independence Movement and the UK government agreed that, going forward, land tenure would morph under a willing-buyer-willing-seller principle. Under the terms of the Lancaster House Agreement, the Zimbabwean Government (GoZ) had the right of first refusal in all sales of agricultural real estate in Zimbabwe. If the GoZ identified a farm that met its 'resettlement criteria', it would purchase it (using funds from a £44 million grant from the British government), sub-divide it and resettle landless communities on the farm. By the mid-90s, it had become evident that this policy would never yield its envisaged outcome: the rural population of Zimbabwe had increased by nearly 50%, and, the land ownership patterns remained relatively unchanged; rural areas were overpopulated. A series of ad hoc constitutional revisions saw the majority of white commercial farmers losing their farms without compensation [6] [17]. These farmers coalesced into an anti-establishment movement that sought to (via political and legal channels): 1) Reclaim their possessed farms, and/or; 2) Compel the Zimbabwean government to compensate them for property lost and damages incurred [7]. Generally, deposed commercial farmers possessed the following key assets: idle pools of funds and highly potent lobbying machinery.
- Civic Organizations: During the 1990s, Zimbabwe endured successive maladies that stretched the nation's welfare system and its traditional social support system. They include: 1) Yield-cutting droughts, locust and army worm invasions; 2) Economic pains that stemmed from austerity measures (like the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme) [18], and; 3) Decimation of the nation's human capital and social fabric by the HIV/AIDS virus. Between 1990 and 1999, a broad array of single-issue civic organizations [8] burgeoned to combat the first and second-order effects of the-said maladies. By and large, the civic organizations regarded themselves as guardians of their target communities. And, they sought to secure constitutional protections for the vulnerable. This rallied them around a new cause: lobbying, under the auspices of the National Constitutional Assembly, the Zimbabwean government to formulate a new "people-driven" constitution. The key assets that civic organizations possessed were their relationships with foreign governments, international donors and transnational entities.
- Academics and Lawyers: They were invariably principals of civic organizations and leading educationists at tertiary academic institutions. Their key asset was/is their ability to build, using a multi-stakeholder approach, organizational infrastructure around social and political causes.
Illustration 3, below, depicts the overlapping relationships between the MDC, ZCTU and the National Constitutional Assembly:
 |
| Illustration 3 (click on illustration to zoom in) |
As Illustration 3 demonstrates, when the MDC was founded in 1999 [9], it was essentially a subset of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA); its structure, human capital mix, financing strategy, vision, mission and objectives were the products of the NCA ecosystem. Together with other constituents of the NCA, the MDC campaigned for a "No" vote in Zimbabwe's 2000 constitutional referendum. By and large, the NCA opposed the Chidyausiku Commission's draft constitution because:
- The draft did not have a retroactive limit on the number of terms that a sitting president could serve.
- They felt that the draft gave legal immunities to the state.
While the Commercial Farmer's Union was not part of the NCA Ecosystem, it unofficially joined the NCA in its "Vote No" campaign, because it was in opposition to the Section 2.3.2 of the draft constitution which, according to the pronouncements that it made, would violate private property rights. The section read, and I quote:
In view of the overriding considerations set out in subsection (1), where agricultural land is acquired compulsorily for the resettlement of people in accordance with a programme of land reform, any compensation payable must reflect an equitable balance between the public interest and the interests of those from whom the land is acquired.
In the assessment of compensation for the compulsory acquisition of agricultural land, regard must be had to the following factors:
(a) the history of the ownership, use and occupation of the land;
(b) the price paid for the land when it was last acquired;
(c) the current use to which the land is put;
(d) any investment which the State or the acquiring authority may have made which improved or enhanced the value of the land;
(e) the resources available to the acquiring authority in implementing the programme of land reform;
(f) any financial constraints that necessitate the payment of compensation in installments over a period of time; and
(g) any other relevant factor which may be specified in an Act of Parliament.
Thus, during the "Vote No" campaign era, an unwritten alliance was forged between the MDC and the membership of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU): Members of the CFU would fund the MDC, and, the MDC would reciprocate by insulating them from the loss of property.
***
Interestingly, the MDC was an usual fixture on the Zimbabwean political landscape. Unlike its adversaries, the party did not have a monolithic ideology. Under the banner of "Change", it had the flexibility to move to the ideological "left" or "right" of any position that its key rivals took. This flexibility allowed the MDC to:
- Link major and contradictory principles;
- Build a fusionist coalition of groups with disparate needs and wants.
Succinctly expressed, the MDC was a "big tent party" that housed the entire spectrum of centrist and leftist viewpoints.
...Balance of Power and Alienation of Supporters
Illustration 4, below, shows the 1999 balance of power in the MDC:
 |
| Illustration 4 (click on illustration to zoom in) |
As Illustration 4 demonstrates, in 1999 Unionists had the highest amount of power in the MDC. They could:
- Drive their agendas even when there was resistance from other constituents.
- Get other constituents to do what they would not otherwise do.
Their power stemmed from the grassroot support structures that they had cultivated, and, the political capital that they had built through their collective bargaining endeavors. Unfortunately, nothing in their antecedence had prepared them to manage an organization with a diverse range of viewpoints, like the MDC.
In 2001, the leadership of the MDC faced its first real internal challenge. The vocal extreme left of the party, of which Mr. Munyaradzi Gwisai was the poster child, advocated, as a proactive measure, for the party to: abandon its centrist position and move leftward to occupy the ideological terrain that the incumbents had seized.
To be exact, they encouraged the party to formally:
- Embrace the land reform exercise that Zanu-PF was spearheading.
- Champion pro-working class socialist policies (that were similar to the policies that Zanu-PF implemented in the pre-1990 era).
These recommendations, were from the vantage point of the leadership of the MDC, unpalatable for the following reasons:
- The MDC would alienate Deposed Farmers if it embraced the land reform. If this happened, their sizable financial contributions would evaporate.
- The land reform policy, was regarded, in Western quarters as a regressive policy. Embracing it publicly would, in essence, mean a certain PR death for the MDC. This would, in turn, make it difficult for the organization to secure the continued support of international community.
- They knew that the 1980s-era socialist policies were unsustainable; the policies would increase Zimbabwe's already ballooning debt - which would culminate in austerity measures (that would ultimately hurt the working class) [14].
To preserve internal harmony and the party's international brand, the leadership of the MDC saw it fit to boot-out the extremists. By failing to find the middle ground between the party's official position (on land reform) and the position of "the socialists", the MDC condemned itself to a future of being caricatured as "a stooge of the West that desired to reverse the gains of the liberation struggle". [10]
In urban areas, this caricature did not influence the electorate's perception of the MDC. However, in rural areas, i.e. where 70% of Zimbabwe's population resides, this caricature defined the electorate's perception of the MDC. Understandably, this made it perennially difficult for the party to make political inroads into rural Zimbabwe.
The next challenge for the MDC came in 2005, i.e. during the run-up to Zimbabwe's senatorial elections, when the leadership of the MDC was split between participating / not participating in the elections. Basically, the camps that were at loggerheads included:
- The Tsvangirayi camp (i.e. the camp of the party President) which asserted that the senatorial elections were unconstitutional. And, it advocated for the party to boycott the elections.
- The Ncube camp (i.e. the camp of the party's Vice President) which urged the party to participate.
This squabble tore the MDC into two; the Welshman Ncube breakaway faction and the Morgan Tsvangirayi MDC formation.
Owing to Mr. Ncube's preference for a bipartisan approach to resolving national issues, the rank and file members of the MDC suspected that he was a Zanu PF apologist. Thus, it is reasonable to assert that he did not have a broad base of internal support. Due to this reality, most people argue that the split had no material impact on the MDC. However, this is a simplistic way of looking at things.
Ncube had a stabilizing effect on the MDC. He always deferred to the party's constitution for guidance on resolving conflicts, disciplining party members, and most importantly, selecting candidates who would represent the party in elections. Further, he always made sure that others did likewise.
This insulated the party from the grass-roots discontent that would have stemmed from "translucent and partial" methods of appointing candidates and resolving conflicts. When he left, no one assumed this stabilizing role. Unilateral, corrupt and deleterious appointments proliferated [16]. And, they had the net-effect of alienating the party's grass roots support structures: "A house divided against itself cannot stand" (- Abraham Lincoln).
Prior to the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU), the MDC formations and Zanu-PF sought to establish common ground. Zanu-PF was adamant that it would never enter into any negotiations with parties that did not acknowledge the permanence and irreversibility of the land-reform exercise. [15]
Both MDC formations acknowledged the permanence and irreversibility of the land-reform exercise. For Tsvangirayi's MDC, this weakened the support it received from:
- Commercial farmers who hoped to reclaim their "acquired" properties.
- Members of the international community who supported Tsvangirayi because they were incensed by the manner in which Zimbabwe's land reform exercise was conducted.
- Quarters that did not understand why Mr. Munyaradzi Gwisai had been booted-out of the MDC in 2001 when he had clearly advocated for a position that the MDC had eventually taken [15]. Some members of the MDC felt that this was a sign of its leaderships' lack of principles.
Owing to the first two bullet points, the money spigot gradually ran dry. Thus, the party's 2013 campaign was chronically underfunded. Generally, the opposition parties that participated in Zimbabwe's 2013 election preached the gospel of Jobs, Infrastructure, Education and Healthcare. Otherwise put, the opposition parties spoke from the same script. Due to the-said funding constraints, the MDC was unable to differentiate its campaign. This gave Zanu-PF the upper-hand in "swing constituencies" [11].
***
The Makones: During the pre-GNU days, a certain entrepreneurial couple appeared from relative obscurity and became close to Mr. Morgan Tsvangirayi. Unlike the other members of the MDC, the Makones were not part of the NCA Ecosystem (refer back to Illustration 3). Hence, most MDC members were perplexed by their almost-immediate ascent to the party's upper echelons. Generally, most MDC members feel/felt that the couple:
- Was cordoning Mr. Morgan Tsvangirayi off from everyone. They argue that owing to this, Mr. Tsvangirayi lost touch with the grassroots sentiment.
- Had accumulated too much power in the party, and;
- Was overriding/hijacking the MDC's constitutional mechanisms for appointing party officials and election candidates. Owing to this sentiment, some of the candidates who failed to secure nominations in the party's primaries stood as independents in the 2013 elections.
By and large, members of the NCA Ecosystem unequivocally opposed the secondment of Mrs. Theresa Makone to the Home Affairs Ministry, i.e. the Ministry that was responsible for the production of Zimbabwe's contested voter's role (and administering elections in line with SADC's guidelines and principles for democratic elections). They argued that there was nothing in her antecedence that had prepared her to manage such a crucial ministry.
No one listened to them.
***
Shortly after the death of his wife, Mr. Tsvangirayi became embroiled in a sex scandal of epic proportions. This scandal eroded the support that the MDC received from:
- Civil society: Generally, the leaders (and mid-level functionaries) of most Zimbabwean civil society organizations are socially-assertive-highly-educated-financially-independent women (who can best be described as feminists) [19]. To them, Mr. Tsvangirayi's "genuine search for love" epitomized the objectification of women. Crudely put; they were mortified by Mr. Tsvangirayi's conduct. And, this cost him their support (particularly the support of the leaders of gender advocacy groups).
- Western Political Entities: Who generally regard sexual misconduct as an unforgivable political sin.
By and large, less support translated into less funding and lower chances of having a resonant campaign.
During the 2013 constitutional referendum, elements of the NCA urged the electorate to vote against the adoption of the COPAC draft constitution. As it did in 2001, the NCA argued that parliament deserved most of the powers that the draft had consigned to the presidency.
The NCA appealed to its erstwhile collaborator, Mr. Tsvangirayi (who was now the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe), for support and more time to campaign for the "No" vote.
Curiously, Mr. Tsvangirayi declined to give the NCA his support and he rubbished its campaign. To put icing on the cake, he also called the body "stupid". In response to this, the principals of the NCA launched their own political platform (using the human capital that they would have otherwise contributed to the MDC's campaign).
The loss of the NCA's support was tantamount to a loss of the MDC's brain trust.
***
Hence, one can argue that MDC has, since inception, been unconsciously alienating key power and support bases. Because of this, the party has been progressively weakening. This weakness culminated in the party's poor performance in the 2013 harmonized elections.
Therefore, the answer to the question "What happened to the MDC?" is: it succumbed to self-cannibalism.
#TotalRandomness: The answer to the question "Is there anything like self-cannibalism in nature?", is Yes - see Illustration 5 [12]:
 |
| Illustration 5 (click on illustration to zoom in) Adapted From: Mike Rugnetta |
[1] The key observer contingents that monitored the 2013 elections include SADC, the African Union, China and the Zimbabwe Election Support Network.
[2] Between 1990 and 1999, Zimbabwe's inflation rate (CPI) grew at a mean rate of 28.57% per year. During this time period, the inflation rate bounced between 17.36% per year (in 1990) and 58.52% per year (in 1999). This contrasts with the 1980s where inflation grew at a mean rate of 12.81% per year and hovered between 5.402% per year (in 1980) and 23.12% per year (in 1989). This simple comparison illustrates that Zimbabwean inflation skyrocketed in the 1990s. During the 1980s, the mean real growth rate of Zimbabwe's GDP was 5.22% per year and the real GDP growth rate hovered between - 1.907% per year (in 1984) and 14.42% per year (in 1980). This contrasts with the 1990s where the mean real GDP growth rate was 2.906% per year and the real GDP growth rate hovered between -9.016% per year (in 1992) and 10.36% per year (in 1996). This simple comparison illustrates that the Zimbabwean real GDP growth contracted in the 1990s.
[3] 55.74% of Zimbabwe's annual income was held by 20% of the people.
[4] These 2-4 day protests were, in union parlance, known as "stay-aways".
[5] For a detailed history of the land ownership patterns in Zimbabwe, read this Wikipedia article.
[6] Post-1990 iterations of the Zimbabwean land reform policy include Compulsory Land Acquisition and the Fast-Track Land Reform Exercise.
[7] By and large, the farmers who lost their land were members of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU).
[8] The civic organizations predominantly focused on the following issues: Human Rights, Women's Rights, Children's Rights, Democracy, Corruption and Empowerment.
[9] The MDC was founded after the trade union movement's first National Working Peoples Convention in 1999.
[10] I think that it was Bruce Bueno De Mesquita who once said "There always exists a principled way to defend any position, no matter how extreme it is".
[11] (Click on the "Margin tab" after clicking on: this link) Generally, the constituencies shaded in navy blue are the swing constituencies.
[12] There is a Shona saying that loosely translates to "A big snake does not bite itself" (The original Shona version is: "Nyoka huru haizvirumi"). Illustration 5 disproves that saying.
[13] Actually, the MDC has now withdrawn its election petition. For the reasons, read Morgan Tsvangirayi's affidavit.
[14] The socialist policies of the 1980s lifted a large number of people out of poverty in a very short space of time. That is an unequivocal fact. Generally, they were donor funded. When the flow of donor funds started to dwindle, the government of Zimbabwe increasingly funded the policies using debt from multilateral finance institutions - which increased the nation's indebtedness. This culminated in forced austerity, which was, in turn responsible for creating the social pressures that spawned the MDC.
[15] It would have been politically disastrous for the MDC to advocate for the reversal of the land reform policy. Zimbabweans from all walks of life regret the chaotic and violent manner in which the land reform policy was conducted. However, they do not wish for the policy to reversed. As far as the land question is concerned, Zimbabweans would like the "reform farmers" to be more productive. One can argue that it was only inevitable for the MDC to embrace land reform. Thus, it is reasonable to assert that the loss of support (for the MDC) from the deposed farmers was unavoidable.
[16] A lot of the businesspeople who have had interactions with MDC-appointed Ministers, deputy Ministers and Councillors say that the MDC's capacity to administer "still has a long way to go"; i.e. the party's appointees are largely unqualified to govern. This could stem from a flawed system for selecting and appointing candidates.
[17] Contrary to popular belief, the violent farm seizures that occurred in Zimbabwe were not the product of a top-down government initiated process, but a bottom-up process wherein landless people invaded farms. This process started in the late 1990s, in a communal area called Svosve. And, it was only rubber-stamped by the Zanu-PF government in the year 2000. It was this official endorsement made the invasions ubiquitous. Like the union-organized popular uprisings of the 1990s, the invasions had their origins in rising inequality. Thus, they should in essence, be regarded as nothing more than class warfare.
[18] For a brief description of the havoc that ESAP wrecked, read this excerpt from Chimhou and Woodhouse: "The origins of Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis are often identified in the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) the government initiated in 1990 as part of a financial agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The key consequence of ESAP was the rapid closure of significant sections of manufacturing industry and a wider collapse of the country’s non-agricultural economy during the first half of the 1990s. Rapid reduction in formal private and public sector employment followed, with 45,000 jobs lost by 1995 and wages falling from 64 to 40 per cent of national income (Moyo and Yeros, 2005: 175). Those remaining in work by the mid-1990s saw the value of their wages eroded by inflation to only 75 per cent of their 1990 value in the private sector, or only 61 per cent in the case of the public sector, and “inflation in the second half of the 1990s probably cut real earnings in half again” (Addison and Laakso, 2003: 461). Widespread unrest, including strikes by government employees reached a critical point when, in 1997, War Veterans staged public demonstrations, threatening to split the ruling party."
[19] Civic organizations are ostensibly apolitical and they generally do not actively campaign for political parties. However, they are particularly adept at: 1) spotting leadership talent in rural areas. 2) generating campaign-bolstering knowledge on the dynamics and resonant issues in target communities, and; 3) Establishing links to donors who seek to expand the Zimbabwean democratic space.
