Defections: A sad picture of capitulation and capture

Obituaries
By Alex T. Magaisa Breakups are hard, yet they are as common in politics as they are in more intimate paths of life. Some end quietly. But others take a more tempestuous course, and when that happens, it can be ugly. Where nuptials existed, having begun with a person in holy robes pronouncing the union […]

By Alex T. Magaisa

Breakups are hard, yet they are as common in politics as they are in more intimate paths of life. Some end quietly.

But others take a more tempestuous course, and when that happens, it can be ugly.

Where nuptials existed, having begun with a person in holy robes pronouncing the union of husband and wife undertaking to live happily ever after, it is another person, this time clad in judicial robes, who pronounces the unhappy ending.

On those occasions where the union refuses to quit peacefully, the process is accompanied by much drama, which includes the noise and some stench, the consequences of nuptial laundry being washed in public.

It is not a pretty sight.

The situation is not helped when one of the parties throws themselves into the arms of an old rival.

It rubs salt on the wounded former partner, prompting more unhealthy exchanges.

This might appear harsh, but it appears to be a suitable metaphor for events of last week when two former members of the opposition placed themselves on the lap of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, an event that simultaneously announced an unhappy separation and a strange union.

Both immediately announced that they felt “at home” in Zanu PF, a party that had tormented them and their supporters for the better part of the last two decades.

There was some irony about the setting of this union, but it may have escaped them.

They spent two decades criticising party-state conflation, but here they were, canoodling with Zanu PF mandarins at State House, the seat of government, not at Zanu PF’s headquarters, the home of the party. Lillian Timveos even cooed about “our chairperson”, referring to Oppah Muchinguri, the Zanu PF chairperson.

The other was Blessing Chebundo — he sounded nervous as he praised his new bosses.

It was an arrival in perfect Zanu PF style — no distinction between the party and the government.

The two belonged to two different parties, but it was telling that Zanu PF apparatchiks happily credited them to the MDC Alliance.

The Daily News, which of late has ploughed the propaganda furrow for the regime, took a similar line.

Timveos was a senior official of the MDC Alliance.

But Chebundo had already migrated from the MDC Alliance to the MDC-T led by Douglas Mwonzora.

That Zanu PF apparatchiks deliberately ignored this fact, choosing to credit Chebundo to the MDC Alliance betrays their desperation to score one over their real nemesis, the MDC Alliance.

You would have thought they would be happy to have taken him from the party they refer to as the biggest opposition party.

But no, when it comes to ugly news, the MDC-T does not exist. Only the MDC Alliance does.

It must be embarrassing to the MDC-T that their member, who was the party’s secretary for local government, was being credited to their rivals, the MDC Alliance, as if they do not exist.

Although the defection was a surprise for many who have known or worked with the two politicians, it was the choice of destination that left people open-mouthed.

Seeing Chebundo standing side by side with his former tormentor-in-chief, Emmerson Mnangagwa, might in normal circumstances have been celebrated as a grand reconciliation of former rivals.

In the circumstances, where the scarred veteran opposition politician was paraded like a hunter’s trophy, it was a sad picture of capitulation and capture.

Chebundo looked like a defeated man who had surrendered, a total contrast to the warrior who had once symbolised resistance against Zanu PF’s repression.

But what made it more pitiful was that while he stood there praising the man who had caused such misery, there were scores who were absent, either because they are dead or he abandoned them when they once stood with him.

Most veterans who bore witness to the tumultuous early days of the MDC have vivid memories of the torrid time that Chebundo and his supporters suffered at the hands of Mnangagwa.

The two men were competitors in the first parliamentary elections of the new millennium when the MDC made its grand entrance onto the political stage.

Chebundo was, by and large, a political novice.

Mnangagwa was already a veteran, having been in parliament and government since independence in 1980.

Chebundo upset the odds, walloping Mnangagwa, who had to be rescued by his then-boss, President Robert Mugabe, who handed him the role of speaker of Parliament.

Mnangagwa’s second attempt ended in another humiliating defeat again at the hands of Chebundo.

Mnangagwa had to be rescued again by Mugabe, who handed him the non-descript role of the minister in charge of rural affairs.

Realising that he could never beat the political upstart from the MDC, Mnangagwa took a gap and landed in a newly created rural constituency, Chirumanzi-Zibagwe, safe from Chebundo.

Now there he was at State House standing side by side with his former nemesis, displaying him as one of a pair of Zanu PF’s latest acquisitions.

For his part, Chebundo appeared to force a grin, itself an acknowledgment of defeat.

He said he wanted to participate in “development” and claimed to have “experience”.

It was an ignominious end to what had started as a heroic fight against repressive rule.

In some ways, seeing those two men there, the winner being welcomed by a man he had defeated, was a reminder of what had happened in the past 20 years — the MDC had won elections, but it had failed to take power.

Chebundo had twice defeated Mnangagwa, but it was Mnangagwa who was in power and Chebundo was on his knees, begging for association.

It encapsulates the tragedy of Zimbabwe’s politics.

But for all his courage of the past, Chebundo is the boxer who, to use the language of the sweet science, had lost his legs in the later rounds.

In 2018, he lost in the MDC Alliance primaries, tasting the same medicine that he had prescribed to Mnangagwa two decades before.

He found himself on the margins of the new MDC Alliance led by Nelson Chamisa.

Unsurprisingly, when an opportunity arose with the MDC-T, which was reconstructed based on the infamous Supreme Court judgement in March 2020, he decided to take it.

A few weeks ago, after the farcical extraordinary congress of the MDC-T, Douglas Mwonzora appointed him as the secretary for local government. Little did Mwonzora know that his new man had other ideas.

He had no intention of waiting long at the halfway house.

He decided if he was going to be Zanu PF’s lackey, he might as well wear the colours, rather than pretend to be in opposition.

But maybe the signs were there already, but few took notice.

A few weeks ago, a press statement on local government affairs signed by Chebundo had a glowing account of how the Zanu PF regime has managed local government affairs.

It mentioned how Zanu PF had instituted reforms in local government.

Those of us who critiqued it thought it was part of the so-called politics of “rational disputation” with Zanu PF, which Mwonzora’s MDC-T has been championing.

With a remarkable reluctance to criticise or challenge the Zanu PF regime for its numerous transgressions and repression, this has been nothing less than a policy of appeasement.

But Chebundo was already in full Zanu PF mode.

Instead of the half-hearted approach at the MDC-T, he has decided to go the whole hog.

Nobody except Chebundo can explain why he decided to do what might have been unthinkable a decade ago.

Despite the obvious disappointment of his incredible somersault, few of his former comrades can ever ignore the sacrifices that he made.

Yet even he too can never forget the sacrifices that were made by all those, young and old, who believed in him and the MDC.

Some lost their limbs and others lost their lives along the way.

Their mothers, widows, and orphaned children walk in the dusty streets and markets of Kwekwe.

Young men spent weeks away from their homes, guarding their leader’s home.

They sacrificed because they believed he was leading their fight against Zanu PF.

Now he must look them in the eye and say it was all in vain.

But he cannot look the dead in the eye because they are no longer here to witness the defection.

He can only face them in his conscience.

*This is an extract from Alex Magaisa’s latest Big Saturday Read