The Sunday News
Vincent Gono, Features Editor
IN the world’s democracies elections are won on the strength of the campaigning parties’ manifestos. A manifesto is a published document containing declaration of the ideology, intentions, views, policies and programmes of a political party.
The manifesto is verbally fed to the public during the campaigning time and has to be carefully crafted. It is the worm that is dangled to the fish so that the fisherman catches it or the carrot that is dangled to the rabbit so as to grab it.
This is however, not usually the case with Zimbabwean politics especially opposition political parties. Not that the manifestos are not there, they are there yes, but only as a formality. They are not usually fed to the public for them to debate the issues and make informed decisions on which party to vote for.
What we have seen from opposition political parties is a hotchpotch of fragmented and hard to sell political ideas that could barely be called a manifesto just like a stake of timber could not be called a ship.
This is so because most of the political parties do not have a mind of their own. They borrow both the ideology, the policies and the funds from the West that is now all too desperate, too vicious and too determined to vindicate itself for its past failures to dislodge Zanu-PF.
A borrowed political, social and economic mind therefore, makes the opposition political parties a lot more distant from the grassroots struggles of the electorate, something that Zanu-PF has over the years been capitalising on.
In fact the borrowed policies and ideology makes them dangerous. The people of Zimbabwe know exactly what they want, they do not want an importation of Western ideologies, they do not want solutions to the problems that are peculiar to them.
And that there are little or virtually no open political debates whatsoever in social circles on which political party has the most brilliant manifesto speaks volumes of the kind of opposition political parties the country has.
People want a manifesto that is grounded in their struggles, a manifesto that talks purely to how the livelihoods of the people of Zimbabwe are going to improve when a certain political party gets in power.
A manifesto that is relevant to the youths, students and graduates, the elderly, the working class, women and children in general.
People want to see a manifesto that talks of real bread and butter issues and not an all-political manifesto where presidential terms are discussed more than how the economy will be fixed.
They do not want a manifesto where the rewriting of the constitution is given more precedence than how employment is going to be created for the jobless graduates.
Opposition political parties have however, not known manifestos to win elections. They have been going historical, evoking history and fast forwarding it to the present especially in the Southern parts of the country by mentioning Gukurahundi.
True, the Gukurahundi episode happened and its now part of history to talk about, but those that try to evoke the emotive memories of the sad political episode as an election manifesto are misguided and are revisionist politicians.
Professor Jonathan Moyo said last year that the Gukurahundi issue was addressed authoritatively by the late Vice-President
Joshua Nkomo and President Mugabe in the run up to the signing of the Unity Accord in 1987.
“I know that most people agree that the late VP Nkomo and President Mugabe addressed the Gukurahundi issue in very fundamental terms with rich lessons for all of us. There is no need to be revisionist about this. I don’t think there is a problem in the country about unravelling the causes of that dark period in our country’s early independence period,” he said.
Equally, those that do not want to talk about it are guilty of suppressing history and the more something is censored and said in hushed tones, the more it gets an amplified voice from those that are anti-establishment.
The Gukurahundi mantra that almost all opposition political parties use to look and sound like they are sympathetic to the people of the country’s five Southern Provinces should not be taken as a manifesto. It is not. For it only seeks to divide the people along tribal lines.
And national politicians have been trying to explain the sad episode and dispel the reports that have been spread by opposition politicians as they play the sympathy card while trying to brush the ruling party with a black brush and proclaiming themselves as holy, as if some of them were not there when it happened.
Zimbabwe People First leader and former Vice-President Dr Joice Mujuru tried to be revisionist and was left with egg on the face when she was humiliated in South Africa over her mention of the historical episode to try and gain the sympathy of a largely Matabeleland audience at her rally in Mamelodi, Pretoria last week.
The youths claimed Dr Mujuru was using the people of Matabeleland to gain sympathy by visiting the mass graves of people who died during the Gukurahundi era. Her aides had to resort to violence to deal with the youths who were demanding that she stops political gimmicking.
“We had honestly come here to ask Joice Mujuru to stop her scheduled visit to Bhalagwe Mine. We feel she is not being honest and wants to use that visit to gain the sympathy of the people of Matabeleland. Our conviction is that she is power-hungry and wants to ascend to power at all costs. Her scheduled visit to Matabeleland is nothing but a political gimmick meant to sway votes to her side.
“We asked them to give us a clear roadmap on how they intend to move the nation forward but we were met with violence and told to leave the stadium.
We were then physically ejected out of the stadium and were threatened with shooting. Our concern is how they are going to rule the country in the unlikely event that they ascend to power when they are exhibiting this intolerant and violent behaviour,” said the youth representative Samu Dube in South Africa.
They said although there should be no monopoly on who should talk about Gukurahundi as long as they were sincere they get worried when politicians start mentioning it each time there is an election.
“There has not been any politician who has done anything. They just mention it and it ends there, just to arouse a spirit of emotions and hate. We do not want that,” she added.
However, those that have been in opposition politics for long now know that the Gukurahundi mantra does not work but they are just stubborn or is it that they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from their past failures.
Instead of singing the tired Gukurahundi song in campaigning they should instead invest their energies in crafting a wholesome manifesto that speaks to the ordinary person’s aspirations.
