The Sunday News
Richard Runyararo Mahomva
With 23 Presidential candidates for the first time in history ahead of the 2018 election; Zimbabwe is raising towards an actualisation stage of a seasoned multi-party state.
In all fairness — and in an ideal situation I was supposed to do an expanse series on all the Presidential candidates.
However, after cautious consideration of the current trends in the recent political developments I have found it key to pay particular attention to Cde Emmerson Mnangagwa’s protagonist role this coming election. In my analysis I situate his key figure role to this election to credited scientific scale of legitimacy which he received this far. The pre-election surveys which have been produced to give the predictive outcomes of the 2018 election situate President Mnangagwa in the orbit of power.
As such, I situate the perspective of this analysis to the findings of the Afro-Barometer which indicated that President Emmerson Mnangagwa had more votes at the time the research results were produced.
The Afro-Barometer has a wide geographic spread and its information access methodologies are befitting to give it credit.
Guided by this perspective, it is also important to note President Mnangagwa’s mandate to preserve incumbency.
Others argue that Nelson Chamisa is also key in this election and has a bigger chance to win the coming election. On a contrary, I submit the view that Chamisa’s rise to power was influenced by an unresolved question of factional fights in the erstwhile MDC-T which now has a split half in the form of the Thokozani Khuphe faction.
This has got an immense catastrophic bearing on Chamisa’s consolidation of power from the MDC’s already fragmented structure since his rise to power.
On the other hand, Emmerson Mnangagwa represents a continuity of a party whose factional tensions were successfully resolved. Therefore, he serves as a mark of continuity to Zanu-PF’s traditions.
Cde Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa’s rise to power as President of both the Republic of Zimbabwe and the ruling revolutionary entity, Zanu-PF broadly affirms the magnitude of Zanu-PF’s rejuvenation and legacy regeneration in the face of a plethora of misdirected efforts to deconstruct the party’s burden of history.
This positions ED’s candidature at the centre of this election all he has to defend the ruling’s 38-year title. Surely, the demise of Zanu-PF whether through opposition engineering or through the embattled G40’s failed scheming in the recent factional wrangles would have been tantamount to the fall of the nationalist legacy.
Cde Mnangagwa’s feat is record breaking and rightfully chronicles the opposition and G40’s failure to abduct the revolutionary party into conceding and thus abandoning its liberation philosophical character. Therefore, through this election President Mnangagwa has a mandate to ensure that he safeguards the dignity of Zanu-PF by ensuring that it wins this election. This is because the ruling party has remained a central force in the body-politics of the country.
Cde Mnangagwa’s Presidency is bluntly articulate of a nationwide paranoia for change which was sustained by opposition propaganda and the party’s sole dependence on former President Robert Mugabe’s stubborn ideological consistency to neo-colonialism until Grace Mugabe came into the picture. Grace Mugabe’s irrational meddling into the party’s succession was immensely characterised by denigrating the image and person of Cde Mnangagwa in a bid to erase his credentials and his befitting stand to lead.
Contrary to her imaginations, the advent of Garwe into the political front turned from diffidence to euphoria within a space of a week.
This historic phenomenon substantiated the density of Zanu-PF’s power consolidation dexterities which outsmarted the decade-long “Mugabe Must Go” mantra by opposition regime-change clubs. This further reflected that the continuity of Zanu-PF is largely dependent the historical and philosophical altitudes and not personality cults.
This historic November phenomenon initiated by Zimbabweans has further affirmed the extent to which Zanu-PF cannot be displaced by superficial neo-liberal hegemonies. Moreover, this particular transition also made it clear that the voice of the people is louder than twitter politics and fake praises to an illegitimate nationalist mother-figure.
More so, he also epitomises the anticipated shift of power within Zanu-PF and others who supported the ruling and were disgruntled at the monopoly of the G40 which exploited its proximity to President Mugabe to overturn the power base of Zanu-PF. In the same manner, ED has also earned himself public affection because of his economic development policy centred proclamations to power. President Mnangagwa’s centrality to this election is further reinforced in the 2018 Zanu-PF.
His candidature responds to the need for Zimbabwe to unlock prospects employment creation, retooling of the extractive and secondary sector, enhancing the ease of doing business, attracting foreign and local investment, infrastructural development, upgrading the function and the dignity of governance; as well as preserving long term national interests. Zimbabwe’s shift of power has seen the dynamic repositioning of the structure of governance with public institutions seemingly taking preferential leaning to national interests over partisan interests. This stimulates consorted patriotic commitment to national growth outside partisan leanings.
In the same manner, this definitely indicates that the coming election will and must have a universal embrace of the desires of all Zimbabweans so as to validate the idea of a rebirth of a nation which was lost to corruption, clientele politics, nepotism and other vices that come with the corrosive effects of power.
Moreover, the Government’s public out-reach initiatives to various political and economic stakeholders as well as his meeting with the youth from across the political divide is telling of a transformative paradigm which is corrective to the systematically aloofness of the Government from the public.
In other words, Cde Mnangagwa offers Zimbabwe an opportunity to rise from the past’s torment and despair with no incentive of hope. He is bestowed with a mandate to repair the fault lines of history.
Over the years, the nation-building has been discordantly pervaded by divisive enterprises of split patriotic consciousness.
Our academic and political discourse have been largely characterised by warring perspectives of national belonging.
To this end, colonial regional divides have also been used as emblematic justifications for the propagations of secession politics. At the same time, Government efforts to promote inclusive nationalism have also suffered internal and opposition sabotage owing to weak ideological persuasion and commitment to values of national unity.
Reactionary historiography has also played a critical role in framing divisive imaginations of national belonging, save to say that the early independence insurgence of 1982 to 1987 has been conveniently manipulated to maintain selective memoirs to self-entitlement by racist and tribal intellectuals. In the process, this has selectively led to the dismissal of what this day means in the history of Zimbabwe.
As such, it is important to reflect on the essence of the Unity Day within the contest of the unfolding experiences of consolidating our national pride under the leadership of President Emmerson Mnangagwa making significant considerations of the current political transition
This neo-colonial framed paranoia towards national unity has also posed as a threat to the unitary strength of pan-Africanism. Paradigms of difference underpinned on race, ethnicity, class, gender and creed continue to impose primordial rifts to our lasting values of unity.
To this effect, David Coltart and Judith Todd (in their biographies) have radically posited a re-membering which dismembers.
Race essentialism and selective amnesia has also been manipulated to map the contours of a superficial state of national tension. In some sections of the academia and across the political divide, ethnicity has been used to voice divisive imaginations of national identity.
In the face of all these attempts to discredit the reality of our oneness, the rise of Cde Emmerson Mnangagwa as President of the Republic of Zimbabwe offers a refreshing opportunity for Zimbabwe to rethink the tensions attributed to Zimbabwe’s fractured nationalism.
At the same time, this calls for Zimbabweans to embrace the peaceful political culture which Cde Mnangagwa has been projecting ahead of the coming election. Certainly, the election must be free and free.
Mahomva is a political-scientist with avid interest classic and modern political theory. He also has a distinct passion around the architecture of governance in Africa and is a literature aficionado.
