The author writes about Zimbabwe but this probably applies to any emerging
democracy.
ZANUPF is the ruling party, been in power since independence (1980). MDC
started last year and won nearly 50% of the vote at the June election
including nearly all urban electorates.
___________________________________
The Financial Gazette
--Brian Kagoro
THE other night I was exceedingly restless. When I finally got around to
stealing some sleep I had the strangest of dreams.
I dreamt that by some divine intervention, His Excellency, the High Priest
of Zimbabwean politics, had gone to a far-away retirement place. In
inexplicable jubilation, I started preparing to host a huge celebration
party.
I drew up the guest list, the shopping list and the party programme.
Impressed with my own effort, I thought:
"All is set for the big do!" Except I had one insoluble difficulty. I could
not come up with a theme for the intended celebrations. For a considerable
length of time I toyed around with the following ideas:
- "To a new day and a new era!"; and
- "Goodbye my troubles!"; and
- "This is the day of deliverance and national renewal."
None of the above phrases offered me any comfort concerning the destiny of
Zimbabwe. The departure of the High Priest dealt with what we had been, but
failed to define who or what we were becoming or were going to be. The High
Priest was gone but the mess was still with us.
This may be a crude analogy but there is very little utility value for
insecticide around a rotting carcass. The insecticide may kill the flies but
it certainly will not arrest the rot nor will it revive the dead animal.
At the risk of sounding gravely pessimistic, allow me to suggest that His
Excellency's retirement will not revive the economy, nor will it arrest the
moral, social and political decay that confronts us today.
The reality that stares us in the face is that the entire old team must go.
In this regard I share this nation's anxiety with the High Priest' aversion
for rest and I also share this nation's eagerness to see him retire
gracefully. In fact, I am persuaded of the urgency of this need, more so now
that the High Priest rules from Harlem.
Yet even as I prepared to party, I was dismayed to the point of dejection.
This was not so much because I wanted the High Priest to come back, but
because I realised that we were not prepared for the departure.
As I scribbled on, I finally settled for the following phrase as the theme
for the big party:
"Here begins the real struggle".
The High Priest is evidently not irreplaceable. This nation abounds with
numerous capable men and women who can replace him any day of the week. It
is just that this divine intervention caught all of us sleeping.
It brought me to the sober realisation that our problems as a nation are
much bigger than Robert Mugabe. Right there in the privacy of my bedroom, I
realised that the national leadership crisis was much larger than ZANU PF.
I felt silly that I should even be thinking that problems could be caused by
anything else other than ZANU PF and its Mugabe. For a moment or so I felt
like a man who had bought a new pair of trousers with no pockets and as a
result had nowhere to put his hands and his wallet.
Real struggle
In my usual sense of resolve, I concluded that nothing could be worse than
ZANU PF. My dislike for that party and the kongonya dance led me to conclude
that it was the epitome of our national destruction.
However, in the privacy of my conscience I conceded that the evil ZANU PF
system:
- had not created tribalism and racism; and
- did not invent corruption; and
- was not the architect of political violence; and
- was not the author of dictatorship.
NB. The party had simply perfected these vices.
That is why I had finally settled for the theme "Here begins the real
struggle".
Among the wide range of adversities confronting Zimbabwe today, removing
Mugabe may only be the opening chapter to a very long thesis. Such action
may bring token relief but it will certainly not cure the malady of
self-destruction that has besieged us since the inception of the colonial
state.
We habitually fall under the rulership of men with small minds and oversized
egos. In fact, we have almost accepted as our assigned lot in this life the
role of being professional complainants in the numerous cases of
misgovernance.
Biggest problem
We consistently express amazement at the decadence of our political leaders
but do very little else to deal with them. Mugabe is, of course, not the
biggest problem that this nation has - we are.
We sit on our behinds and hope that those who have made deviance an
enterprise will some day reform and be born again. This whole nation watches
bloodshed as it would a tragic loss at the Olympics, with very little
motivation to act to save the situation.
My biggest source of discomfort is not the High Priest but the hangers-on.
At least we can vote the High Priest out of power, but how do you even begin
to deal with the hangers-on?
Is MDC the solution?
Some may say your dream was incomplete. Why did you not dream of President
Morgan and First Lady Susan in Zim-l and at State House?
They will say why did you not dream of Silo, Matongo,etc, as vice
presidents? Or even the learned professor?
They will question why I did not dream of all the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC)'s shadow ministers as substantive ministers.
They may not understand why I did not dream of open palms as replacements
for clenched fists.
Some might even ask: why did you not dream of a 40-something President as an
appropriate replacement for a 70-something one?
The MDC per se is not necessarily a panacea to our national problems. An MDC
President, or a new ZANU PF one for that matter, may hardly be the issue.
There is a more fundamental concern besides the obvious fact that the MDC
guys would be a lot more handsome or beautiful than the ZANU PF lot.
Cynical as this may sound, we must realise that we are not concerned - at
least at the moment - about beauty contests.
The MDC group might also pass the transparency test because the members have
not been exposed to sufficient corruption.
The solution to our national dilemma lies in transforming our ways of doing
things and in a total paradigm shift. It is not a worthwhile struggle to
spend an entire lifetime fighting for the removal of a dictator.
As long as the conditions that nurture dictatorships are left unperturbed,
we will have as much problems with the MDC as we have had with ZANU PF.
It is therefore imperative that we transform the legal and institutional
frameworks that nurture dictators. We must, as well, deal with our rotten
political systems and political culture .
-Brian Kagoro is a legal practitioner and political spokesman of the
National Constitutional Assembly, a Zimbabwean civic organi-sation.
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