The common thread linking politicians

Prof Arthur Mutambara accused of the same leadership traits afflicting Mugabe by top ally Job Sikhala

There is a common thread linking Robert Mugabe, Ndabaningi Sithole, Eddison Zvobgo, Edgar Tekere, Welshman Ncube, Arthur Mutambara and Job Sikhala that emerges from the whingeing by Job Sikhala from his current tussling with MDC-M leadership.

If the truth be said it is a thread that links all of us but that some of us are better at severing at material times than the disgraced former St Marys MDC legislator and Mugabe.

What causes most of us to join and actively participate in organised institutions are shared interests that the institutions set out as objects of its incorporation.

Religious objects group and bind worshippers together. They however differ on strategy to attain objects of worship and split on those considerations to become separate entities with similar objectives but different methodologies of attaining the same outcome.

The need to brand compels groups to choose names, emblems and slogans that distinguish them as unique entities yet ideologically they may not be different after all.

Ownership of the brand becomes a serious conflict point should modalities to attain set objectives at some point vary within the membership.

Job Sikhala a self confessed founder member of the MDC has become a victim of brand proprietorship to the same extent as Robert Mugabe, Ndabaningi Sithole, Edgar Tekere, Eddison Zvobgo, Welshman Ncube and Arthur Mutambara are to their organisations.

They are all fundamentalists who are prepared to do anything necessary to retain ownership of a brand name.

Ownership is a common thread that runs through us all because of economic fundamentals that demand that we can only survive at peace with our conscience if we use what we own to sustain the kind of lives we enjoy.

The struggle for ownership is at the core of all human endeavours and because it is not easy to attain ownership it is that much more difficult to relinquish ownership when changed circumstances demand us to.

Many of us are capable of smooth transition and adaptation to changed circumstances and do so without anyone noticing it but not fundamentalists.

Ownership somehow transforms us into defensive ogres that are prepared to die for a cause.

It bestows on us as loyalist a sense of subservience and a compulsion to act in defence of a concept, emblem, belief and norm in such a manner that when we do so we are in many instances unconscious of whatever is happening around that may or may not be to our advantage to explore.

When Robert Mugabe took over leadership of Zanu in Exile he became a Zanu PF fundamentalist. He assumed ownership of the Zanu PF brand name to the same extent his real name totem and clan name identifies him.

Zanu founding member the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole was a Zanu brand convert and when Mugabe returned to contest the 1980 independence elections under the Zanu banner the two servants of a brand name clashed with each claiming exclusive ownership of the brand name.

Unlike company names, property and product rights whose ownership can be protected by registered patents and trademarks names of people and voluntary organisations are sadly left exposed to copycatting without recourse to legal protection.

The dispute over the Zanu brand ownership was taken to court and the court ruled that neither claimant had exclusive and protected right of ownership of the brand name resulting in Zanu appearing on the 1980 ballot paper twice with the one led by Mugabe adding PF to distinguish itself from that led by Sithole which later added Ndonga to the prefix.

Founding subscriber members of a brand name find it most difficult to distance themselves from a brand especially one that has succeeded in generating goodwill within communities in which it operates.

When Jonathan Moyo ruffled Eddison Zvobgo by implying that he was more Zanu PF than those of Zvobgo’s ilk the Zanu PF founder member promptly reminded him that he was a “Johnny come by lately” to the brand with absolutely no powers to eject him from the party regardless of whatever it is he was alleged to have breached.

“How can a “mafikizolo” (Johnny come by lately) decree that he can eject me from the party that I founded and he joined? I founded Zanu PF and will die Zanu PF. I own Zanu PF because the party is me and I am the party so it is not possible for anyone to eject me from the party.” He responded after the furore his mad relay athletes’ analogy had caused in the party.

Another of Zanu PF’s founding fathers Edgar Tekere was victim of numerous attempts to gag him by threats to dismiss him from the party. Like Zvobgo his response to suspensions and insults from Zanu PF insiders was that they were incompetent of taking the Zanu spirit in him from him regardless of whatever they did to abuse him because he owned the party from inception and unlike most of his detractors who joined the party he never joined it.

When it was the turn of the MDC to deal with conflicting strategies to achieve the founding objects of the party that had been severely derailed by the reversal of the party’s 2000 electoral inroads in Zanu PF domains through violence and rigging founding subscribers to the party formation split into two with one group aligning itself to leadership by Secretary General Welshman Ncube and the other remaining loyal to Founding President Morgan Tsvangirai.

The ownership of the brand name MDC generated such intense acrimony that public trading of political punches using the foulest language became the norm rather than the exception among former allies with the objective of wrestling power from Zanu PF but different thinking about the best method to do so.

Tsvangirai being a slave of the brand name as much as his new adversaries would not budge to calls and attempts to eject him from membership and leadership of the party he founded and likewise Welshman Ncube so once again two MDC parties emerged from the dispute over brand ownership.

The two entities were driven by the desire to tap into the goodwill of the MDC name at election time.

Among Ncube’s most vocal and vile supporters were Trudy Stevenson, Gift Chimanikire, Paul Themba Nyathi, Priscilla Misihairambwi a, Job Sikhala and later on David Coltart.

There was no shortage of retaliatory whiplash from Tsvangirai’s followers led by Nelson Chamisa and Tendai Biti.

National leadership problems dogged the breakaway faction led by Welshman Ncube resulting in them settling for Arthur Mutambara.

The robotics professor who is a fundamentalist of Student Political Activism took the battle for ownership of the MDC brand to seasoned Tsvangirai and made catastrophic errors when he picked on Tsvangirai for ridicule at one time claiming he was a more seasoned politician than Tsvangirai whom he labelled “a strategically incompetent political midget.”

Professor Mutambara is as much an ownership freak as the MDC founders and wanted to re-brand the breakaway faction with a name and emblem that bore his signature but met resistance from powerful stalwarts in the faction who would not hear any such nonsense about the MDC brand being soiled.

The breakaway suffered humiliating defections back to the Tsvangirai led MDC by senior officials after being humiliated in test of strength by elections and by the time the harmonised elections were held was desperate to seek shelter from its former leader who had rebuild a more formidable national political entity with a real chance of upstaging Zanu PF.

But they were greedy and wanted to reap where they had not sown resulting in the collapse of attempted coalition alliances and the faction suffering humiliating defeats to Tsvangirai wherever they felt they had the best chances of upstaging his party.

Numerous appeals had been made for the faction to disband and reunite with Tsvangirai’s main wing unconditionally but they refused alleging they were democratic and could not work under Tsvangirai who they claimed was more dictatorial than Mugabe.

Now the very problems they alleged were hallmarks of Tsvangirai’s leadership have returned to haunt Job Sikhala who was the most vocal detractor of Tsvangirai to have missed out of an accommodation in the coalition government.

The temptation is to label Sikhala a bad loser given the timing of his outbursts about leadership bankruptcy in the Mutambara led faction but Mutambara has irritated many Zimbabweans by pursuing a divisive opposition politics that he was not prepared to stand up to when it mattered most.

Mutambara chickened out of the Presidential election at the last minute and urged his backers to deliver their votes to a self confessed Zanu PF fundamentalist Dr Simba Makoni.

After his preferred candidate crashed to a humiliating defeat Mutambara was back with Tsvangirai whom he had despised as a political midget but when the runoff failed to materialise due to violence Mutambara never voiced concern about he was at it again negotiating his losers back into positions of power and influence in the coalition government that emerged from SADC mediated bargaining which saw him personally landing the prestigious deputy Premiership.

As if that was not insulting enough Mutambara selected election losers for all ministerial positions allotted to his faction and left the 10 elected MP’s on whose back he claimed leadership legitimacy to be included in the coalition government in the cold.

Because Mutambara chose to reward election rejects ahead of the electable members of his faction he created grounds for Job Sikhala to expect similar rewards and if not as happened get back at him with accusations we are now hearing.

Of course Job Sikhala will refute any accusations of sour grape politicking but he suffers the same culpability he accuses Mutambara of in this debacle.

While he claims he is free at last from the political leadership debauchery by Mutambara and his group of what he now calls Mugabe and by extension Zanu PF zealots masquerading as MDC democrats, he is far from that freedom.

That Mutambara and his faction are a Zanu PF sponsored political project is nothing new to most Zimbabweans opposed to Zanu PF. The only novelty being it coming from a senior faction leader albeit at the unfortunate time he has been targeted for party discipline.

But Sikhala is consistent in one thing. He says Both Tsvangirai and Mutambara have betrayed the founding objectives of the MDC founding document by coalescing with Mugabe and Zanu PF in government as if nothing happened to the parties at the hands of Zanu PF impunity which he was victim of for a decade.

While he maybe right in that assessment he fails the democracy test when he threatens that he will die an MDC member because he founded the party and guests invited to lead the party (by him and other founding members because of their lack of self confidence in their leadership capabilities we guess), like Mutambara have no right to whip him into line if he errs.

That is what is wrong with Mugabe, Zvobgo, Tekere, Ncube, Mutambara and a host of other brand fundamentalists’.

A political party is evidence of common political beliefs held by those that subscribe to the party be they founder members of invited converts.

To claim that because one managed to hold the views and courageously sold them to unite a critical mass of subscribers he/she is immune to standing disciplinary measures when he breaches standing rules because of the status of being a founder member is absurd political autocracy.

Political ideals are commonly owned and must be exercised in groups that subscribe to self regulation by the party code of conduct. Those that do not subscribe to the code must dissociate themselves with the brand rather than create brand confusion like Mugabe, Ncube and Mutambara are known to have done with Sikhala’s unqualified support in the past.