MTHWAKAZI INDEPENDENT

The height of hypocrisy is when the MDC Alliance, an organisation perceived by many to be the only competent opposition, starts to concern itself with reinforcing the same faulty principal foundations that form the base of the independent Zimbabwe’s political system.

You cannot be the anchor of democracy when you are compromised by undemocratic values and actions. MDC-T is a mockery to democracy when it claims to be the only competent challenger to ZANU PF’s dictatorship, yet it is itself governed by a constitution so flexible that it bends on the demands of the elite.

It will be foolhardy to believe the MDC Alliance as it stands today is brave enough and competent to objectively look ahead, recreate our politics, remove any doubts and anxieties about the future when it is itself presently leading a political double standard.

Increasingly, principle and MDC-Alliance is becoming difficult to positively put together in the same sentence. How can the MDC Alliance be considered a competent opposition when it seems to mimic ZANU PF’s foundational internal operatives? Like ZANU PF, the MDC Alliance now amounts to organised hypocrisy driven by primal urges of greed and power.

Boundaries between the MDC Alliance and ZANU PF are nonexistent; the two organisations are inseparable. There is a profound hypocrisy – and deep political ignorance – when the MDC Alliance complains about ZANU PF’s lack of democracy when the Alliance itself continues to abdicate its responsibilities to ethnic minorities in its midst.

A recent arrogant stance saw the MDC Alliance leadership walk into Matabeleland, talk at and not with people and walk out as if nothing happened, and then see themselves fundamentally different from ZANU PF that has normalised the same approach albeit with occasional food packs thrown at the poor electorate.

The opposition credentials of the MDC Alliance will remain questionable until it actively and effectively rids itself of political attitudes overlaid by tribalism. The Alliance needs to be seriously looking at building and sustaining systems that empower every region while eliminating those that protect the suppression of minority rights by the majority. Time for centralised governance is up, viable alternatives need to be explored with honesty not just as a way of gaining our votes.

The MDC Alliance, particularly its MDC-T backbone, cannot continue to veil its tribally marginalising attitudes under the cloak of democracy and freedom of expression. It is mortifying to those of us demanding real political change how many local MDC Alliance supporters are shocked by honesty and how few by apparent deceit. People would rather believe calling for Mthwakazi specific solutions to Mthwakazi specific needs is tribalism and ignore the Alliance’s systematic complacency in addressing Matabeleland concerns.

Those double-think experts telling us that the MDC Alliance is the solution to our problems are also the same bullies attempting to distract us from focussing on the detail of that organisation’s proposed solutions preferring instead to limit us to generalities.

When the MDC Alliance leaders display clear ethnic Shona supremacist influenced political priorities that do not address our needs, they are the only competent opposition with a broader national mandate, when we express Mthwakazi interests we are tribalists. We are called tribalists for demanding to know the finer details of how the Alliance differs from the MDC-T and ZANU PF in its attempts to deal with our specific needs.

Far from being tribalists, I believe we are well within our rights to demand that an organisation that has never been honest except by accident prove itself first before we start to believe it is indeed changing and represents political progress in our generation. When we avoid a vegetarian-only restaurant it is not out of hatred of the restaurant but out of the desire to meet our meat dietary needs.

It is now an irrefutable fact that Mthwakazi residents have no need for the MDC Alliance, it is not the solution we need for our problems, but an extension of their source. Our solution lies in strong local governance that can only be delivered by genuinely pro-Mthwakazi parties. The MDC Alliance has betrayed the ordinary citizen by allowing hunger for power to usurp principle. The deep-rooted tribalism amidst the MDC Alliance casts the shadow of hypocrisy over its opposition credentials, the prospects for freedom and the pursuit for happiness by the majority Mthwakazi residents is betrayed.