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 * By Grace Kwinjeh**


 * Last updated: 09/28/2005 05:03:12**

THE Movement for Democratic Change’s Youth Assembly over the past weekend made a very bold statement against the party’s participation in the forthcoming Senatorial elections. This move must be applauded. I thought that it was about time. That’s the way to go.

It is patently clear that the Senate agenda is a Zanu PF one which has nothing to do with addressing our country’s various socio-economic problems and other structural problems. In short whether or not there is a Senate will not result in more fuel, affordable food, drugs, or going back to the rule law and bring more democracy.

Zanu PF has made its political agenda for the year 2005 clear. It is an agenda that is solely driven by the party’s quest to restore its political hegemony once again. Thus, taking the country back to the pre 1999 scenario. The March 2005 Parliamentary elections which as predicted were callously rigged was the first step in fulfilling this agenda. Zanu PF secured a two thirds Parliamentary majority.

In my considered opinion it is demonstrably foolhardy; to defend the MDC’s continued presence in parliament as having anything to do with ‘defending democratic’ space. What democracy ? What space? MDC’s Parliamentary presence only serves to endorse and legitimize an illegitimate regime.

At face value, it may appear unfair to accuse the MDC of colluding with Zanu PF against the suffering masses, but the political reality is that a dictatorship is a dictatorship, supping with it even in an institution such as parliament makes the MDC guilty by default. Guilty of perpetuating Zanu PF’s evil agenda and its wanton rape of Zimbabwe’s resources. The party is participating in a perceived process of ‘Governance.’ A logical extension of this argument is that even if the MDC legislators never successfully move a motion in parliament the party must still stand satisfied that it is participating in a process of ‘Governance’.

Again the political reality is that every ‘nay’ that the minority MDC legislators vote as against the majority Zanu PF ‘ayes’, must be accepted as part of a legitimate democratic process. Consequently, the fact that the MDC is fighting a losing battle on the legislative front is crystal clear, even to my inebriated Tsunami survivor uncle in Tsonzo, and does not require neither professorial intellect nor political eloquence.

The same goes for the ill informed and unpopular constitutional changes. The MDC must stand accused of being a silent and conveniently sleeping partner in Zanu PF’s constitutional venture. Extending this analogy further, one could even risk an argument that applying the principle of collective responsibility, means that as a willing participant in the legislative agenda of the Fifth Parliament of Zimbabwe the MDC can no longer play it safe and plead innocence.

So when Zanu PF embarks on an unpopular constitutional agenda meant to further entrench its hold onto power with the MDC partaking in that process the MDC is as responsible as Zanu PF for the consequences of such actions. The MDC legislators as at 2000 must be definitively be distinguished from the MDC legislators at 2005. At 2000, the so to speak the fresh faced MDC was a disciple of what some have criticized as the naïve dispossession that the party’s parliamentary presence would as it were ‘bring about change.’ In 2002 the MDC now schooled at the harsh realities of the limitations of the legislature as a tool of change sought to complete the change through the Presidential process. It is now common cause that the limitations of this course of action were subsequently exposed.

Those of you that care to remember will recall that on both occasions our regional neighbors dismissed the MDC’s protestations of electoral fraud by arguing that the results of the elections demonstrated the ‘will of the people of Zimbabwe.’

The MDC once having accepted to participate in the Senatorial elections cannot turn around and refuse further constitutional amendments which if we are to take Justice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa’s word per his recent announcement Zanu PF is likely to have many up its sleeve.

A further predicament that the MDC faces is that of setting up a yard stick by which to measure participation in further constitutional amendments. One naturally fears the pre March 2005 situation in which the debate on whether or not to participate in the elections descended into a political free for all within the MDC, with the consequences that the party found itself caught in a web of official pronouncements from which it failed to extricate.

Zanu PF’s constitutional agenda is not for the benefit of the suffering masses but to protect its own interests by any means necessary and at any cost.

I remember as a young Student at Dadaya High School how the Head Master summoned the whole school to the Dining Hall. Students, teachers, support staff, cooks, everyone was there. He explained how Government was going to introduce reforms that will see our parents tightening their belts just a little bit. I remember him explaining how things would be tough, but this was going to be for a short while after which all will be well. I did not in my early teens understand the process of prolonged suffering that was about to visit my family and the people of Zimbabwe.

Going to school was no longer a given. I remember I would arrive at school and few days later our names would be called out at assembly to go back home and collect school fees. I remember the long walks on the dusty road from Dadaya Mission to the main Zvishavane – Bulawayo road. Catch lifts to Bulawayo and be away from school a little while.

But always as our parents salaries began to really erode in earnest. We always prayed that the following year will better, maybe the next, maybe the next. But never, life has just been getting worse. Zimbabweans continue to suffer, to the point that it has become part of our life. Having no medication in hospitals has become normal, high inflation has become normal; death a norm.

But for the ‘chefs’ Zimbabwe is a land of milk and honey, while we have continued to tighten our belts they have loosened theirs. The late Masipula Sithole, at a public meeting in Harare once commented on how the chef’s had finished the fruits of the struggle and are gnawing at the roots of the tree. That was so many years ago but even the juices of that tree have since dried up. The little that the country earns in any way they will grab and plunder.

We have now been reduced from a lower working class family to peasants. Back to the dark ages. There is no reward for any hard working family. My whole family has moved to the village, brothers and sisters can no longer even attend the boarding schools that we attended, those have become a luxury. ‘Kudzidza kumusha.’ Three meals a day also a luxury.

For some the struggle for change started recently, for others by default but many of us have watched and experienced the unfairness and ruthlessness of the Zanu PF regime closely. The very bane of our lives has been about fighting for a democratic Zimbabwe. Freeing Zimbabwe from Zanu PF’s tyranny. Saying no to participation in the Senatorial elections is a critical part of this struggle.

Every revolution has its casualties and the problem comes with wanting to minimise the cost of that revolution. This has never happened in history and is not likely to happen in Zimbabwe. Comrades, we have to stand up now or risk being remembered as those women and men who where not there when Zimbabwe needed them most. We must resist Zanu PF’s resurgent attempts to dictate the pace of the revolution. No to the Senate elections. No to Zanu PF’s constitutional agenda.

Grace Kwinjeh is a political activist. Contact Grace: