Zimbabwe opposition’s self-created dilemma

However, the senatorial issue was not the underlying reason for the MDC split. It was just but a spark that ignited the fire.

To understand this split, one must look at the dynamics of the party’s foundation. It had been formed less than a year before an election, which would have raised false hopes for some of its founding members.

The party was also a pastiche of political ideologies – leftists and liberals, employers and trade unions, city workers, farm workers and landowners over and above ethnic and class fault lines that it harboured.

By 2005, the party had also started to exhibit a predisposition towards violence aimed at fellow comrades, which was contrary to the party’s founding principles.  This violence could have been motivated by fatigue associated with losing subsequent elections.

The non-violent democratic struggle that the MDC had adopted at formation, what one can liken to Antonio Gramsci’s war of position, (as juxtaposed with war of manoeuvre) was such that patience and discipline were indispensable.

A war of position is a non-violent, protracted and uneven ideological process targeted at dislodging dominant ruling groups. Such a struggle is susceptible to defeats, wins and reversals. It requires an “unprecedented concentration of hegemony” within the opposition to guard against disintegration.

It is usually long and drawn out, thus those who engage in it must be prepared for that eventuality. This was not the case with leaders who caused the 2005 and subsequent splits.

In the 2008 election, one faction of the MDC obtained 100 seats, while the other got 10 seats. ZANU-PF won 99 seats. For the presidential elections, ZANU-PF won 43.2%, MDC-T won 47.9% while the other MDC’s backed candidate won 8.3%.

A combined tally for the opposition had they not split the vote would have been 56.2%, well above the required 50% + 1 vote.

This means that had the opposition been strategic and disciplined, they could have won state power in 2008. However, such a conclusion is based on a risky assumption that elections in Zimbabwe are free and fair. This may not be the case, but dynamics associated with this proposition warrant a separate discussion altogether.

The hung result of 2008 led to a negotiated government of national unity (GNU). The GNU persisted for just over four years, and culminated in the 2013 elections. Not long after losing these elections, contradictions began to manifest themselves within the MDC-T.

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