Mutambara’s image now damaged beyond repair
Kirsty Coventry is making all of us proud,its difficult to find something to cheer you up when your country is slowly sliding into chaos and Kirsty ‘s victory couldn’t have come at a better time. Congrats girl! I am happy for Kirsty also partly because she is enrolled at the same university that I went to in Austin,TX quite insignificant of course, but it makes her victory even more sweeter. Now back to the bitter sweet world of politics.
I must say I never trusted MDC faction leader Arthur Mutambara from the start,everything is wrong about a man who spends two decades in the diaspora,shut out of the public never saying anything about developments in his home country only to come back at the eleventh hour claiming to be the saviour.
But recent developments in which Mutambara said they are prepared to strike a deal with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party is more revealing about a politician we have known for little over two years. This event has shaped his political image.
“Political image is like mixing cement,” said US Democratic Party nominee Walter Mondale. “When it’s wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there’s almost nothing you can do to reshape it.” This statement rings true of Mutambara.
In the next years regardless of the outcome of these talks people will never forget this great betrayal by Mutambara. Any attempt to repackage himself to cut a new and winning impression after these talks will be a damp squib that won’t work.
Mutambara should have realized that even if they agreed with ZANU PF,it was suicidal to say this in public. Politicians survive through knowledge of how to maintain a balance between which information is available to the public and which information is kept hidden. Mutambara failed in that balancing act.
Mutambara’s utterances and calling Tsvangirai names revealed not only pride but arrogance. As a prominent political analyst, George Will once observed: “A politician’s words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.” Mutambara revealed his condescending attitude towards the Zimbabwean majority which supports Tsvangirai,its a costly revelation,one that could consign him to political oblivion one way or the other.
Mutambara has alienated himself from his faction’s core voting block. Its public information that his faction derives its support from rural Matebeland. The faction’s electoral successes in these two provinces could be attributed to their political strategy one in which Tsvangirai and his candidates were portrayed as ‘traitors’ and tribalists.
Being born and raised in Matebeland South, I remember an incident during my school days. It was at a prize giving ceremony, those who went to school in Zimbabwe know about those events where achievers in different fields be it academics and sports are rewarded. So it happened that I won a prize for excelling in Ndebele and as my name was being called out I could hear people murmuring,I knew why, my name sounded strange. I was shona.
What I am trying to explain is that the scars of tribalism cut deep in Matebeland, people are still traumatized by traitors like Enos Nkala and Naison Ndlovu and the Gukurahundi genocide is still fresh in minds. People still don’t approve ZAPU’s marriage with ZANU. They feel they have been left out and the politicians do not really care about them.
The tragic history of Gukurahundi,broken trust,betrayal and government abandonment defines the politics in those regions and the political language that resonates includes the code words; ngumthengisi, traitor, opasi, kathenjwa. Economics in rural Matebeland is not a huge deal because most bread winners work in South Africa and Botswana. So some politicians understand these code words and use them to their benefit and through this strategy the Mutambara faction won.
It will take more than one or two political cycles to win back rural Matebeland people’s hearts and their faith in government and politicians. But one thing is clear, Mutambara’s image is now tainted with one of more of those code words.
They say he who sups with devil should use a long spoon, Mutambara used a short one and is now too close to ZANU PF for comfort.
Promising political leaders in Matebeland have seen their political careers go up in smoke because they had aligned themselves with ZANU PF. ZANU PF is an anathema and anyone who aligns himself with the a party of blood is bound to get burnt.
Like I said politicians in Matebeland understand the dynamics and the political landscape there and that is why you saw a stampede by some of the elected officials to distance themselves from Mutambara ‘s bed hopping with ZANU PF,they understand its political suicide.
The damage has been done,cast in stone an epitaph that reads,’ Here lies Arthur Guseni Oliver Mutambara…’.
Visit Asher ‘s website www.mutsengi.com to read more about his views and commentary on Zimbabwe’s politics
Posted by Gilbert Muponda
on August 15, 2008. Filed under Opinion.
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