BERNARD MPOFU
President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s electoral victory brought to the fore questions over the emergence of fissures within Zanu PF. The ruling party garnered two thirds of the 210 House of Assembly seats while Mnangagwa received 50,8 percent of the presidential election vote.
While Mnangagwa got a new lease of life to govern Zimbabwe for the next five years, recurrent infighting within his party could be one of his biggest challenges.
On his campaign trail, Mnangagwa said he would censure party members plotting a post-election impeachment after he realised that some were de-campaigning him in the polls while propping up Zanu PF candidates who contested in the just ended polls. This phenomenon has largely been known as “Bhora Musango.”
For a man who came to power after factionalism reared its ugly head claiming the scalps of high profile party stalwarts like former president Robert Mugabe and those coalesced around his wife Grace, many thought Mugabe’s ghost divided Mnangagwa’s vote while others contend that divisions and contestations within the party could be deep-seated.
Mnangagwa took over from Mugabe last November after a faction known as G40 was outmaneuvered by those sympathetic to Mnangagwa who had been kicked out of the party earlier on.
Zanu PF Secretary for the Commissariat Engelbert Rugeje recently told Business Times that the party would undergo a restructuring exercise to deal with divisions within the party.
While research shows that there is little analytical literature on the theory and empirical analysis of party factionalism that leads to splits and the formation of new political entities, Zimbabwe like many other African countries has been dogged by fissures within political parties. Some have been messy while others have resulted in the emergence of new charismatic political leaders.
Intense wrangling and high-stakes gambits are a feature of all political party leadership contests around the world.
In South Africa for instance the Congress of the People (Cope) came from a bitter conflict marking the ANC’s 2007 Polokwane Conference in which Jacob Zuma triumphed over Thabo Mbeki and his allies. Ironically Zuma had to face the same fate as his predecessor but in the final analysis the ruling party had been become weaker.
Where these have sufficient outlets and platforms for the airing and expression of difference and are conducted and systematised through appropriate and adequate processes of inclusive decision making, parties are able to maintain a degree of cohesion and unity. But that is not the case in many countries, divisions often happen under the cover of darkness as political actors plot and counter-plot.
In the absence of platforms for expressing difference, or distribution of positions, or bargained outcomes on policy and when the differences among members and leaders are too great, there is an extensive and prolonged sense of grievance.
Harare-based political analyst Takura Zhangazha said factionalism can be a bane for African politics as it negates democracy but blinds loyalties to personalities.
“It’s a combination of materialism in politics or patronage system that engender loyalty that may be ethnocentric or on one’s prospects of ascending to power. It’s something that should be nipped from the bud and it makes politics expensive,” Zhangazha said.
“Factionalism makes politics very much about individuals instead of values ideas and principles.”
However in some cases, parties formed to represent neglected constituencies or to address ignored issues and challenges in society engage in a positive type of political entrepreneurship and identify and build a constituency as their power base in society in order to address identified social challenges.
The controversial ascendancy of Chamisa also reflected that when the stakes for position, either leadership or policy, are so high that leaders and members conspire to give them effect and make them binding, without following the agreed upon rules, new issues of conflict are introduced and layered on to existing ones.
The divisions within Zanu PF have also been common in the country’s main opposition party, the MDC led by Nelson Chamisa. Since its formation in 1999, the MDC, which was largely a labour-based party has suffered three splits.
Chamisa’s rise led to factions with the MDC which led to a new break-away party fronted by Thokozani Khupe. Analysts said these divisions could have weakened the opposition’s prospects in the just-ended polls.
Khupe’s break from the parent party led to a very different type of politics—she became the subject political trolls and in some cases abuse and this ultimately to her precarious prospects for success.
University of Johannesburg professor David Moore said while concessions were made in cherry-picking candidates for the lower house seats, the MDC Alliance did not put more attention in the House of Assembly polls.
“I think the MDC did not get more seats in Parliament because their main focus was on the presidential election race,” Moore said adding failure by Khupe to garner a number of seats suggested that factionalism was really the main factor that affected the outcome of the elections. Khupe’s formation won two seats under proportion representation.
With election season over and Zimbabwe’s awaits the next polls in 2023 simmering tensions within the opposition party could further weaken opposition and ruling party politics alike.
