THERE was a time when everyone thought MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his ilk had finally found traction with the nationalist agenda but all that was extinguished last week when South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) announced it would forge ties with the MDC-T and People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
The reason for the proposed unholy pact is that the coalition would push for democracy across Africa.
While this is yet another sad development in Africa’s fight against neo-colonialism, there are many opportunities for former liberation movements to forge ahead with the development and nationalistic agenda.
Tsvangirai was in Government, in a country led by nationalists for five years, but learnt nothing about nationalistic leadership and its tenets.
Neo-colonialism is what drives his politics.
And it dovetails with DA leader Mmusi Maimane’s anger against political parties entrenched in nationalistic politics.
Making the neo-colonial coalition announcement, Maimane had no kind words for Zambian President Edgar Lungu who has detained that country’s opposition leader, Hakainde Hichilema, on treason charges for allegedly obstructing President Lungu’s convoy.
Said Maimane last Thursday in a press release: “The DA is unequivocally committed to the advancement of vibrant, competitive, multi-party democracy, the rule of law and the entrenchment of human rights and free speech across Africa. The persecution of Hichilema goes against these values, and as such, we must stand in solidarity with those who are fighting for true democracy on the continent.
The DA will re-establish South Africa’s leading voice on the continent for the entrenchment of democracy and the upholding of human rights on the continent, a role we surrendered after the Mandela presidency.”
Maimane was duly barred from entering Zambia last week as he attempted to attend the treason trial of Hichilema.
“In this light, I will be making contact with African leaders, including Morgan Tsvangirai and Tendai Biti, in order to establish a plan of action on the way forward in entrenching democratic values and the rule of law in Africa,” Maimane wrote.
“We must not cease in our efforts to liberate Africa from the stranglehold of ‘big man politics’.
“Indeed, opposition parties have a role in realising this through co-operation.”
A glimpse of the DA’s politics, just like the MDC-T’s, shows a nagging trait of racism.
Where the MDC-T has the likes of Iain Kay and Roy Bennett, the DA has its former leader and Western Cape Premier Hellen Zille leading from the front with provocative posts on social media.
In March this year, she stoked controversy with a string of racist posts on twitter.
“Getting onto an aeroplane now and won’t get onto the Wi-Fi so that I can cut off those who think EVERY aspect of colonial legacy was bad,” she tweeted.
“For those claiming legacy of colonialism was only negative, think of our independent judiciary, transport infrastructure, piped water etc.”
The colonial legacy which is a prominent feature of the DA’s DNA was, and still is, bad in such a way that it makes people like Zille, Tsvangirai and Maimane believe they can negate people’s aspirations.
It is bad in such a way that perpetrators of the ills and evils associated with colonialism believe they can erase memories of the horrors they wrought on us through twitter.
They have now forgotten that after robbing our forefathers of their land and wealth, they have no right to continue looting from us the little that is left from colonialism.
Colonialism, predecessor to slave trade, was a policy of theft, abuse of people’s rights and subjugation.
It took from our people not only their abundant natural resources but their dignity.
This is the dignity that our leaders are trying to restore through such programmes like the Land Reform and Resettlement and the on-going Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment initiatives.
Our leaders seek to redress the imbalances created by colonialism along racial lines which, not surprisingly, Zille and her kith and kin find attractive and compelling with ignoramuses like Tsvangirai and Maimane blindly being taken on a nasty ride to hell.
While our leaders preach and deliver economic emancipation, they are hampered by the likes of Tsvangirai and Maimane who naively grovel at the altar of neo-colonialism.
This is why they hate land reform and resettlement initiatives; they hate Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment.
They hate the Command Agriculture initiative because it should be done by whites.
They hate the dualisation of the Beitbridge-Chirundu Highway because it is being done by ZANU PF, the Party of the liberation struggle.
They hate the commissioning of the Tokwe Mukosi Dam because the 50 000 plus people who will benefit from it are blacks, the same blacks they hope to one day rule.
They are vehemently opposed to the completion of the Kariba Hydro Station because we must stay in perpetual darkness.
With a dead economy, they have a voice, but they are dreadfully detached when it comes to proffering solutions to the economic challenges they created for the country by inviting sanctions.
Yet these are the solutions that the ZANU PF Government is presenting, which Tsvangirai and his neo-colonial acolytes resent and thus want negated.
Their politics suffer from a chronic poverty of ideas and they wish that poverty to transcend to people’s lives.
Theirs is a useless coalition of spent forces with nothing to offer to the people.
Let those with ears listen.