Need to clamp down on foreign-funded troublemakers
EVERY year during the SADC Summit, and sometimes other international events where the sitting and elected President of Zimbabwe may have an important role or Zimbabwe may be discussed, such as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, some opposition elements, usually funded by outsiders, try to create an incident through organising public demonstrations.
A critical element of these demonstrations is to ensure that a group of people are arrested, so allowing spin doctors on social media to proclaim that Zimbabwe is not a democratic state and does not allow or follow democratic values.
If there can be a bit of violence, that helps although the organisers would rather this occurred without a direct link to them, to show that “the people” are so angry that they go beyond protest and are possibly incited by the police or the Government.
The reason why the leaders do not want a direct link is that organising a violent demonstration is a criminal offence in most countries, including Zimbabwe, and the idea is not to go to jail for that, since if nothing else this would make it hard to visit foreign countries and live off other people’s hospitality, while you make appeals.
So the goal is to embarrass the President and the Government, create some headlines and try and build up the impression that Zimbabwe is beyond the pale when it comes to human rights.
Outsiders like to back these elements because they can create the headlines, even without the votes, and because they feel that opposition parties are missing the point of overthrowing the Government, rather than building up support so they can be a legitimate option for voters.
This time round the two chosen groups are Transform Zimbabwe and the newer National Democratic Working Group, both with fine-sounding names, but both basically one-man political outfits that do not compete in elections and have close to zero support, so need foreign funding and direction.
Transform Zimbabwe is described, at least by the outsiders who back it, as a political party founded just over a decade ago.
It has studiously avoided nominating candidates for local government, Parliamentary and Presidential elections and so showing up its weaknesses and its almost total lack of support.
For all practical purposes it is Jacob Ngarivhume, who appears to be able to earn a living from donations by outsiders. The working group is another one-man show, that of Job Sikhala, who like Ngarivhume entered politics via student politics and the original MDC, but went a bit further with a Parliamentary nomination and won a seat, but who then spun off one of the small splinter parties, managed to return to central opposition politics when the MDC put together an electoral alliance and returned to Parliament.
But he has never been regarded as one of the central opposition leaders, being regarded as a loose cannon and a loud mouth, rather than a practical politician who can built up voter support.
The two only become a nuisance to Zimbabwe and Government because of their external backing, picked by those who fancy manipulating Zimbabwean politics and causing trouble as potential trouble makers. This time the backers are reportedly the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Oppenheimers’ funded Brenthurst Foundation.
The activities of the two, and their backers, put the authorities into a modest quandary. Whatever the authorities do these miniature political outfits will want to go further and cause headline trouble.
Even if they got authority to demonstrate the smart bet would be that they would manage to let that “slip” into violence.
So the smart move by the authorities is simply to follow the law and make sure they cannot cause trouble. We do not need this. And the SADC Heads of State are not going to be impressed.
The SADC Heads all obviously have a very good idea of what Zimbabwean politics is about. They know President Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF party won the last two elections handsomely.
They know that there is a significant, if disorganised, opposition party prone to internecine warfare that attracted easily the second largest block of votes.
Then there is a batch of small and largely single-issue parties with zero Parliamentary representation who do participate in politics legitimately to make their point, plus these tiny one-person outfits that want to be the eternal outsiders and pretend they are important although no one wants them. Zimbabwe has laws against foreigners backing political parties with resources or cash, and tracking the money laundering to get the money to Sikhala and Ngarivhume could be useful, although both could well claim their present incarnations are not political parties as they have never registered with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to fight an election. Still, the money was almost certainly laundered.
But foreign political meddling does need to be stopped. Zimbabweans obviously have the right to back any political entity they wish, but foreigners have to stay clear.
Major Zimbabwean parties can even get national funding, once they have won enough votes, and a good slice of the present budget for parties will go to the main opposition party, at least once the authorities are reasonably sure who is the actual head of the party so they hand over the cash to the right leadership.
And at the same time it needs to be made perfectly clear to the two opposition outsiders who fancy a larger role, and who are prepared to accept foreign cash to cause trouble, that this is not subject to negotiation. If they reckon they have support, they need to nominate candidates and fight elections, not pretend that they are some God-given answer to Zimbabwean problems and so are allowed to operate outside the law.